This American Life: The Literary Works of Our Time

Prove: Literary merit should be given to NPR’s This American Life Podcast.

-Returns to the origin of communication and establishment of rhetoric –> Spoken word

-In it’s development, consists of developing a central theme, exploring it’s real world application, seeking out stories and conducting journalistic research, and then forming it into a story that can be experienced solely through the auditory sense.

-There is also merit in being a close listener–> comparable to the close reading of Birkerts. (Although this is not for everyone, many can engross themselves in the podcast experience that Ira Glass hosts.)

Difference is, you’re not reading with your eyes, taking in something with your eyes isn’t as hard intellectually as taking something in with your eyes… “bookish” persona of glasses

-Episode #109, Notes on Camp –> connection built through the close reporting of the TAL contributers, listener can put their self in the place of the campers and their love of summer tradition. PATHOS! Attention to detail, outline of the process to produce one episode…

-Benefit of the digital revolution: vast spread of ideas, podcasts are available for free through computers

- Leads to downfalls, This American Life can only be accessed in podcast form if you have a computer, ipod with downloading capabilities… also can be accessed every Sunday through National Public Radio every Sunday at 4 pm.

-Birkerts says,

I often find that a novel, even a well-written and compelling novel, can become a blur to me soon after I’ve finished reading it. I recollect perfectly the feeling of reading it, the mood I occupied, but I am less sure about the narrative details. It is almost as if the book were, as Wittgenstein said of his propositions, a ladder to be climbed and then discarded after it has served its purpose.

….This shows how even someone who says that deep reading is the experience we are attaining through reading novels, he can admit that he doesn’t remember the experience behind everything he read…. Maybe the real holy grail of literary work is the experience of the here and now. Deep reading and deep listening could be only a temporary benefit. Just as Birkerts explains his loss of memory of reading, I couldn’t reiterate every TAL episode I’ve listened to over the years.

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