The Text is a Lie

While shopping for books during the first day of school, I was pleasantly surprised to find that one of the English books that I was required to buy wasn’t like the standard English books that I had become so accustomed to in high school. As soon as I saw this book, The World is a Text, by Jonathan Silverman and Dean Rader, it grabbed my interest. Perhaps it was the neon colors on the mock “Welcome to Las Vegas” sign, or maybe it was the fact that the book didn’t look old and crusty like so many English books do. I instantly was excited by the idea that we would be reading a modern textbook, and began flipping through the pages. The pictures also caught my eye, as they seemed to match the book’s cover with their up-to-date style. For once in my life I was actually anxious to read an English book.

When we received our first reading assignment, the book seemed to be living up to the hype. I was legitimately excited to be reading the book, because it contained topics that interested me like the television show Family Guy. I was even more elated to read the essay that we were assigned on video games. Little did I know that one essay could so radically change my opinion of the book. The essay was titled “Reading and Writing About Video Games”, and was written by Peter Hartlaub. I had no problems with it until I started reading about Halo. The article claimed that “In the lower left-hand corner of the screen a circular radar sensor shows that six heavily armed insect creatures are on foot, fifteen meters away, and closing ground fast.” Now with me being a big-time Halo fan and player this statement was particularly troubling to me. First off, Halo equips its players with motion sensors, not radars. This is a huge difference. A radar detects any object in its path, while a motion sensor only detects moving objects. This is a key difference in a game like Halo, because if you are trying to sneak up on someone, which happens often in Halo, it is important that the enemy cannot tell where you are. The essay also claims that from the “radar” you can tell that there are “six insect creatures on foot who are 15 meters away.” In reality, from the motion sensor in Halo you cannot tell what type of enemy is approaching, nor if they are on the ground or in the air, nor how far away they are.

I would have been able to forgive one unfactual statement, but there is still one other inaccuracy that has caught my eye. In the essay entitled “Smells Like Teen Spirit”, by Matt Compton, the author claims that in the song, lead singer Kurt Cobain “repeats the word ‘Hello’ fifteen times” during the pre-chorus. This claim is undeniably false. In the lyrics, Cobain truly sings “Hello, Hello, Hello, How Low?” three times before singing “Hello” three more times and launching into the chorus.

To me it is very disturbing and alarming that a textbook that claims to be suitable for college use can be riddled with statements that they claim as fact, yet are totally inaccurate. I guess I should have listened to the advice my parents always told me: You can’t judge a book by its cover.