E. B. White commenting about new media, 1938

E. B. White commenting about new media, 1938. “One Man’s Meat: Removal” (Harper’s, July 1938). Quoted in Lapham's Quarterly 7.2 (Spring 2014), "Revolutions" issue, p. 86.[1]

White foresees movement toward what would be seen before the end of the 20th c. as the triumph of the simulacrum,[2][3] and the power — political power among other kinds — of the image.

Radio has already given sound a wide currency, and sound "effects" are taking the place once enjoyed by sound itself. Television will enormously enlarge the eye's range, and, like radio, will advertise the Elsewhere. Together with the tabs [tabloids], the mags [magazines], and the movies, it will insist that we forget the primary and the near in favor of the secondary and the remote. More hours [...] will be spent digesting ideas, sounds, images — distant and concocted. In sufficient accumulation, radio sounds and television sights may become more familiar to us than their originals. [...]

When I was a child people simply looked about them and were moderately happy; today they peer beyond the seven seas, bury themselves waist-deep in tidings, and by and large what they see and hear makes them unutterable sad. (Lapham's)

RDE, finishing, 18Dec21