"What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that where would be no need to ban a book ... Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance." — Neil Postman, "Amusing Ourselves to Death"

Jesse Corn laments the sad state of writing in our time ("Where are the Twains and Tolstoys of today?"). He sees a decline in the quality of literature, of writers and their writing. He believes today's writers and thinkers see too little of the big picture, and fail to explain the complexities of political and economic events.

I share some of Mr. Corn's concerns about many of today's writers, namely, near-nihilism and hyper-partisanship. But I differ with him about the lack of excellent writers, fiction and nonfiction.

For me, there are more than I can read and study.

My major problem with Mr. Corn's argument is this: It is difficult to understand what happened to writing and writers since the 19th century without considering what happened to the culture of the written word.
The culture of the written word has been shredded. We're drowning in information, much of it what Postman calls "a sea of irrelevance," loosed by TV, aggravated by its kin. Mr. Corn did not even allude to these forces.

What happened to voices like those of Tolstoy and Twain? Mass entertainment happened. TV and movies happened; radio and the Internet happened.

In the culture of the written word, writers were kings of communication. Mr. Corn notes that Twain and Tolstoy became celebrities. Indeed, they did. In their day, writers were among the few private people with a chance to become a "celebrity."

The written word had a powerful claim on people's time and attention. There was no TV, no radio, no movies, no YouTube, no Facebook, no Tweeting, no texting.

No competition for attention from Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt; from Oprah; CNN, MSNBC or Fox News. None from Payton Manning and Tiger Woods and LeBron James.

If there were any American idols, George Washington and Abraham Lincoln filled the bill. (The memoirs of another president, published by Mark Twain, were a "best-seller" when they came out in 1885, and earned Ulysses S. Grant's widow and family almost $10 million in today's dollars. And the president and Civil War general actually wrote his own memoirs.)

In short, in Twain's and Tolstoy's era the written word still dominated our culture and communications.

Newspapers were the lifeblood of politics and government. People got information and ideas from them and magazines and journals. Many speeches, essays and opinion pieces were written in the conventions of the age of exposition, their arguments laced with specific propositions and evidence strung together logically.

Reading was major entertainment, the primary way to learn about the larger world and its past.
Sunday afternoon was a time to rest and read a book. Would-be readers certainly couldn't switch on an NFL game or baseball or basketball. Children and young people could not play a video game or surf the net or text a friend on their cell phone while updating their Facebook on their laptop.

Families might actually gather and read aloud from classic works, the Bible included.

The culture of the written word cultivated serious reading and serious writing.

Lots of talented people now go into TV and radio and films. Today, a man of Twain's wit and other talents would have many paths beyond writing for making a living, including the kind of writing done for TV news and other dramas. He might become a stand-up comedian, maybe even host of a late-night talk show.

All this is necessary background for explaining what happened to writing and writers since the era of Twain and Tolstoy.

The Kennedy-Nixon "debates," of 1960 are seen as a watershed in our public life; they marked the beginning of TV's rise in reshaping campaigns as well as the practice of government itself.

Here is the pertinent point for this column: TV and its kin have damaged the culture of reading and writing - of writers and writing - as much as it has damaged our public life. Take away all of our electronic communications and entertainment and how would we fill our time?

Postman's "sea of irrelevance" continues to rise.

The good news is that, despite all this change and the unsettling trends in politics and our culture, we still have a significant number of serious readers for fiction and nonfiction, including history. Fortunately, we have a supply of good and excellent writers to feed these readers' interests.

The world of writers and writing is not nearly so dark as Mr. Corn paints it.

Tack Cornelius is a writer and Gainesville resident whose columns appear occasionally.