Teen Readers

I was happy to read about the vitality and intelligence of this generation of teen readers in a recent Newsweek article (http://www.newsweek.com/id/136961), but I wasn't the least surprised. I workshopped with young readers for years; I saw their yearning. I heard their questions and stood nearby as they read well and wrote wisely. The teen readers I've come across are gloriously committed, smart, big-hearted. They're the type of people you want around when you've stumbled across some new lit passage you've got to love out loud.

Then there was this thing that happened the other day. I've had this high school student—I'll call him K—reading and writing with me this month, which is to say that he comes, we talk, I suggest some titles, xerox some poems, send him out into the world with a camera and pen, then wait to see what happens when he stops by again. A couple of weeks ago, I asked him to read Colum McCann's ZOLI. Next time we met, he said he hadn't. Well, yes, sure, I was disappointed. I'd wanted McCann for K, for K's sake, but I didn't bark, I just asked why. Why not ZOLI? Because, K said, he'd had Camus to read.

Camus?

For my book club.

Your book club?

Yeah. It's a bunch of us. We get together every week and talk.

So it was Camus last week. It'll be Orwell next week. Chances are they'll move on to Russian novels. It's classics, is what I'm saying, and no teachers, no parents are involved. These are high school seniors on the verge of the rest of their lives, getting together for books on Tuesdays, because it's fun, because it's good and right.

All hail the next generation.

The Death of Photography? The Rise of Newsvine.

A recent Newsweek article asks the question, "Is photography dead?"—asks whether, in the words of writer Peter Plagens, "the entire medium hasn't fractured itself beyond all recognition." It is possible, Plagens goes on to say, that the medium (now so digitally ripe, so easily manipulated) has lost its soul, lost touch with truth. Says Plagens: "The next great photographers—if there are to be any—will have to find a way to reclaim photography's special link to reality. And they'll have to do it in a brand-new way."

I bought a new camera recently, and it's one incredible piece of equipment. I didn't read a novel last week because I was reading the manual instead, and every time I think that I've got one of the functions down, I trip up against another button and wonder what it does. In the end, however, I want the same thing from this camera that I have wanted from any camera, including the little pin-hole oatmeal carton version I made in elementary school. I want to preserve things. I want to be able to study—at length, later—something that I've only glimpsed at in real time. I only want the truth from my images, but I know that that does not mean that I have necessarily captured soul. No function button is going to give me that. Only my ability to bear witness. (I'm still working on that; I'll always be working on that.)

On another topic altogether (but one that feels related), I was interviewed by Scott Butki last week, about two recent books, UNDERCOVER and ZENOBIA. Over the course of the interview, I learned a little something about what Scott does with his Newsvine, and it's fascinating. "Newsvine is a place with more than 100 writers writing about everything from the best current music to suggesting drinking games for the election debates to talking sports," he explains about this site, which was bought three months ago by MSNBC. In addition to interviewing fascinating people such as Roger Ebert, Robert Parker, Mary Higgins Clark, and Stewart Copeland of the Police, Scott himself writes frequently about media ethics and (at this very moment) the writers' strike.

In any case, as one who can barely figure out how to embed links into her own blog (wait, that's right, I haven't figured that out yet, despite the best efforts of my friend Nettie Hartsock and the incredible blogger Toby Bloomberg), I'm very impressed with what Scott has created and grateful to him for including me in the process. You can visit Newsvine at http://sbutki.newsvine.com/.