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5 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
highly disappointing screed, coming as it does from one of the finest novelists of the last half-century, August 24, 2009
Helprin's book is both a passionate defense of copyright law as well as a mini-autobiography. Helprin is one of the great novelists and essayists of the past half-century, and his book A Soldier of a Great War is one of my all-time favorite novels. In many ways, therefore, Helprin was ideally suited to pen a passionate defense of copyright law.
Alas, while Helprin occasionally rises to great heights in his defense of copyright, he too often sinks to lamentable lows -- by resorting to the same unbecoming rhetorical tactics used by the mob he seeks to condemn. Indeed, his book is filled with gratuitous vitriol and neo-Luddite ramblings about the Internet and Information Age that severely detract from his defense of copyright.
This is a shame, because, in places, Digital Barbarism makes a fine case against those critics who wrongly view copyright as an impediment to the creation and diffusion of content. But his manifesto quickly goes off the rails as his defense of copyright quickly morphs into an indictment of the Internet and all things digital. In this sense, Helprin joins the "Internet pessimists" (some might say Luddite crowd) that includes Neil Postman, (Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology), Lee Siegel (Against the Machine: Being Human in the Age of the Electronic Mob) and Andrew Keen (The Cult of the Amateur: How Today's Internet Is Killing Our Culture).
It's regrettable -- and surprising -- that someone of Mark Helprin's literary prowess didn't make a better effort to persuade his readers.
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11 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Much needed, very disappointing, June 29, 2009
I'm 40 percent done reading the new book by Mark Helprin, "Digital Barbarism" (Kindle Edition). "Reading" is probably not the right word for it, as the activity here is the mental equivalent of forcing my way through a very thick and prickly underbrush in a swampy forest. It is mostly due to his writing style: dense, convoluted, opaque. I find myself having to frequently re-read his meandering sentences to get at the point he is trying to make. It is quite ironic that at the origin of this book lies a New York Times editorial by Mr. Helprin, in which he proposed extending the term of copyright considerably, and for which he was viciously attacked in comments and blogs. He complains of having been grossly misunderstood, and never having advocated extending the period of copyright protection to infinity, as implied by his attackers. Yet what he wrote in the original article was this: "Congress is free to extend at will the term of copyright. It last did so in 1998, and should do so again, as far as it can throw." When read extremely carefully (probably more than once), there is nothing in these sentences that explicitly says "forever", and really nobody, not even US Congress, can throw anything into infinity. But can you blame scores of people for reading into these sentences a desire for infinite extension? Yes, it may be a leap of logic, but a tiny one. And that's the problem with Mr. Helprin: his writing lacks precision, is embellished by his wordsmithing to a point of ambiguity. Some people will claim that he writes beautifully; I'd say, yes, inasmuch as rococo architecture can be considered beautiful.
Aside from my frustration with its language, there is also the fact that this book is a long, tiresome tirade against the modern world. Mr. Helprin gives a tip of his hat to a few good things modern technology has brought, like improvements in medicine, but this is barely noticeable in the thicket of his million complaints, including things as trivial (OK, silly) as the substitution of pen and paper with the computer as the writer's primary tool. (I am fully cognizant of the irony of my reading his book on Kindle, the latest incarnation of the "machine" he seems to despise...).
All in all, this book has been a huge disappointment so far, all the more that I basically agree with many of his points, and share his fear that the support beams of our culture are being turned into dust by swarms of aggresive, insatiable termites, whose damaging power is amplified by technology. There are several species of these termites, with different names, including: the Open Source "movement", music "sharing" networks, Creative Commons, etc, but with the same endgame in mind: replacing our property-based society with one based on the old, utopian ideal of "contribute what you can, take what you need". (Given our imperfect nature, this ideal very quickly degenerates into, "contribute as little as possible, grab as much as you can get away with", resulting in economical and societal deterioration. XX century has given us plenty of examples of that pathway, but some people still think they can do it better "next time".)
We're very much in need of powerful, precise critics of all that is wrong with the new, "digital" culture, and by golly, there is plenty: from the above mentioned termites, to the sense of entitlement with no bounds ("I want, therefore I am. I am, therefore I shall have"); to the worship of mob rule hidden behind oxymorons like "wisdom of the crowds" or "smart mobs"; to the maniacal tearing down of livelihoods and entire industries, of which newspapers are the latest victim. This criticism, however, cannot be just a temper tantrum, but has to be able to see this unfolding transformation from more than one angle; after all, neither the music industry, nor the newspaper business are entirely blameless in bringing their own demise. Unfortunately, Mr. Helprin is not that kind of critic, and that's OK, as long as his failure on this front does not discourage others.
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2 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Fine Writing, Wise Analysis, October 17, 2009
As the author of thirty-seven books, I have (obviously) a keen interest in the subject of copyright. Hence I read, and savored, this book by Mark Helprin, whom I regret not having encountered before. His writing is dense--i.e., you don't breeze through it quickly, for he has chosen his words (and thoughts) carefully, and trying to skim and skip would be like trying to gulp down a gourmet meal. He digresses often, and well, but he keeps coming back to the main subject, that in our digital age we have lost sight of what constitutes good writing, and thus many people (Helprin's critics, of whom there appear to be thousands)seem to believe it is "selfish" for writers to be well-paid (and, frankly, we aren't). I think his wisest insight is that the "cut and paste" habit that is so much a part of Internet communication has led many people to think that articles and books don't require much effort, that we writers are lazy slackers who can throw a book together in no time at all. Not so--although, heaven knows, many of the books out there do appear to have been thrown together when the authors were half-stoned. It is inspiring to see creativity and eloquence defended by a writer who has both qualities in abundance.
In case you aren't familiar with Helprin's "controversy," it concerns his defense of U.S. copyright, which extends for 70 years after the author's death. That is, if you write and publish a book, you receive royalties during your lifetime and your designated estate receives them for seventy years afterward--which differs from "public domain" books, in which no royalty is paid to anyone, and the publisher reaps all the profits. This is not exactly a radical idea, since every country has similar copyright practices, yet Helprin discovered that Internet bloggers were cursing him for upholding such a "selfish" practice. The bloggers constantly misquoted and misconstrued various authorities from the past (such as Thomas Jefferson), and Helprin carefully clarifies what these authorities said, and meant. He also makes a good case for the traditional view: good writing flows from creative individuals and is not "communal," no matter what Internet junkies may say. He cites the "wikis" as sad examples of how "communal" writing can spread errors on a wide scale.
Alas, I doubt this book will be read by his critics, because the anti-Helprin bloggers (who, it appears, would qualify as bored Internet addicts with very short attention spans), but nonetheless the book is well-thought-out and a delight to read. Even if you have no interest in the copyright issue, his observations of contemporary technology make the book worth reading.
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