Motoko Rich, writing in today's New York Times, sees literary blogs as the evolutionary successors of newspaper book reviews. "For those who are used to the old way, it’s a tough evolution."
Tough indeed. At risk of seeming fratricidal, I have to point out that, compared with a well-crafted book review, the average blog post — on just about any blog — is unreadable. This isn't to say that there aren't great writers out there keeping blogs; rather, that newspapers have the benefit of editors — and good editors are not merely guardians of good grammar, but guardians of entertaining and readable prose. And as soon as blogs have the financial wherewithal to hire good editors, they cease to be different in any meaningful sense from newspapers.
The perennial question resurfaces, then. What is a blog good for? I mean a blog with no editors, a blog that is just barely readable.
A while back I happened across As We May Think, an essay by Vannevar Bush published by The Atlantic in 1945. In this essay he complains of the increasing need of a way of sorting the massive amounts of information washing over us. "There may be millions of fine thoughts, and the account of the experience on which they are based, all encased within stone walls of acceptable architectural form; but if the scholar can get at only one a week by diligent search, his syntheses are not likely to keep up with the current scene."
So many articles published, so many books. How to organize things so that you can know what you should read and, having read it, remember why you read it, and what you thought about it? Part of the answer, according to Bush, is to extend the associative process of our thoughts artificially just as we've extended our knowledge. We naturally connect things by "some intricate web of trails carried by the cells of the brain," but these "trails" are prone to fade.
He envisions a device called a memex, something quite like a PC — equipped with some of the associative functions of Amazon's A9 or del.icio.us. The user of the memex enters data and connects them by a trail. "Thereafter, at any time, when one of these items is in view, the other can be instantly recalled merely by tapping a button below the corresponding code space. Moreover, when numerous items have been thus joined together to form a trail, they can be reviewed in turn, rapidly or slowly, by deflecting a lever like that used for turning the pages of a book."
He then illustrates its use in daily life, saying that you might look something up in the memex during a conversation with a friend, and you could even transfer data and trails from his memex into yours.
"Wholly new forms of encyclopedias will appear, ready made with a mesh of associative trails running through them, ready to be dropped into the memex and there amplified."
Well, of course we've got Wikipedia, and it's doing just fine without blogs, thank you very much. However, it is only in blogs that you can have truly creative and free association, complete with wild speculation and opinion. Further, blogs provide small enclaves where idiosyncratic ideas can take full shape without the tyranny of Wikipedia's masses reining them in.
I say that literary blogs are only worthwhile to the extent that they are entirely different from book reviews, and completely incapable of supplanting them. Instead, one would hope that they would be public memex's — or, to put a more attractive face on them — something like contemporary literary salons.
By the by, Bush mentions a contraption called a "Voder" in the essay. You can see the Voder being played in "Gizmo," a funny movie I found via Boing Boing.
Wednesday, May 2
Sunday, March 18
Why You'll Never Write Like Shakespeare
Shakespeare's plays are sturdy stuff, but hardly topical. Nevertheless, Harper's is running a cover story on Shakespeare, "How Shakespeare Conquered the World," by Jonathan Bate, in its April issue. If the story is interesting, it's because Shakespeare's so fundamental to our culture that it's impossible to evaluate his plays fairly. A bit of perspective — a glimpse of how his contemporaries saw him, and how his fame grew — seems like just the thing.
And maybe one of the reasons we'd like to evaluate his plays fairly is precisely to know how he conquered the world, or, more to the point, how we too can conquer the world.
"How Shakespeare Conquered the World" won't get you very far, though it's a good read. What is needed, no doubt, is a certain historical consciousness, and it will give you that. But there is nothing in the story to relate Shakespeare's success with our contemporary world. A better place to start thinking about taking the literary world by storm would be n+1's pamphlet P.S.1 Symposium: A Practical Avant-Garde.
The pamphlet contains a discussion moderated by Keith Gessen that starts off with keynotes from Mark Greif, Eliza Newman-Saul, and Dushko Petrovich. Perhaps the most practical of the practical approaches to the avant-garde, and the most relevant to the problems of the aspiring playwright or novelist, is Greif's. Greif focuses on the relationship of the avant-garde to the other "levels" at work in a field of art, and relates it to the progress of the entire field.
You may feel some dissatisfaction, as I do, with Greif's defense of the notion of progress in the arts. "How can art be progressive, in this sense, rather than just changeable?" he says, anticipating my doubts. "I think the way in which the progressive arts and intellect do progress is by trying to give better and better accounts of the way in which our social reality changes—contingently, yes, but also chronologically and cumulatively." So art has to keep up with history, and there is perhaps some kind of growth, a gathering of wisdom, that comes with this constant change.
Well, back to Shakespeare. It's pretty clear that it would be impossible today to write in the manner of Shakespeare, however much we might admire his manner. Why? Is it because the contemporary spirit cannot be captured in iambic pentameter? Is it because contemporary audiences are too smart to believe that the characters in a play could speak as colorfully and eloquently as Shakespeare's characters do? If either of these is true, then why are Shakespeare's plays still so rewarding? It seems hard to deny that it is a simple matter of fashion. A writer who adopted Shakespeare's iambic pentameter and all his other wonderful habits would not seem authentic to us, and would clearly be imitating another time and place, like Don Quixote fashioning a knight's armor for himself or an American white-collar wearing a kilt to work. A writer makes it new, and by making it new claims his own time and place.
Further, the search for the avant-garde, where you could have a have a Shakespeare-like impact, seems likely to become increasingly difficult. Avant-gardes exist only in centralized, cohesive cultures, since they are reactions to centralized cultures. And centralized cultures are dying out with the shriveling of the record and movie industries. The most important cultural phenomena of the contemporary world are arising in the scattered, shadowy world of networks. The great vortex of the Internet, even as it connects nearly all cultural phenomena, has done away with centralized culture simply by expanding it to the bursting point. Now, you've got to dig around on MySpace and Jaman. Happy hunting.
And maybe one of the reasons we'd like to evaluate his plays fairly is precisely to know how he conquered the world, or, more to the point, how we too can conquer the world.
"How Shakespeare Conquered the World" won't get you very far, though it's a good read. What is needed, no doubt, is a certain historical consciousness, and it will give you that. But there is nothing in the story to relate Shakespeare's success with our contemporary world. A better place to start thinking about taking the literary world by storm would be n+1's pamphlet P.S.1 Symposium: A Practical Avant-Garde.
The pamphlet contains a discussion moderated by Keith Gessen that starts off with keynotes from Mark Greif, Eliza Newman-Saul, and Dushko Petrovich. Perhaps the most practical of the practical approaches to the avant-garde, and the most relevant to the problems of the aspiring playwright or novelist, is Greif's. Greif focuses on the relationship of the avant-garde to the other "levels" at work in a field of art, and relates it to the progress of the entire field.
You may feel some dissatisfaction, as I do, with Greif's defense of the notion of progress in the arts. "How can art be progressive, in this sense, rather than just changeable?" he says, anticipating my doubts. "I think the way in which the progressive arts and intellect do progress is by trying to give better and better accounts of the way in which our social reality changes—contingently, yes, but also chronologically and cumulatively." So art has to keep up with history, and there is perhaps some kind of growth, a gathering of wisdom, that comes with this constant change.
Well, back to Shakespeare. It's pretty clear that it would be impossible today to write in the manner of Shakespeare, however much we might admire his manner. Why? Is it because the contemporary spirit cannot be captured in iambic pentameter? Is it because contemporary audiences are too smart to believe that the characters in a play could speak as colorfully and eloquently as Shakespeare's characters do? If either of these is true, then why are Shakespeare's plays still so rewarding? It seems hard to deny that it is a simple matter of fashion. A writer who adopted Shakespeare's iambic pentameter and all his other wonderful habits would not seem authentic to us, and would clearly be imitating another time and place, like Don Quixote fashioning a knight's armor for himself or an American white-collar wearing a kilt to work. A writer makes it new, and by making it new claims his own time and place.
Further, the search for the avant-garde, where you could have a have a Shakespeare-like impact, seems likely to become increasingly difficult. Avant-gardes exist only in centralized, cohesive cultures, since they are reactions to centralized cultures. And centralized cultures are dying out with the shriveling of the record and movie industries. The most important cultural phenomena of the contemporary world are arising in the scattered, shadowy world of networks. The great vortex of the Internet, even as it connects nearly all cultural phenomena, has done away with centralized culture simply by expanding it to the bursting point. Now, you've got to dig around on MySpace and Jaman. Happy hunting.
Sunday, March 11
Personal Rapid Transit
According to the Economist, Heathrow will have a "personal rapid transit" system installed soon ("Beyond the Stagecoach"). A personal rapid transit system, or PRT, relies on small, single- or few-passenger pods to whisk people to their destinations instead of the larger trains or buses of traditional systems. Unlike the avuncular old buses we're all used to, these won't have to stop at nearly every designated spot on the route, because there will be at most four people in the pod, so there will be at most four stops. When a pod must make a stop, it departs from the main rail onto a bypass to allow the other pods to make their rapid ways onwards.
Well, perhaps this is what it takes to make public transportation palatable to the general public, though in a city like Philadelphia, public transportation is already often faster than driving in the congested, narrow streets. However, one of the things that makes our underutilized public transportation systems such great assets is that they are perhaps the only truly public space where anyone spends any real time. This evening I was walking home and I passed by an open window in one of the townhouses on my block and saw a young man with cornrows sitting inside, and it made me reflect: I have no idea what most of the people on my block look like. When I leave my apartment, I hurry off to wherever I have to go, and I rarely encounter anyone on my block.
On the bus or the subway, however, one is forced to see who one's fellow citizens are, and they are not likely to conform to the expectations television may have given us. Not so long ago, I was riding on a bus in Philadelphia, and I overheard two Muslim women in full niqabs talking. You might expect veiled women to speak in hushed tones, but these women were obstreperous Philadelphians, who said things like "Girl! I tole him —" In an age when we shop for jobs and dates online, when we're constantly moving about and nothing's likely ever to be good enough, where we sort ourselves into narrow and exclusive categories, understanding the people whom chance has put next door or on the next seat on the bus is more important than ever. And if we break this public space into private-sized chunks, the chance will be lost.
Well, perhaps this is what it takes to make public transportation palatable to the general public, though in a city like Philadelphia, public transportation is already often faster than driving in the congested, narrow streets. However, one of the things that makes our underutilized public transportation systems such great assets is that they are perhaps the only truly public space where anyone spends any real time. This evening I was walking home and I passed by an open window in one of the townhouses on my block and saw a young man with cornrows sitting inside, and it made me reflect: I have no idea what most of the people on my block look like. When I leave my apartment, I hurry off to wherever I have to go, and I rarely encounter anyone on my block.
On the bus or the subway, however, one is forced to see who one's fellow citizens are, and they are not likely to conform to the expectations television may have given us. Not so long ago, I was riding on a bus in Philadelphia, and I overheard two Muslim women in full niqabs talking. You might expect veiled women to speak in hushed tones, but these women were obstreperous Philadelphians, who said things like "Girl! I tole him —" In an age when we shop for jobs and dates online, when we're constantly moving about and nothing's likely ever to be good enough, where we sort ourselves into narrow and exclusive categories, understanding the people whom chance has put next door or on the next seat on the bus is more important than ever. And if we break this public space into private-sized chunks, the chance will be lost.
Friday, February 16
I'm Right, in Any Case
Writing in the current issue of Columbia Journalism Review, Mitchell Stephens argues that newspaper stories must start providing insight as well as information, if they're to keep a competitive edge next to Internet sources, cable, and radio. Just as monthly and bimonthly magazines make up for their slow response with increased analysis of current events, daily newspapers will have to make up for what is beginning to look like a slow response with increased analysis.
In effect, this means that the writer must put more of himself in the story, and we shouldn't worry so much about objectivity.
Besides the pressure from Internet sources, there are reasons newspapers might head this way that Stephens doesn't mention. Objectivity was important to newspapers because it allowed their stories to appeal to more people. A paper that published opinionated stories quickly alienated a good portion of its readership. But as our culture becomes increasingly polarized, it becomes increasingly difficult to find neutral middle ground. I don't think there are presently any newspapers in America that aren't generally considered to be either liberal or conservative. This may always have been the case, but it wasn't always the case that liberals and conservatives saw papers on the opposing side as radical and worthy of destruction (as Ann Coulter apparently did when she said: "My only regret with Timothy McVeigh is he did not go to the New York Times building").
It might make more sense, then, for papers to solidify the loyalty of the readers in their perceived ideological bases.
The downside of this is obvious. However unrealistic it might seem to think that there is an objective truth, the semblance of an objective truth has been a stronghold of cohesion in our culture. When we all read the same newspapers, our varying reactions to the same story are personal; but when conservatives read one paper and liberals read another, our varying reactions to the same story are tribal.
But who, faced with a newspaper full of stale facts that were already broadcast on the radio and a newspaper full of thoughtful analysis, would not pick the latter?
In effect, this means that the writer must put more of himself in the story, and we shouldn't worry so much about objectivity.
Besides the pressure from Internet sources, there are reasons newspapers might head this way that Stephens doesn't mention. Objectivity was important to newspapers because it allowed their stories to appeal to more people. A paper that published opinionated stories quickly alienated a good portion of its readership. But as our culture becomes increasingly polarized, it becomes increasingly difficult to find neutral middle ground. I don't think there are presently any newspapers in America that aren't generally considered to be either liberal or conservative. This may always have been the case, but it wasn't always the case that liberals and conservatives saw papers on the opposing side as radical and worthy of destruction (as Ann Coulter apparently did when she said: "My only regret with Timothy McVeigh is he did not go to the New York Times building").
It might make more sense, then, for papers to solidify the loyalty of the readers in their perceived ideological bases.
The downside of this is obvious. However unrealistic it might seem to think that there is an objective truth, the semblance of an objective truth has been a stronghold of cohesion in our culture. When we all read the same newspapers, our varying reactions to the same story are personal; but when conservatives read one paper and liberals read another, our varying reactions to the same story are tribal.
But who, faced with a newspaper full of stale facts that were already broadcast on the radio and a newspaper full of thoughtful analysis, would not pick the latter?
Monday, February 5
Crowdsourced
My interest in public space versus private space has surfaced in this blog a few times, usually in connection with the ways a networked life changes how we share physical space. But networked life also changes how we share intellectual space.
Penguin has begun a new experiment in what it calls crowdsourcing. It is, in a nutshell, a wiki novel. You can read what's been written so far here. And, this being a wiki, you can also edit it or add to it.
The challenges in collective writing are analogous to the challenges in any public venture. On the site's About page, Jeremy Ettinghausen says:
The project is still less than a week old, but already the novel has taken on the character of a public space. In a private space we seek a singular, coherent expression of our identity; in a public space, however, we allow or even encourage an accretion of numberless identities, styles, and philosophies. In a typical novel, an author limits himself to three or four major characters - or perhaps as many as a dozen. At present, Penguin's crowdsourced novel has 41 major characters. Among them are Linus Torvalds, the creator of the open-source Linux operating system, and Bill Gates. Its chapter titles are multilingual ("Chapter 4 大香蕉 [The Big Banana]") and mildly subversive ("Chapter 8 1/2").
Just as an unguarded subway car suggests graffiti to a certain kind of mind, to contributing writers this shared intellectual space can only suggest gleeful subversion of its own language, plot, and setting. It shouldn't be surprising then that there are exhausting explosions of incongruous words and images in the novel, and that the structure of the novel is driven by formal experimentation. The only traditional literary device that is likely to survive in the novel is irony.
Therefore, it seems to me that only one writing style can result from this collaborative form. The writing style of David Foster Wallace.
Penguin has begun a new experiment in what it calls crowdsourcing. It is, in a nutshell, a wiki novel. You can read what's been written so far here. And, this being a wiki, you can also edit it or add to it.
The challenges in collective writing are analogous to the challenges in any public venture. On the site's About page, Jeremy Ettinghausen says:
Can a collective create a believable fictional voice? How does a plot find any sort of coherent trajectory when different people have a different idea about how a story should end – or even begin? And, perhaps most importantly, can writers really leave their egos at the door?
The project is still less than a week old, but already the novel has taken on the character of a public space. In a private space we seek a singular, coherent expression of our identity; in a public space, however, we allow or even encourage an accretion of numberless identities, styles, and philosophies. In a typical novel, an author limits himself to three or four major characters - or perhaps as many as a dozen. At present, Penguin's crowdsourced novel has 41 major characters. Among them are Linus Torvalds, the creator of the open-source Linux operating system, and Bill Gates. Its chapter titles are multilingual ("Chapter 4 大香蕉 [The Big Banana]") and mildly subversive ("Chapter 8 1/2").
Just as an unguarded subway car suggests graffiti to a certain kind of mind, to contributing writers this shared intellectual space can only suggest gleeful subversion of its own language, plot, and setting. It shouldn't be surprising then that there are exhausting explosions of incongruous words and images in the novel, and that the structure of the novel is driven by formal experimentation. The only traditional literary device that is likely to survive in the novel is irony.
Therefore, it seems to me that only one writing style can result from this collaborative form. The writing style of David Foster Wallace.
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