Writing About Literature in the Digital Age, an e-Book written by my professor and his students from a previous section of the same class I'm taking right now, has been an interesting read because it's articulated many of the ideas that have been germinating in my brain about blogging. I've tried blogging a few times, actually. Blogging is exciting for me, but at the same time, it often leaves me feeling bewildered and overwhelmed. What if I write something but the readers don't like it? What if it's not interesting? Funny? Clever? Intelligent? Will people quit reading? Will they even start?
Chapters 5 and 6 address the ways in which authors connect with their readers. In Chapter 5, Alyssa Rutter writes about Harper Lee and her unwillingness to connect to her audience. Shortly after To Kill a Mockingbird was published, Lee practically disappeared off the face of the earth after becoming overwhelmed by the popularity of her first novel. I admit I've occasionally daydreamed about being a mysterious author who never talks about her books and leaves the readers to discern the meaning without my influence. But that's hardly been the effect of Harper Lee's silence. Some people actually believe that Lee didn't even write her famous novel. Lee wrote a bestselling novel, but she failed to create an authorial presence. Meanwhile, Toni Morrison is connecting with her audience on all kinds of levels, as Andrea Ostler writes in Chapter 6. Morrison is able to help her readers to understand her book Song of Solomon. Morrison's ability to connect with her audience is producing only positive results, while Lee's readers are left puzzled by her disappearance--if not worse.
Blogging is a great way to take creation of an authorial presence into your own hands. As Rutter points out, if an author doesn't create his or her own online personality, then someone else will. I really enjoy blogging as opposed to other kinds of writing because it's so personal. On blogs, we get to use "I." We get to project our opinions even if they're not perfectly articulated and supported, as Dr. Burton wrote. We get to put our own voice into our writing and sound the way we like to sound. Using Alyssa Rutter's words, we create ourselves online. Blogging is all about creating a relationship between author and reader, a relationship which is becoming not only valuable, but critical in today's literary world. Contrary to Roland Barthes' opinions, the author is not dead, as Andrea Ostler points out. The author is not only alive and well, but being sought after by the readers of literature in the digital age.
When I think of the term "ghost-writer," I feel a little unease about the intention of the author behind the printed page. What do they want from their readers? What are they trying to get across? I feel that a relationship between an author and the reader is essential to create literature that can make changes in society. Barthes' argument about the death of the author and Fish's view that meaning in literature is created only though interpretive communities lack the depth that is required to make a piece of work powerful to change society. The intimate relationship between an author and the reader can easily be created through the use of blogging which allows for small bios and pictures that bring the author to life for the reader. The interchange between the author and the readers is transparent because the author is able to know the reader as a person and not just as part of a mass readership. The digital age is bringing the author and the reader ever closer to one another.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you halfway. I think that in the age that we live in, people are trying to connect and they want to find the author. Not only is this tight author-reader relationship now impossible to escape, I think it's a good thing. But I also think Barthes had a point about the autonomy of a text. I think that too often nowadays people read a book, think it means something and then...the author says it means something different, so I guess it means that instead. Or worse, the reader doesn't have any opinion to begin with, simply waiting for the author to "reveal" the meaning. I think we need to be free to come up with our own meaning, even if it's at odds with what the author says. In some ways, I think Barthes was right--the text doesn't "belong" to the author; it belongs to whoever is holding it in his or her hands. Author glorification certainly can change a society, but I believe it's a degrading change when it means that individuals no longer wish to think for themselves.
ReplyDeleteI hope I haven't just argued against myself... Ha, ha. I'm playing devil's advocate in a way, I suppose, but I think there are important aspects to both viewpoints. But like I said, there is no way to escape the tight-knit relationship between author and reader in our age, so what we should do is focus on that relationship as a conversation between two educated people, which I think is what you were saying. Thank you for your comment!