:) That smile is for you Yoby!

I posted a draft of an op ed I have been working on about the current state of publishing. The basic argument is that Publishing is doing a poor job at PR.

http://www.goodreads.com/story/show/4420...

Any feedback is appreciated if you have a moment and you'd like to read it. (I'm not sure that the thread of the argument is holding together real well, what do you think?)

Did I tell you all that I'm back to work now? The company I used to work for hired me back a couple months ago as an associate editor at a collector's magazine (gun collectors, of all things). The company has an inter-office discussion forum. It's a trip.

Andy wrote: "Regarding number 8: "8. Long tail balkanizes audiences, disrupts means of canon-building and fragments literary reputation."

Oh I feel so sorry for the academics who build the canon, who do the an..."

Oh you are such an iconoclast on revered positions. but remember, todays iconoclasts become tomorrow's icons with iconoclasts of their own.

Regarding number 8: "8. Long tail balkanizes audiences, disrupts means of canon-building and fragments literary reputation."

Oh I feel so sorry for the academics who build the canon, who do the anthologizing. It used to be so easy for them to ignore humanity; now, with the Internet, they've got billions of voices shouting at them different opinions, ideas, feelings, experiences, how will they ever be able to justify their decisions in the face of all that? And if they don't do it right, there are millions of people out there who will do it for them. It must be very threatening to their image of the supremacy of their own giant brains. It all seems so taxing for them. Oh how I long for the days when the professors could just close their eyes and point to the deadest, whitest writers on the list and go home in time for dinner. But now, now they might have to work EXTRA HOURS studying this new challenge to our assumptions. It is all so very taxing for them. The poor babies.

Whitaker wrote: "Yoby wrote: "Look for what we have in commoninstead of our differences? I need a little of both. I need people I can schmooze with about books, it is like being homesick. But books weren't writt..." "that CR radicalizes us" In some areas, I think it is radical to be unradical. So many opinions are out there, it is radical to withoold what we think, it is radical not to have a cell phone, (I don't) or to not know how to read text messaging. Many say that books are out because digital is in.. But the new greenies will complain how all the digital media and players will be stripping the earth of even more of it's minerals and ores, and we are destroying trees and ecosysytems to get to them. Had an interesting talk where they mentioned a lot of the natives that were studied for oral histories up here couldn't read, so they spoke them, and if the person for the story was far away, it would pass by word of mouth, and they had no problem remembering at all. Will that be the ultimate green literature?

I think many in this discussion are picking up on the difficulty of even understanding the list. I'm interested in what you all think about how ironic that is! As Russ2 said, "What a fascinating list! Some statements specific enough that one might actually talk about them, others difficult to understand what they mean or what they have to do with literature." Is part of the difficulty of contemporary literature it's "post-modern" fragmentation?

On another bent, I was asked to review a book by Astrid Ensslin called Canonizing Hypertext. It gets pretty technical, but addresses the idea of literary hypertext and how it should and might be canonized. (oxymoronic?) She makes an interesting argument and deals constructively with the intersection of literature and electronic media. (review in spring '09 South Carolina Review which will be online at some point.)

Harley wrote: ""17. Polarizing civil cold war is harmful to intellectual honesty."

My assumption is that he is referring to the republican/democrat polarization of the political society. (Red vs Blue states) H..."Who was it that I read who said that is the argument culture aggravated by the media, because good news and peaceful conversaitons don't sell on air time." I try to stay dow below it. I wasted a lot of my life on that when I could have done something better for my health.

"17. Polarizing civil cold war is harmful to intellectual honesty."

My assumption is that he is referring to the republican/democrat polarization of the political society. (Red vs Blue states) How TV news tends to have people shouting their opinions but not listening to each other.

I was just thinking the same after I was back home fro a really great writer's conference. I wantyed to interogate everyone "Do you know who the Writer Laureate of Alaska is? [answer:Nancy Lord, I have read all of her books])

But if they start reading, I won't have any wildlife to observe and write about! This is Alaska. (I am thinking of Lord's short story The Woman Who Married A Bear.)

Yoby wrote: "Look for what we have in commoninstead of our differences? I need a little of both. I need people I can schmooze with about books, it is like being homesick. But books weren't written about peop..."

Yoby, sorry, I didn't mean to say that CR radicalises us. The diversity of voices here is great. The commonality is the love for books and reading, not 'ism-s. Actually, come to think of it, I rather like the idea of radical fundamentalists of reading:

Knock, knock. Hi, ma'am. I'd like to introduce you to a good book. Have you read any Tolstoy lately?
{slam!}

Look for what we have in commoninstead of our differences? I need a little of both. I need people I can schmooze with about books, it is like being homesick. But books weren't written about people sitting around reading, so I need people of all kinds.

Well, there are some studies right now that indicate that while the Internet has made it easier for people to find other people who share the same views and interests (CR anyone?), it also means that people tend to only hear views of the same type. I'm less certain that it can be attributed to the Internet, although arguably the Internet has excacerbated the problem.

The upshot of that is that people remain stuck in an echo chamber which polarises their views: when people of a similar mindset get together, the tendency is to reinforce and encourage the more extreme elements precisely because moderates get heckled off or become too afraid to speak their mind. Philip Zimbardo's book The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How People Turn Evil is one example of an excellent study on this.

Other studies look at how people process information. A lot of work on this has been done in behavioural economics. Turns out that people tend to tune out information they don't agree with (hah! Takes a scientist to "discover" what a lot of us knew all along.)

So the first part contributes to the polarizing civil cold war, and the second part contributes to the failure of intellectual honesty.

Long tail = business can make money from products with a small niche market (in a fragment of a nutshell).

I suppose he is equating "niche" with balkanization (i.e. fragmentation, usually used in a negative sense; from the many small jurisdictional regions in the Balkans resulting from political conflict).

So, if consumers are increasingly focused on niche products, it will be difficult for a canon (set of works that are common to and shared by everyone) to exist, and difficult for a common literary reputation to arise - an author would be well-known in a niche or two, but not across a culture.

The second one has me a bit baffled too, as I indicated in my original post below.

Theresa

Can anyone explain to me what these points really mean:

"8. Long tail balkanizes audiences, disrupts means of canon-building and fragments literary reputation."

"17. Polarizing civil cold war is harmful to intellectual honesty."

Thanks in advance!

Yoby wrote: "I have, too. And for so long most of my friends made me feel ashamed that I liked to read good literature, as if I were doing it to just show off (maybe that was partly true, but I can't stand novels you can suck down like a soda) But here I feel so - at home."

Amen to that! And it's SOOOOO comforting to know that other people have had the same experience. :-D

Sherry wrote: "I suggest both, thicker hide AND a Kindle. That way it's not so heavy when you have thicker books." ROFLOL Hey, I just realized I am beginning to speak text-messaging. Maybe I am like Benjamin Button.

I suggest both, thicker hide AND a Kindle. That way it's not so heavy when you have thicker books.

Sherry wrote: "I can read War & Peace on my Kindle and nobody knows. "
Now there's another good reason to get a Kindle, that, or grow a thicker hide.

I can read War & Peace on my Kindle and nobody knows.

I feel exactly the same, Yoby. I remember years ago when my brother and I were both reading Anna Karenina and he had to make a flight somewhere. He had the book with him and said he almost felt like putting a false cover on it because he was so sick of hearing people ask why he was reading Tolstoy! Here, everyone understands.

I second everything you say, Yoby. I've been around here almost as long as Sherry.

Boy, I'm glad you're here, too, Yoby. This is home to me--and has been for a long time.

Andrea wrote: "Interesting that one of my main venues for finding and discussing print literature is the internet. I've read more since I joined goodreads than I have in months before. I feel so much more conne..."
I have, too. And for so long most of my friends made me feel ashamed that I liked to read good literature, as if I were doing it to just show off (maybe that was partly true, but I can't stand novels you can suck down like a soda) But here I feel so - at home. I can throw out a reference to another novel while discussing any current one, and almost everyone can pick up on the reference, as if the authors were just temporarily out of the room but we are all family. It feels more home than home ever has.

Interesting that one of my main venues for finding and discussing print literature is the internet. I've read more since I joined goodreads than I have in months before. I feel so much more connected to the reading when I have people to discuss it with and yet can pick and chose what I read. Don't know if this will apply to younger readers.

Jim, I was thinking that myself. This list might more appropriately be titled "18 Challenges to the Contemporary Publishing Business", and perhaps part of the author's object was for us to figure that out, and that the storytelling will continue, no matter the format or media or channel of trade?

Theresa

Interesting that the challenges to contemporary literature are virtually all economic. Being an idealist, I'd like to think that at least some challenges relate to understanding and creating rather than just finding a way to engage an audience.

I think you can do it from a computer, too, NE.

Tweety Bird. The verb "tweet" sounds rather silly, doesn't it? One wishes Sylvester would come and snack on this little bit of onomatopoeia, feathers and all.

Anyway, I think you need to have a cellphone to "tweet" or be "tweeted," is that correct? Or can you do it with just a computer?

-- Bugs

Another example of using new technology to tell a story. Dan Baum, former staff writer for the New Yorker,tweeted the story of his job and loss thereof. Here are the collected tweets.

http://www.danbaum.com/Nine_Lives/New_Yo...

He also has some interesting blog posts about reaction to his tweeted saga.

Theresa

What a fascinating list! Some statements specific enough that one might actually talk about them, others difficult to understand what they mean or what they have to do with literature. But it seems to me that avant-garde literature is not really static either (e.g. Danielewski's 'House of Leaves' if I have that right), so I would wonder about the compare/contrast of divergent trends in the two lists. But there is much more fodder there than for a simple post (and my sleepy brain).
Personally, though, I think the imaginative literary creators will at least keep up with the cultural changes, or maybe even move ahead, and they will always exist.

Never fear. I haven't thrown out the Webster's yet. It sits within arm's reach.

Yeah, yeah, I've done it too. But the definitions seem streamlined here... flimsy. And I keep my Webster's to the left of this computer. And I love its thin pages and the sounds they make when I flip them. Yes, and the smell. And the habit. And even the familiarity of guide words on the top (trusty as Lewis & Clark).

Lexical Luddite, thy name is NE.

I used to be like you, NE, but now I tend to use the computer for a dictionary. I don't even go to a particular URL, just type "floomdoogle definition" into google.

Pop. There it is.

He has one point. Many twenty-somethings are loathe to touch a print dictionary if they are near a computer. My daughter, for instance, and a young teacher across the hall from me. Neither would pick up a dictionary even if it sat beside the computer. No. Typing "dictionary.com" or some such site URL is much easier in their minds.

But not in mine. (Humbug!)

That's a fascinating story about cell-phone novels. I hadn't heard about that before, just the cell-phone poems.

These are interesting at least by virtue of the con arguments that come to mind.

For example, as to argument 2., what about cell-phone novels in Japan? Printed text is flowing from digital texts. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/20/world/...

I'm not entirely sure what the "polarizing civil cold war" in No. 17 refers to, but perhaps he means the vastly different POVs of bigtime rightsholders (RIAA) and a large class of consumers?

Thanks for the link, I may use this as a starting point for class discussion.

Theresa

My favorite is #6: the one that talks about "disenfranching" young writers.

Failure of print and newspapers is disenfranching young apprentice writers.

Sounds painful, but they're young, so I expect they should suck it up like all of us aging sorts do.

So, do you think this guy's got it nailed?

Eighteen Challenges in Contemporary Literature

* By Bruce Sterling Email Author
* May 30, 2009 |
* 7:25 am |
* Categories: Uncategorized

1. Literature is language-based and national; contemporary society is globalizing and polyglot.

2. Vernacular means of everyday communication — cellphones, social networks, streaming video — are moving into areas where printed text cannot follow.

3. Intellectual property systems failing.

...and more at http://www.wired.com/beyond_the_beyond/2...