On reading Johnson
AMM Aabad, Dhaka
Dipping into Samuel Johnson past the middle age is palatable, though not entirely digestible. Dr Johnson is out of date for the nimble-footed information age. The leisurely development of Empire English perhaps could be enjoyed during an elephant ride, sitting on the howdah; or lounging on the tropical veranda, hugging the long pipe of the hookkah, with the punkha-puller dozing at the rope. It is fast food and instant hype in the satellite age.As one of the architects who laid a solid foundation of the English language in the eighteenth century, today's functional English appears to be lean and bony on a slim diet of semi-starvation (meat not served in the health shops). The grandeur of the Roman (or British) Empire no longer echoes from the fast, synthetic, action-packed sentences of the creator of James Bond, the 007 man, who employed a band of ghost writers to strip the words, sentences and paragraphs into new nuances of transparency and permissiveness. There must be action in every sentence (notice that in the American movies, the talkers are always moving. It is a sin to be still, if the TV commercials are to be taken at face value) We all got the bug inside us. Notice that the thick novels have made a come-back from the Age of Leisure to the Age of Minutes. Informality has increased, but social mixing has declined. Distracting competition in the mass media has cornered reading as a pastime. The audio-visual options provide the reading materials in more entertaining form, and faster than reading line by line, page by page.... We are now offered better packages than reading books; in fact, virtual reality comes in three dimensions in infinite variety of colours. The pen is no longer mightier. Good bye, Dr Johnson. Rest in peace, you just made it to the other life divine.
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