Memory and Storytelling

During class I started thinking about if we lived in an oral culture today. Mostly I thought about how cool novels would be. Instead of reading from a book to learn about the adventures of Ebenezer Scrooge throughout christmas past, present, and future, Dickens would have had to pass it down through time, each person it was passed to making his own changes. Getting "published" would be as easy as walking on the sidewalk finding a few passers-by and reciting a story you had thought out.

This idea actually reminds me of the end of Fahrenheit 451 when the main character discovers underground book lovers who have each remembered entire books and plan to keep them alive not through paper, but by repeating them to each other.