Sir, – In Patrick Freyne’s weekend essay he posits, inter alia, that it will be a big mistake if we stop reading and writing and allow digital technology and artificial intelligence replace the spoken, read and written word. From my writing desk it is very easy to agree with him (“Here’s why AI is making us dumber and more lonely,” April 18th).
Technical agnosticism is not just a function of my age, but my shared fears with Patrick are nurtured by a genuine love of language, reading and writing. As a graduate of the 1960s school of writing, when under the gimlet eye of the class Christian Brother, my rusty nibbed pen, fuelled by the desk’s inbuilt inkwell, traced words across my copybook in a Bunteresque scrawl, a lifelong love of writing was born and continues to this day.
For more than 50 years I have written daily diaries, 500 words in longhand each day. In my study, these diaries are gathered in columns on the bookshelf, a silent progression of life curated chronologically, acting as a Praetorian Guard to my past. This increasing volcanic eruption of molten words and Pompeii preservation of the pages has to date yielded a harvest of more than nine million words. When asked why, I reply in the words of Van Morrison - “It’s too late to stop now.”
In the same study is a library of more than 2,000 books that offer both reassurance of the written and read word and the comfort of being in the tacit company of genius. These books are filed by author, genre, time and location of purchase, and thus act as guardians of memories and moments in a life. As Cicero said: “A room without books is like a body without a soul.”
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A decline in reading for pleasure, with reading losing out to screen time, has been linked to a shrinking vocabulary. A recent study suggested people have been losing about 340 spoken words annually over the past 15 years.
The rise of digital communication is believed to be replacing spoken conversation, particularly incidental interaction. Communication shortcuts of abbreviations, acronyms, emojis, etc, all contribute to a reductionist and regressive trend in language and interaction that moves us further back in time rather than forwards.
So, Patrick, this writer will not call you crazy as invited by your essay, but would rather thank you for your support of the written and spoken word. – Yours, etc,
TOM MCGRATH,
Mount Usher,
Ashford,
Wicklow
Sir, – Patrick Freyne’s wonderful weekend essay puts me in mind of an invaluable piece of wisdom that John McGahern once passed on.
He was a guest at my goddaughter’s wedding more than 20 years ago. There was a moment in proceedings when he was sitting alone at a table and I took my chance. I introduced myself and blurted out how much I loved his books and admired his writing skills.
I told him I was struggling with a piece of writing myself and asked how could he write so clearly. And he said ‘try writing down how you would say it out loud. You have to write what you say in order to see what you think’ – which is exactly what Patrick Freyne is saying in his article – “People write to communicate and also to figure out what they think ...” – Yours, etc,
CLIONA O’FARRELLY,
Chair of Fellows,
Trinity College,
Dublin
