Cultural products are being "shortened."
Despite being recognized as a masterpiece of world literature, recently at a book fair, I still saw *Under the Shadow of Young Girls in Bloom* (part 2 of *Searching for Lost Time *) at the half-price counter.
Beneath the shade of the blossoming girls , many books are clustered together at the fixed-price counter, discounted by fifty or sixty percent. It's easy to see that these counters are dominated by large-format works, some over five hundred pages thick.
Among them, it's not difficult to find elaborate, famous works by established authors, some even Nobel Prize winners in Literature. Why is that?
On numerous occasions, in conversations among "colleagues," this writer has received feedback that they are reluctant to read manuscripts exceeding 100,000 words. 100,000 words means readers spend significantly more time on it, while information is piling up daily, demanding constant updates—though few can clearly explain the purpose of such constant updates.
While the average lifespan of modern people has increased, resulting in longer lives, people in modern society tend to consume shorter cultural and entertainment products. Shorter cultural products satisfy the desire for more information, meaning we are prioritizing quantity over the genuine intellectual content of the information we receive daily, whether intentionally or unintentionally.
It's not just books; nowadays, music , movies, and even television are facing new viewing habits from the general public.
The emergence of "movie review" videos on social media is the clearest evidence of this trend. Essentially, they aren't reviews but film summaries, aiming to condense a two- or three-hour feature film into a fifteen- or twenty-minute video; or to summarize a television series with dozens of episodes into a couple of hours.
Nowadays, music is mostly just catchy choruses trending on social media platforms. Everyone hears it, everyone knows it, but if you listen to the whole song, hardly anyone will listen to it completely.
Literature and books are not exempt from this phenomenon of art being "shortened." In modern society, where the smartphone is becoming like an external part of the human body, it's understandable that we are easily distracted and influenced by the many beautiful things available online instead of spending time reading books.
Building habits for children
Back in 2024, Mo Yan, the Chinese writer who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2012, confessed that he regretted being drawn into online short films instead of spending time reading books. He felt that those short films were pointless and a waste of precious time.
Mo Yan is not the only "victim" of the times. The act of scrolling (on screens) is gradually replacing the act of flipping (pages and newspapers). We view more content on social media, becoming passive consumers of content in a sea of overflowing, garbage-filled information.
Just like instant coffee that's only a few seconds to brew can never compare to the deliciousness of a single drop of strong, brewed coffee. The joy of spending time on a piece of music, a movie, or a book is worth more than consuming hundreds (or even thousands) of pieces of trash every day on social media—trash content that is artificial intelligence-powered, enabling it to be produced faster and in greater quantities, while humans unconsciously "absorb" it without seeking any additional pleasure, their fingers simply scrolling out of habit.
These are the new challenges we all need to face in an era where various art forms are trying to win back every audience/reader from the embrace of social media. Short reading is a trend, but trends are not immutable; they can be created and changed.
What we need to do is not give up and go with the flow or chase trends, but rather, we ourselves, from the publishing industry to education, must cultivate a reading habit, starting with children. We must pull children away from the glare of phone screens and show them the joy and benefits of reading.
Children learn from whom? It's from their parents. Parents should change their short reading habits and spend more time reading to their children, reading with them, and using their experience to choose good, suitable books for their children. This will help children become familiar with and access the joy of reading.
Because children and students are the ideal age group to cultivate a reading habit that can stay with them for life, thereby building a sustainable reading culture.
Source: https://baodanang.vn/doi-dai-doc-ngan-3335048.html
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