Russell Banks

Birnbaum: I would like to think that people who read are keeping alive a certain sense of humanity. But then what about e-readers (laughs)?

Banks: That’s OK. It’s still story. Stories are what connect us to each other, face-to-face. When you read a novel, whether you hear it on an audio tape or see it on a Kindle, you are seeing the world through the eyes of someone other than yourself. You are inhabiting another human being. It’s a deeply personal encounter. It gives meaning to someone else’s subjective experience, a single person’s experience. That’s a different kind of experience than a movie allows. A movie—you don’t interact with it, you just accept it. It takes you over like a very powerful drug. Story is a different thing and there are many delivery systems for story.