NOTE: My article, "Gullible's Travels: Guarding against Misinformation on the Net," is in the Spring issue of Library Journal's Net Connect, online at http://libraryjournal.reviewsnews.com/
index.asp?layout=article&articleid=CA210719
DRAMATIZING SOME INFORMATION ISSUES
Marylaine Block reviews two novels: Lawrence G. Townsend, Secrets of the Wholly Grill, Carroll & Graf, 2002, and Terry Bisson, The Pickup Artist, TOR, 2001.
It's sometimes kind of difficult for librarians to explain the issues that concern us to people who aren't in our profession. Issues like shrink-wrap or click-through licenses, for instance, whose unfairness seems utterly obvious to us, seem unimportant to others because the issues are so far-removed from their own experience. That's why a good novel that dramatizes such topics can be a real asset.
Lawrence Townsend's book is about Thinksoft, a corporate software giant whose latest marketing ploy is sending people packages of free meat and barbecue sauce which they may open only if they agree to buy Thinksoft's computer-controlled barbecue grill, and pledge never to use the meat or sauce separately from that specific grill; in return the company pledges that for the mere cost of the online connection to ThinkSoft, you will get meat grilled perfectly to your specifications every single time. Oh, yes, there are just a few other stipulations as well; for instance, you're agreeing that you won't hold the company liable for bodily injury or death if you use their meat and sauce on another grill, that you won't try to find out the secret ingredients or workings of the sauce and the grill, and that you have no right to obtain or use such information if you sue the company for damages.
It turns out that the product is dangerous and bankruptingly expensive, as hopelessly addicted consumers keep running up connect charges, and the company is legalistic and thuggish in its enforcement of its contracts, but lawyers willing to challenge ThinkSoft are few and far between. Nonetheless, a well-known plaintiff's attorney who has begun to believe his own press releases sues Thinksoft for damages, aided by an idealistic young associate fresh out of law school and his journalist friend who has been gathering ThinkSoft secrets while working as a company custodian.
This is pure David and Goliath, a battle between sheerest good and over-the-top evil worthy of a comic book (or, perhaps, a computer game). Half courtroom drama, half high comedy, the book is a witty, pun-filled treat. And you can hand it to anybody who doesn't understand the abuse of power involved in the very concept of a shrink-wrap license.
Terry Bisson, on the other hand, is dealing with the very real problem of information glut. There are two parallel stories here. The first is the story of the pickup artist, whose job is to collect individual copies of books, art, and music that have been officially deleted, extinguished from libraries, museums, private homes, and the historical record. Interspersed with his story is the history of how and why, prompted by revolutionary acts by a shadowy group calling themselves "Alexandrians," it was legislated that older works had to die, under the dominion of the mysterious Mr. Bill, to make room for the new.
The pickup artist, like Fahrenheit 451's enforcement officer, never thinks about the contents or meaning of what he's picking up, or what its fate will be. Then one day, he picks up an old vinyl Hank Williams record, and, remembering that his father named him Hank after a country singer, he becomes determined to hear the record. His quest to find a record player he can play it on inadvertently turns him into an outlaw. He heads west with the librarian who's been helping him, in search of the album, which itself has vanished into the underworld of bootleggers who preserve and sell deleted treasures.
This is a bizarre and darkly comic book, with mythic overtones, and it will not be to everyone's taste. Still, it usefully raises the question of whether, in our determination to preserve the human record, we risk letting the weight of the past crush the creative energies of the present and future.
If that book isn't to your taste, however, you could derive a similar cautionary message in the wonderful little short story this book reminds me of, "MS Fnd in a Lbry," by Hal Draper (available in the anthology Laughing Space, by Isaac Asimov and J.O. Jeppson), which postulates that the complete collapse of civilization was caused by loss of control of the glut of information.
Which IS a problem, and not just for libraries. There isn't enough room to keep everything, nor enough catalogers or time available to classify it all if we could -- and that was true even before the internet came along. How nice of Mr. Draper and Mr. Bisson to explain this to the Nicholson Bakers of the world in such a palatable allegory.
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Aside: If you ever wondered why my book reviews are almost always positive, it's not because I'm easy. It's because I promised myself when I quit my job that I would never again read another book I didn't want to read.
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COOL QUOTE
Writers, critics, museum operators, impresarios and entrepreneurs -- all those who made a living on or around the decomposing bodies of art, literature, music and film -- pleaded the case that the Alexandrians themselves wouldn't. Citing figures correlating age and first publication, income and expectation, Hors Breen, art critic for The New York Times, declared that "artistic overload" was destroying the drive and desire of young artists everywhere. Tateo Moldini recounted his campaign in Italy to rid the churches of medieval and renaissance art "so that a new renaissance could flourish." Osiki Hade told of museums whose storerooms were larger than their galleries by a factor of ten. San Francisco talk show host Gerry Bright spoke of the despair and apathy of the young, deluged with more books, recordings and films than they could possible read, hear or see.
Terry Bisson. The Pickup Artist. A Tor Book, 2001.
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Ex Libris: an E-Zine for Librarians and Other Information Junkies.
http://marylaine.com/exlibris/
Copyright, Marylaine Block, 1999-2002.
[Publishers may license the content for a reasonable fee.]
