There are plenty of pronouncements about “the future of the book” when it comes to the increasing popularity of e-books and the steady release of new digital literature apps. Indeed, the ability to add video, voice-over, animation, and annotation all point to the great potential when literature becomes electronic, and in coming years we’re sure to see a number of new creations that will challenge our definitions of “the book.”
But the while the possibilities of electronic literature and enhanced e-books sound good in theory, often they fail to deliver in practice. There are a lot of reasons why this occurs: it can be costly to add video or animation, and the integration with the text itself isn’t always seamless or sensible.
With this in mind, there are a lot of reasons to expect why an iPad version of one of the 20th century’s most important poems, T.S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land” could be a complete flop. It’s “The Waste Land” after all, a 430-ish line poem that is both incredibly familiar and notoriously difficult. Indeed, Eliot himself seemed aware of the challenges in interpreting the poem as he included his own lengthy notes when the poem was published in 1922.
Article source: RRW http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/readwriteweb/~3/6c8msQHuBEk/ts_eliot_in_the_app_store_the_waste_land_comes_to.php