The death of words...

This morning's "Fresh Air" broadcast featured past interviews with two recently dead writers and critics: Reynolds Price, the much-loved southern novelist; and Wilfrid Sheed, a British critic-cum-nonfiction writer and novelist. Both of these men were about 80 years old, and though they came from different countries, their particular ways of speaking struck me as being quite similar. They each seemed to delight in fastening words together, as if their specific points were secondary to the ways in which they were presented--poetically, thoughtfully, and with a graceful ease. While listening to the broadcast, I was struck by how these men seemed to speak for a different time; the language they made use of and the care with which they composed their statements seemed old fashioned, but also much much better than how almost anyone speaks under the age of, say, 60.

I got to thinking about who would speak for today's American literary presence, and the first author who jumped to mind was Jonathan Franzen. I suppose that, aside maybe from Don Delillo, Franzen is the most respected--at least on a worldwide popular and pseudo high-minded scale--American author today. Compared with Price and Sheed, Franzen's spoken English is sadly inferior. I listened to a clip from a radio interview with Franzen late in 2010, and there is not even close to the same command, confidence, and resonant joy in language as evidenced by writers of ages past.

What does this all mean? I am not sure exactly, but I suspect that there are historical causes at play here. The most interesting possibility is not the most obvious: the postmodern (I know I know: not supposed to use that hackneyed term anymore) condition has eroded a reverence for words that once consumed men and women of letters. That makes me sound like Allan Bloom, but, well, there you have it. Then of course there is the reliance on technology to speed up communication, a condition that obliterates subtlety and joy in the name of efficiency, speed, and access.

I fear that the worst part of the 60s, namely the attempted eradication of a sense of good, better, and best in cultural expression, was so successful that we have lost the ability or interest in promoting a learned mastery of words, all in order to include all points of view.