CLI FI NOVELS OR CLI FI MOVIES? LITERATURE OR CINEMA? BOOKS OR FILMS?

CLI FI NOVELS OR CLI FI MOVIES? LITERATURE OR CINEMA? BOOKS OR FILMS?

A professor in Florida tells this blog:

''It’s not either/or. Popular culture is extremely important and influential — hey, it’s “popular.” It reaches everyone, cuts across all strata of income and education and age and cultural background. But even the producers of pop culture need to go somewhere to refill the wells of their imagination, as a poet  once said.

I have had this conversation many times with friends and colleagues. I have friends in Hollywood who tell me I should stop writing academic stuff and try to go on TV with my ideas about environmental literature. 

I recall a conversation with a colleague, a prominent literary essayist, who is proudly a mid-list writer, but whose extraordinarily thoughtful work often reaches key thinkers in more mass-audience genres. So  again, we’re not talking either/or. I prefer to believe in ''a ripple effect''. We need ways of reaching the broader public. We also need people who are trying to push the limits of science and art in ways that may not be of immediate interest to general audiences.

I enjoy reading on an e-reader, I prefer to teach mostly paperless classes here in Florida (to the extent that that’s possible), and I like listening to popular culture and watching movies.
But I also persist in finding print culture, even physical books, to be meaningful, useful veins of communication. It’s not all about sheer numbers of readers, viewers, or listeners.''