After all what is Shakespeare but a bunch of old stories rewritten by someone who lived after the printing press? And to read him today is to read a mass of clichés…most of which were original when he wrote them.
I do disagree with one point which I hope was intended to be hyperbolic:
> You’re experiencing the agony of the dead word of the book, where the future is already set down, waiting for you on the final page, where nothing changes…
The novel, to me, is the ultimate in multimedia experience, where a scene set in winter can make me feel cold, while a video of the same is too flat, perhaps in some ways too descriptive, stripping the interpretation from the experience. Reading a book for a second time years after the first can unearth a completely different story, like revisiting a city you haven’t visited for years, but in the case of reading only one of you has changed.