My youngest daughter remembers us
stopping at little hotels during family trips.
She says she feels a certain type of nostalgia
for the free-though-you-know-it’s-not-really-
free breakfasts, where there are waffle machines
you load with batter and flip over. When the beeper
goes off, you pry your breakfast from the gridded
skillet with the tip of a plastic knife and slide it onto
a paper plate. Almost made from scratch, but better
than the sad precooked pancakes in the store’s
freezer section, their taste and texture like the boxes
they’re packed in. “Convenience” is the reason
offered for almost everything “streamlined” or
“deliverable”—meaning speed, meaning you shouldn’t
have to work so hard or spend all day writing memos,
summarizing documents, reading the book, drafting
a first draft. Surveys report that 86% of college
students use AI in school. Fewer adults read books
for pleasure, and only 34% of children said they enjoyed
reading in their free time. Once, a book could be a tent
lit up with a flashlight, the wilderness of night kept
outside with a cosy blanket fort. My colleague told
her literature class to find two examples for each
of the literary terms in their book: simile, metaphor,
metonymy, conflict, rising action, irony. They blinked
and acted stupefied. What do you mean? they said,
as if she’d asked them to separate lentils and pebbles
with dented spoons. Imagine waffles and pancakes
not just landing on conveyor belts, but coming
to you pre-buttered, pre-chewed, stamped with
a complimentary phrase from Shakespeare.
Purveyors of fine poetry since 2003.
