From the nettle, radio, a British listener plucked a strange flower, literature. Speculating on radio's influential future, Novelist Richard Hughes (High Wind in Jamaica) mused in the current Virginia Quarterly Review:
At least once before, a mechanical invention had made a revolution in literature. For before the printing press was invented, the writer reached the majority of his public not through their eyes but through their ears. Poetry was sung or recited; prose books, too, were recited or read aloud. . . . The effect of the printing press on literary style was ... a slow development, culminating only in our own...
To continue reading:
or
Log-In
