Jonathan Franzen, the American novelist, is in rage against the machines. He objects to the way that modern gizmos, screens and keyboards are affecting the written word. He wants to make some corrections.
Franzen seems to object to just about every form of modern digital communication. Last week he railed against Twitter: “Unspeakably irritating ... the ultimate irresponsible medium.” Before that, he attacked e-books as “just not permanent enough” and incompatible “with a system of justice or responsible self-government”. Before that he clobbered Facebook: “All one big endless loop ... we like the mirror and the mirror likes us.”
Mr Franzen’s Luddite pronouncements reflect a fear, shared by many writers and readers, that digitisation is a threat to literature itself, that the world is becoming