![]() ![]() ![]() Other things are not always equal, however. The pyrotechnology of Google married to the classics: What’s not to like? Google can make even the elliptical poetry of Ezra Pound accessible to many readers. In our digital age, those great incipits can be cited with abandon - “Happy families are all alike” “Call me Ishmael” even “This is the saddest story I ever heard” - as someone need only copy them into the Google search bar to discover their provenance (“Anna Karenina,” “Moby Dick,” and Ford Maddox Ford’s “The Good Soldier”). I suppose it’s another universally acknowledged truth that when you begin to write anything in which Jane Austen will be cited, it is irresistible to quote the famous opening line of “Pride and Prejudice.” It’s a great line from a great book, one not only studied by literary scholars but taught in classrooms everywhere and even available in airport bookstores, where it sits on the shelf along with the other small number of public-domain classics that have established an enduring place in the popular imagination: “Great Expectations,” “Moby Dick,” “Vanity Fair,” “Portrait of a Lady,” etc. It is a truth universally acknowledged that when given the choice between something that is free and something that costs even a small amount of money, other things being equal, most people recall that they are rational actors in an economic morality play and choose the free item. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |