Readers, will you indulge me in something? For months now, I’ve been meaning to say something about Mark Helprin’s latest book, Digital Barbarism: A Writer’s Manifesto. It is a strange, wondrous, challenging, and enriching book — possibly even an ennobling book. Mark is my friend, and you may discount everything I say. But then, you may want to hear a word or two, regardless. Let me jot just a few “impromptus” on this book.

Start with the cover? There is something interesting on it, at least to me. Under Helprin’s name, we read, “Author of Winter’s Tale and A Soldier of the Great War.” This reminded me of something. Helprin has written many acclaimed and important books, of course: the novel Memoir from Antproof Case; the short stories collected in Ellis Island and The Pacific; other works. Yet he has chosen to be identified with — or someone else has chosen that he be identified with — Winter’s Tale and A Soldier of the Great War.

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Okay, this is what I was reminded of. As the Allies were closing in on the Nazis, U.S. soldiers arrived at the door of Richard Strauss (an ambiguous figure in the war). He greeted them with, “I am Doktor Richard Strauss, composer of Der Rosenkavalier and Salome.” I myself might have been tempted to mention Elektra and some other things — but Strauss chose those two works.

Not bad choices, to be sure — and neither are Winter’s Tale and A Soldier . . ..

Above, I used the word “strange,” in describing Digital Barbarism. That is just about the highest encomium of Harold Bloom, the literary critic — “strange” as in new, original, imaginative. A departure.

So, what is Digital Barbarism about? Not all that easy to say. It’s about copyright (and is a defense of copyright). It’s about the lure of machines and gadgets, in an age crammed with them. It’s about holding on to substance, when substance can leak away. It’s about the high things in life, and the importance of valuing them. I’m tempted to say that the book is about “life its ownself,” to quote Dan Jenkins. The book is certainly about a lot.

Helprin selects an epigram from Churchill: “I am all for your using machines, but do not let them use you.” And in his preface, he writes, “What follows is an affirmation of human nature versus that of the machine, via a defense of copyright, the rights of authorship, and the indispensability of the individual voice. Of late, these have come under sustained attack.”

When I read this book, I experienced a certain amount of guilt, or, if not guilt, recognition: that I have spent far too much time “surfing the Net,” playing with my BlackBerry, and otherwise being absorbed in the digital. I feel that Helprin points the finger at me, but in a friendly, constructive way: “Don’t waste your life. Don’t fritter away your time. Get out and live, or live inwardly in a worthy way.”

This message is not always welcome.

In The Pacific, there is a story called “Jacob Bayer and the Telephone.” An entire village is transfixed by this new invention, the telephone. And human relations, as I recall the story, are warped. It seems clear that Helprin means the story to be a parable about the computer. I mention this simply to say that technology and its consequences are not a new theme for Helprin.

No, Helprin is not against the phone, or the computer: He is against their mastering their users; he is against their substituting for real, lived life.

To keep going in this vein, a bit: Helprin is not a fuddy-duddy or Luddite. As he writes, “I am not decrying the digital revolution per se, or recommending for you and your children the cold water, wood fires, and Latin declensions of my brick-and-iron childhood. I have always understood that the heart of Western civilization is not the abdication of powers but rather meeting the challenge of their use.” Indeed. And I suppose that applies to nuclear weapons and iPods alike (not to be frivolous).

You may have heard, in the last several years, that schools are nothing — can do nothing — without computers. Helprin is bracing on this subject, as on most. He writes, “A substantial proportion of this country’s academic energies is swallowed up in the study of off-the-shelf software. Terrified lest their children be computer illiterate, lemming parents have pushed the schools into a computer frenzy in which students spend years learning to use tools that assemble pieces of what others have done, and relieve the students of the necessity of learning anything other than manipulation.”

I will continue quoting Helprin, but let me pause for a story — because I was reminded of something. This: Some years ago, I was interviewing Marilyn Horne, the great mezzo-soprano. (Note, this was not my interview from a year ago, written up here; this was a prior one.) She was decrying the state of music education in the schools, and saying how there was not nearly enough money available. Instead of arguing with her — I was the interviewer, after all — I asked her about her own music education, the schooling she obtained when she was growing up in Bradford, Pa. Oh, it was wonderful, she said. The principal of the school was the music teacher, too, and they had their music lessons down in the basement, with just a pitchpipe — nothing else. Not even a piano. But, boy, did they learn.

And I remarked, “That did not take much money, did it?” She agreed. What it took was the care and consideration of the teacher: a desire to transmit something important, or at least delightful. I think of this story almost every time the subject of money and the schools — per-pupil spending and so on — is raised. Money is great, indispensable. So are other things.

Anyway, let me continue to quote Helprin, right where I left off — he is not talking about money, specifically, but thank you for indulging my Horne story, regardless:

You can’t teach someone how to cook by showing him how to put a frozen dinner in a microwave oven. The system is much like Sesame Street, which, instead of waiting until a child is five and teaching him to count in an afternoon, devotes thousands of hours drumming it into him during his undeveloped infancy. But while numbers will remain, fifth graders will, when they get to graduate school, have no contact with current computer programs and applications. The “teaching” of computer in the schools may be likened to a business academy in the twenties founded for the purpose of teaching the telephone: “When you hear the bell, pick up the receiver, place it thusly near your face, and say ‘Hello?’”

 

Basic computer literacy is a self-taught subject requiring no more than a few days. Ordinary literacy, however, requires twenty years or more, and that is only a beginning.

And so on. That is a pretty good taste of how Helprin thinks and writes.

Speaking of how he writes — the following sentence is perfectly Helprinesque, characteristic of him and him alone: “No one will ever run the mile in two minutes, crawl through a Cheerio™, or memorize the Encyclopaedia Britannica.” That little trademark thing — an irresistible touch.