大象传媒

Writer Will Self considers the potential impact of society鈥檚 increasing indifference to the novel and to reading for pleasure.

Asked by scientists to respond to their research that reading fiction may help us to form episodic memory, he discusses what impact technology has had on the novel and why our new digital culture may be just the latest in a line of fleeting knowledge technologies.

The ideas discussed by Self were originally presented in Glasgow during Book Week Scotland, organised by the Scottish Book Trust, alongside Dr Elspeth Jajdelska from the University of Strathclyde and Chris Butler, Associate Professor at the Nuffield Department of Clinical Neuroscience, University of Oxford. They also presented their findings from their year-long Science of Stories project which was funded by Royal Society of Edinburgh.