Media in Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead Trilogy
Irecently made an expedition onto Facebook and found the following bids for my attention:
“Never-before-seen Letter on Doubt by Hugh B. Brown.” “9 Ways to Quit Sugar for Good.” “He Snarled at Everyone Who Went Near His Cage. But When THIS Woman Comes Along? UNBELIEVABLE!” “10 Words Every Girl Should Learn.” “8 Unbelievably Difficult Yoga Poses You Have to See to Believe.” “Click here to watch a video of a freak accident that happened to this surfer.” “This video of baby bears wrestling is the most adorable thing I’ve ever seen in my entire life.” “Watch This Dad’s Reaction to Kids Texting at Dinner.”
Behold the items on the menu: treasure unveiled, the promise of selfmastery, the mystery of the human-animal bond, the struggle for recognition, the spectacle of the body contorted or in pain, the will to adoration, doubt and belief in all their colors, and, finally, a well-placed rebuke of the abuse of social media, of course brought to you by social media. Everything is there except for polished English usage. A simple log-on unfurled the encyclopedia of the human circus before my eyes. What was I supposed to do with this series of come-ons? It took some hardness of heart, but I ignored them like beggars in the street, donating only a few minutes of spare change to the “never-before-seen letter,” which was written by someone I respect on a topic I care about, though, of course, the headline’s “never-before-seen” was false. How should we live with this strange beast, the Internet, that has so filled the world in the past two decades and is slurping up a growing share of both the human race’s attention and the planet’s electrical supply? What are the proper ethical, aesthetic, political, and religious stances toward so much abundance and so much clamor? No one can comprehend the Internet’s full extent, and not even the NSA, Google, or the Internet Archive can map it as a totality thanks to its paywalls and fire walls, link rot and dead links, dark web and deep web, and constant updates and deletions. Even language strains to keep up: giant corporations sport baby-talk