Random
Reconsidering Stereotypes
My brother sent me this link to the Denver Broncos Cheerleaders, along with a note saying: “one of the questions is what book are you reading?”
I began clicking through the profiles.
What struck me was:
1) The fact that every single cheerleader was either reading or between books, and many of them were reading multiple books. [compare this to my current batch of college freshman students, the majority of which claimed at the beginning of the semester not to be reading anything at all]
2) Although many of the cheerleaders were reading popular fiction like The Notebook, Marley and Me, and Twilight, there were equally as many who were reading literary fiction/nonfiction. [Anjuli Rodriguez (bottom, 3rd from left): Jitterbug Perfume by Tom Robbins; Romi Bean (middle, 2nd from left): Blink by Malcolm Gladwell; Amanda Lofland (top right): Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand; Mary Johnston (top, 2nd from right) Twelfth Night, by William Shakespeare; etc.]
This got me thinking about a few things:
1) Our assumptions about readers, audience, etc. [In workshop, Lee K. Abbott would always talk about how we needed to write for “the lady on the bus” – a sentiment I adamantly disagreed with]
2) Our assumptions about community: who constitutes the community of indie literature? Are their Denver Broncos cheerleaders reading this post? [more importantly, are there Laker Girls reading this post?]
3) Our assumptions about…
Tags: cheerleaders, denver broncos
Chris,
Our conversation about the question of readership goes back a long way. I don’t believe in the lady on the bus thing anymore, because whenever I was riding the bus, I saw ladies on the bus reading everything from Dan Brown to Calculus textbooks, but not many books of stories or novels of the sort I admire. (I suspect it’s different from bus to bus, too. In San Francisco, the highbrow old ladies on the bus were outreading me, I’d say.)
Interestingly (to me, anyway), a lot of what would seem to me to be more easily digestible and broadly accessible literary stuff (Richard Bausch, say, or Andre Dubus, or Frederick Busch) doesn’t sell a tenth as well as David Foster Wallace, William T. Vollman, Roberto Bolano, etc. Where there are exceptions, they seem to largely be old-fashioned novelists who still have big ambition of one sort or another, even if that ambition isn’t centered largely on language (Richard Russo, Anne Tyler, John Irving, etc.)
What that says to me is that the big throng of people who are most likely to buy in large numbers anything like the kind of book I would want to read or write are actually looking for something more challenging or at least more ambitious than what many workshops would advocate.
This matters to me, because I would like to one day have a large readership, and I want to write fiction that is simultaneously challenging and formally inventive and, yes, accessible and comprehensible to a generally educated reader.
I know that’s different from what you’re advocating and what many HTMLGiant responders will advocate, since this is a site that rightly admires literature that pushes the boundaries as far as they can go, as I do, too. Many of my friends who are positioned deeper into the lyric mode w/r/t their fiction than I am (if it’s not wrongheaded to think of a scale of lyric to narrative, which it might well be), and who publish with smaller presses such as Dzanc, FC2, Coffee House Press, etc., have told me that they have come to the conclusion that the maximum audience for experimental fiction (again, the terminology gets slippery) is probably in the neighborhood of 5000-10000 whether the writer is published by Coffee House Press or Knopf, the big corporate successes (Infinite Jest, Mark Z. Danielewski) notwithstanding (although I do wonder how many copies Danielewski actually sells.)
Those works are still quite accessible compared to the kind of thing I sometimes hear you talk about, Chris, which is a kind of literature that aspires to eschew character and story-qua-story altogether in favor of assemblages of language that are pleasurable mostly because of their deployments of language alone. The ongoing small audience of Gertrude Stein aside, I would think that this particular aspiration would leave one with, well, an even smaller pool of potential readers.
I think that, all posturing to the contrary aside, most writers think about the question of audience, and that their decisions about audience certainly factor into decisions about the work, even if the decision is, “I don’t care if the book ever has an audience, and maybe the work is more pure if I provoke the audience downward to zero.” Because the act of writing, it seems to me, is fundamentally a communicative act.
As I’ve thought about why I write, I’ve realized that part of what thrills me about literature is its ability to bring the public and the private into dialogue one reader at a time, in a way that the writer controls, and in a manner fully in keeping with the writer’s vision for the work, if the writer is sufficiently in control of his work to make this happen. For the vision I have of my work, matters such as character, place, a vital but comprehensible language, point of view, structure, etc. — all that Literature 101 stuff — must be foregrounded, because to me the act of being inviting to the reader (and to broadening varieties of reader — certainly I hope to better accomplish this with the next book than I did with the last one) is prelude to the truly transgressive ends I hope the fiction-making to achieve — transgressions that certainly include play with language, structure, and point of view, and complication and recontextualization of place and character.
I disagree with the notion that there ought to be some kind of firm dividing line between indie and mainstream (or whatever) literature. I think it would be better to cultivate a climate in which writers could move around aesthetically based upon the needs and, yes, requirements of the book or story they are right now working on, and to value more strongly Zadie Smith’s rightful pronouncement that literature is a big tent, and that practitioners of various aesthetic inclinations can labor alongside one another and learn from each other and read each other with pleasure.
Chris,
Our conversation about the question of readership goes back a long way. I don’t believe in the lady on the bus thing anymore, because whenever I was riding the bus, I saw ladies on the bus reading everything from Dan Brown to Calculus textbooks, but not many books of stories or novels of the sort I admire. (I suspect it’s different from bus to bus, too. In San Francisco, the highbrow old ladies on the bus were outreading me, I’d say.)
Interestingly (to me, anyway), a lot of what would seem to me to be more easily digestible and broadly accessible literary stuff (Richard Bausch, say, or Andre Dubus, or Frederick Busch) doesn’t sell a tenth as well as David Foster Wallace, William T. Vollman, Roberto Bolano, etc. Where there are exceptions, they seem to largely be old-fashioned novelists who still have big ambition of one sort or another, even if that ambition isn’t centered largely on language (Richard Russo, Anne Tyler, John Irving, etc.)
What that says to me is that the big throng of people who are most likely to buy in large numbers anything like the kind of book I would want to read or write are actually looking for something more challenging or at least more ambitious than what many workshops would advocate.
This matters to me, because I would like to one day have a large readership, and I want to write fiction that is simultaneously challenging and formally inventive and, yes, accessible and comprehensible to a generally educated reader.
I know that’s different from what you’re advocating and what many HTMLGiant responders will advocate, since this is a site that rightly admires literature that pushes the boundaries as far as they can go, as I do, too. Many of my friends who are positioned deeper into the lyric mode w/r/t their fiction than I am (if it’s not wrongheaded to think of a scale of lyric to narrative, which it might well be), and who publish with smaller presses such as Dzanc, FC2, Coffee House Press, etc., have told me that they have come to the conclusion that the maximum audience for experimental fiction (again, the terminology gets slippery) is probably in the neighborhood of 5000-10000 whether the writer is published by Coffee House Press or Knopf, the big corporate successes (Infinite Jest, Mark Z. Danielewski) notwithstanding (although I do wonder how many copies Danielewski actually sells.)
Those works are still quite accessible compared to the kind of thing I sometimes hear you talk about, Chris, which is a kind of literature that aspires to eschew character and story-qua-story altogether in favor of assemblages of language that are pleasurable mostly because of their deployments of language alone. The ongoing small audience of Gertrude Stein aside, I would think that this particular aspiration would leave one with, well, an even smaller pool of potential readers.
I think that, all posturing to the contrary aside, most writers think about the question of audience, and that their decisions about audience certainly factor into decisions about the work, even if the decision is, “I don’t care if the book ever has an audience, and maybe the work is more pure if I provoke the audience downward to zero.” Because the act of writing, it seems to me, is fundamentally a communicative act.
As I’ve thought about why I write, I’ve realized that part of what thrills me about literature is its ability to bring the public and the private into dialogue one reader at a time, in a way that the writer controls, and in a manner fully in keeping with the writer’s vision for the work, if the writer is sufficiently in control of his work to make this happen. For the vision I have of my work, matters such as character, place, a vital but comprehensible language, point of view, structure, etc. — all that Literature 101 stuff — must be foregrounded, because to me the act of being inviting to the reader (and to broadening varieties of reader — certainly I hope to better accomplish this with the next book than I did with the last one) is prelude to the truly transgressive ends I hope the fiction-making to achieve — transgressions that certainly include play with language, structure, and point of view, and complication and recontextualization of place and character.
I disagree with the notion that there ought to be some kind of firm dividing line between indie and mainstream (or whatever) literature. I think it would be better to cultivate a climate in which writers could move around aesthetically based upon the needs and, yes, requirements of the book or story they are right now working on, and to value more strongly Zadie Smith’s rightful pronouncement that literature is a big tent, and that practitioners of various aesthetic inclinations can labor alongside one another and learn from each other and read each other with pleasure.
Knowing what to say when asked what one is reading is sometimes worth more than reading the fucking book itself. With that said, and nothing against these long-haired kittens, but what an easy cop-out question: what book are you reading. And what’s the big surprise again? Because these chicks look great stripped naked with enough brain energy to masturbate with, it’s a big surprise they’re reading…a…book by–Robbins? Shakespeare? Woah! Oh woah. Christ.
Knowing what to say when asked what one is reading is sometimes worth more than reading the fucking book itself. With that said, and nothing against these long-haired kittens, but what an easy cop-out question: what book are you reading. And what’s the big surprise again? Because these chicks look great stripped naked with enough brain energy to masturbate with, it’s a big surprise they’re reading…a…book by–Robbins? Shakespeare? Woah! Oh woah. Christ.
i’m going to agree with, or at least be skeptical alongside, Sabra. I think that’s an easy question to have a pre-loaded answer for, especially in written form. Example…
I am reading the biography of Hideki Matsui who is a Japanese baseball player for the NY Yankees. He is not only talented, but works much harder than most players to be the very best. He also has a great personality. This book inspires me!
I can imagine her sitting down with her agent and together carefully constructing this answer.
i’m going to agree with, or at least be skeptical alongside, Sabra. I think that’s an easy question to have a pre-loaded answer for, especially in written form. Example…
I am reading the biography of Hideki Matsui who is a Japanese baseball player for the NY Yankees. He is not only talented, but works much harder than most players to be the very best. He also has a great personality. This book inspires me!
I can imagine her sitting down with her agent and together carefully constructing this answer.
awesome post, kyle. especially liked this:
“I think it would be better to cultivate a climate in which writers could move around aesthetically based upon the needs and, yes, requirements of the book or story they are right now working on…”
i jump from style to style from book to book. it mirrors my reading habits, but maybe doesn’t give anyone who had read any one of my books a good sense of where i’m coming from, but your single sentence explains exactly what i want to keep doing for the rest of my life.
as for who is reading what — some of my students were eagles cheerleaders, which means eagle’s cheerleaders here in philadelphia have probably read gertrude stein on the broad street line.
awesome post, kyle. especially liked this:
“I think it would be better to cultivate a climate in which writers could move around aesthetically based upon the needs and, yes, requirements of the book or story they are right now working on…”
i jump from style to style from book to book. it mirrors my reading habits, but maybe doesn’t give anyone who had read any one of my books a good sense of where i’m coming from, but your single sentence explains exactly what i want to keep doing for the rest of my life.
as for who is reading what — some of my students were eagles cheerleaders, which means eagle’s cheerleaders here in philadelphia have probably read gertrude stein on the broad street line.
That’s funny, Darby.
Gooooo sports!
That’s funny, Darby.
Gooooo sports!
also I think i’ve heard other celebrities give the Robbins answer, drew barrymore i think, though I’m not sure. but he does seem kind of like the ‘cool’ thing to read for people who dont read much. I’ll put house of leaves into that category too. i was introduced to that book by a guy who never read anything, and was like, you gotta check out this book! just flip through it a little! its awesome! i could never look at that book seriously after that.
also I think i’ve heard other celebrities give the Robbins answer, drew barrymore i think, though I’m not sure. but he does seem kind of like the ‘cool’ thing to read for people who dont read much. I’ll put house of leaves into that category too. i was introduced to that book by a guy who never read anything, and was like, you gotta check out this book! just flip through it a little! its awesome! i could never look at that book seriously after that.
props to kyle. that’s a fucking treatise and a half. after the reading that i wanted to clap.
i remember the “lady on the bus” adage from a craft seminar lee k. abbott gave at columbia a few years back. i didn’t like it then and i like it even less now. for some reason i can’t get over the word “lady.” i keep thinking of some old woman in a flannery o’connor story, wearing a flowery hat, carrying around some kind of handbag. i say write for the people you want to hang out with. the people you want to exchange emails with. the people you want to stay up way too late talking to about a bunch of shit you kind of don’t really remember later but know meant something at the time. fuck ladies on buses who can’t relate. write for your friends and your exes and strangers who’d be your friends or exes if only they knew you and how great and horrible you truly are.
props to kyle. that’s a fucking treatise and a half. after the reading that i wanted to clap.
i remember the “lady on the bus” adage from a craft seminar lee k. abbott gave at columbia a few years back. i didn’t like it then and i like it even less now. for some reason i can’t get over the word “lady.” i keep thinking of some old woman in a flannery o’connor story, wearing a flowery hat, carrying around some kind of handbag. i say write for the people you want to hang out with. the people you want to exchange emails with. the people you want to stay up way too late talking to about a bunch of shit you kind of don’t really remember later but know meant something at the time. fuck ladies on buses who can’t relate. write for your friends and your exes and strangers who’d be your friends or exes if only they knew you and how great and horrible you truly are.
For the record, James, I want to say that Lee K. Abbott was a great, great, great teacher, for me. I don’t think absent his interventions I would be able to envision a career as a writer.
For the record, James, I want to say that Lee K. Abbott was a great, great, great teacher, for me. I don’t think absent his interventions I would be able to envision a career as a writer.
Yeah, I knew a guy who emphasized for fifteen minutes his take on the brilliance of House of Leaves by the way the “house” was in red all over the place “because that was just interesting” and he’d “never seen anything like that before.” Like so cool, even though “he couldn’t really explain what it was about” aside from the way “it described a house with a lot of rooms or something.”
Yeah, I knew a guy who emphasized for fifteen minutes his take on the brilliance of House of Leaves by the way the “house” was in red all over the place “because that was just interesting” and he’d “never seen anything like that before.” Like so cool, even though “he couldn’t really explain what it was about” aside from the way “it described a house with a lot of rooms or something.”
It’s funny, because as soon as I saw this picture, I said to myself, “That lady on the top right is totally a Libertarian.” Seriously, I did! Ask my dogs. They were there.
It’s funny, because as soon as I saw this picture, I said to myself, “That lady on the top right is totally a Libertarian.” Seriously, I did! Ask my dogs. They were there.
although to answer the question of assumptions about readers and communities, i guess i don’t care enough about who my audience is to worry about it, or to even make assumptions in the first place. I never write with a mindframe of, I’m only writing for this select group of humans and I will assume these other humans will not be my audience.
of course, i’m not an ‘author’ with a product to peddle. if I was I would have to think about things like who is my audience and how do i get my hands in their pockets. hopefully i will never be an author.
although to answer the question of assumptions about readers and communities, i guess i don’t care enough about who my audience is to worry about it, or to even make assumptions in the first place. I never write with a mindframe of, I’m only writing for this select group of humans and I will assume these other humans will not be my audience.
of course, i’m not an ‘author’ with a product to peddle. if I was I would have to think about things like who is my audience and how do i get my hands in their pockets. hopefully i will never be an author.
Kyle, you’re a ridiculously badass comment writer. This is fantastic, and deserves a re-post of its own.
Kyle, you’re a ridiculously badass comment writer. This is fantastic, and deserves a re-post of its own.
you’re also assuming that the cheerleaders weren’t just saying: oh yeah, i’m reading atlas shrugged. it’s actually the only book i can remember seeing. the one who answered twelfth night probably remembered it from an english class. but here i am, making assumptions. and you know what that makes you and me, right?
as per kyle’s thoughts, etc: i’m not necessarily a fan of capitalism, but i know what makes the gears turn around here, and no book, i don’t think, will “find” an audience; books don’t go out into the world and hunt people; no, it will be “delivered” to an audience via a variety of conduits – some free, some not free. it’s a small business really, being an author. and maybe some of us don’t want to be authors and that’s like, whatever, who cares?
it seems like the writing community has always been pitching tents (as zadie smith said (dirty minds think alike)). you can either build the best tent you can or you can sleep outside, wrapped up in the canvas. maybe someone will learn from your wrap-up method and incorporate aspects of it into their tent-making technique, but you will not sell your wrap-up method to an audience if you don’t bring them over to check out the technical intricacies and minimal design specifications that make it so fucking awesome.
you’re also assuming that the cheerleaders weren’t just saying: oh yeah, i’m reading atlas shrugged. it’s actually the only book i can remember seeing. the one who answered twelfth night probably remembered it from an english class. but here i am, making assumptions. and you know what that makes you and me, right?
as per kyle’s thoughts, etc: i’m not necessarily a fan of capitalism, but i know what makes the gears turn around here, and no book, i don’t think, will “find” an audience; books don’t go out into the world and hunt people; no, it will be “delivered” to an audience via a variety of conduits – some free, some not free. it’s a small business really, being an author. and maybe some of us don’t want to be authors and that’s like, whatever, who cares?
it seems like the writing community has always been pitching tents (as zadie smith said (dirty minds think alike)). you can either build the best tent you can or you can sleep outside, wrapped up in the canvas. maybe someone will learn from your wrap-up method and incorporate aspects of it into their tent-making technique, but you will not sell your wrap-up method to an audience if you don’t bring them over to check out the technical intricacies and minimal design specifications that make it so fucking awesome.
why do you not want to write for the lady on the bus? why would you not want to write for someone?
why do you not want to write for the lady on the bus? why would you not want to write for someone?
why do you want a ‘large’ readership? does the satisfaction of communicating a thing increase proportionally to the number of people you are communicating with?
why do you want a ‘large’ readership? does the satisfaction of communicating a thing increase proportionally to the number of people you are communicating with?
Hey Kyle,
Sorry for the belated reply. I went to bed shortly after posting this last night (man, I’m getting old).
Thanks for your (as always) thoughtful remarks. Although we see many of these issues from differing points of view, I believe I’m a better writer/thinker for having had your perspective to grapple with these past few years.
One fundamental difference between our perspectives is this issue of audience. Not only do I not intend to write for the woman on the bus, I do not intend to write for anyone other than myself. Unlike you, I do not see writing as “fundamentally a communicative act” – I see writing as fundamentally an act of personal gratification. I construct language for my own pleasure, not because I want to build an audience for it. Whatever audience my work has attracted thus far is a side-effect, not my intention. I create for myself and offer to share my creation with others and sometimes others find thrills, if not, well, so be it. I reach satisfaction at the point when I finish a piece, not when a piece connects with an audience — by the time it connects with an audience I am already over that piece and working on another. In effect, audiences are like stargazers in that they are viewing something that died a long time ago, they are seeing only residual life.
Size of audience – the small pool. In fact, given my druthers, I would be happier to have a smaller audience if that audience were more greatly influenced by my work: the example I like to use is that old saw about the Velvet Underground only selling one hundred albums, but each of those hundred people who bought albums started a band. To me, the amount of readers is irrelevant, unless you are selling units like Stephen King, in which case I can understand wanting to reach a large audience. What matters to me is impact, influence, ability to shift paradigms – which does not correlate with the amount of readers one amasses, but rather with the potency of the readers one amasses.
I agree with you about disliking the dividing line between mainstream and indie lit, but ignoring its existence seems disingenuous so I always feel like I need to make those distinctions.
I know I’m missing stuff, responding to only a few of your many great thoughts. Sorry. I haven’t had my coffee yet this morning. I’ll return later today and catch up.
Hey Kyle,
Sorry for the belated reply. I went to bed shortly after posting this last night (man, I’m getting old).
Thanks for your (as always) thoughtful remarks. Although we see many of these issues from differing points of view, I believe I’m a better writer/thinker for having had your perspective to grapple with these past few years.
One fundamental difference between our perspectives is this issue of audience. Not only do I not intend to write for the woman on the bus, I do not intend to write for anyone other than myself. Unlike you, I do not see writing as “fundamentally a communicative act” – I see writing as fundamentally an act of personal gratification. I construct language for my own pleasure, not because I want to build an audience for it. Whatever audience my work has attracted thus far is a side-effect, not my intention. I create for myself and offer to share my creation with others and sometimes others find thrills, if not, well, so be it. I reach satisfaction at the point when I finish a piece, not when a piece connects with an audience — by the time it connects with an audience I am already over that piece and working on another. In effect, audiences are like stargazers in that they are viewing something that died a long time ago, they are seeing only residual life.
Size of audience – the small pool. In fact, given my druthers, I would be happier to have a smaller audience if that audience were more greatly influenced by my work: the example I like to use is that old saw about the Velvet Underground only selling one hundred albums, but each of those hundred people who bought albums started a band. To me, the amount of readers is irrelevant, unless you are selling units like Stephen King, in which case I can understand wanting to reach a large audience. What matters to me is impact, influence, ability to shift paradigms – which does not correlate with the amount of readers one amasses, but rather with the potency of the readers one amasses.
I agree with you about disliking the dividing line between mainstream and indie lit, but ignoring its existence seems disingenuous so I always feel like I need to make those distinctions.
I know I’m missing stuff, responding to only a few of your many great thoughts. Sorry. I haven’t had my coffee yet this morning. I’ll return later today and catch up.
I second Kyle’s comment here about Lee K. Differences of opinion aside, he was a phenomenal teacher for me, too.
I second Kyle’s comment here about Lee K. Differences of opinion aside, he was a phenomenal teacher for me, too.
[…] higgs’ latest post produced a discussion about audience. i have thought about this before. my question is: can you ever have an audience (outside of […]
Yes.
Yes.
For lots of reasons, one being the idea that literature has something been culturally relevant, and that maybe it could continue to be culturally relevant. Another being that, like I said before, I think of writing as a fundamentally communicative act that is unlike other media because it enables a direct one-to-one communion between the reader and the consciousness(es) the writer invites the reader to inhabit for the length of the reading. And inasmuch as I’ve partaken of that pleasure from the writers I love most, I want to make something worthy enough of readers that I can offer that pleasure reciprocally to as many of them as possible. And one other thing, too: These things take a lot of time and cost a lot besides time to make and make well, and after giving over so much of my own finite life to making something, I want it to go into the world and be read by as many people as possible.
I don’t understand why this is seen by some writers as some kind of fundamental betrayal. The desire to be read broadly is not incongruent with the desire to make something on one’s own terms and toward one’s own ends. If literature teaches us anything, it’s that things aren’t either/or. They are terribly complicated, and I don’t see why the act of making something wouldn’t be motivated simultaneously by the artist’s desire for singularity as a maker, for the work’s singularity as a work, and by a desire that the work connect widely with readers/viewers/listeners, etc.
For lots of reasons, one being the idea that literature has something been culturally relevant, and that maybe it could continue to be culturally relevant. Another being that, like I said before, I think of writing as a fundamentally communicative act that is unlike other media because it enables a direct one-to-one communion between the reader and the consciousness(es) the writer invites the reader to inhabit for the length of the reading. And inasmuch as I’ve partaken of that pleasure from the writers I love most, I want to make something worthy enough of readers that I can offer that pleasure reciprocally to as many of them as possible. And one other thing, too: These things take a lot of time and cost a lot besides time to make and make well, and after giving over so much of my own finite life to making something, I want it to go into the world and be read by as many people as possible.
I don’t understand why this is seen by some writers as some kind of fundamental betrayal. The desire to be read broadly is not incongruent with the desire to make something on one’s own terms and toward one’s own ends. If literature teaches us anything, it’s that things aren’t either/or. They are terribly complicated, and I don’t see why the act of making something wouldn’t be motivated simultaneously by the artist’s desire for singularity as a maker, for the work’s singularity as a work, and by a desire that the work connect widely with readers/viewers/listeners, etc.
damn typos!
damn typos!
A reviewer a long time ago said “Tom Robbins writes the way Dolly Parton looks.”
For some reason I feel this is pertinent here, cheerleaders ridiculously dressed and all.
A reviewer a long time ago said “Tom Robbins writes the way Dolly Parton looks.”
For some reason I feel this is pertinent here, cheerleaders ridiculously dressed and all.
I know that I write for an audience often, even if that audience is just one other person, or the idea of a person that I think might exist or an idea that I have super-imposed upon a person that does exist. I’m writing for myself but I’m also writing to communicate what I want that person or that idea of a person to “hear”.
I know that I write for an audience often, even if that audience is just one other person, or the idea of a person that I think might exist or an idea that I have super-imposed upon a person that does exist. I’m writing for myself but I’m also writing to communicate what I want that person or that idea of a person to “hear”.
i think the difference in audience consideration falls heavily in the question that i see posed by Kyle’s post and then Christopher’s response–how communicative do you see art/writing/etc. to be? do you write for you? or for your audience? do you see art as 50% a conversation? of course, then you have to tread the y-axis of “big audience doesn’t mean big art,” etc.
i think the difference in audience consideration falls heavily in the question that i see posed by Kyle’s post and then Christopher’s response–how communicative do you see art/writing/etc. to be? do you write for you? or for your audience? do you see art as 50% a conversation? of course, then you have to tread the y-axis of “big audience doesn’t mean big art,” etc.
I still don’t really understand why having a large readership matters. If writing is a communicative act, and you yourself acknowledge the unique one-on-one conversation that occurs, why do you desire a one-on-greaterthanone?
It’s not that I don’t agree with you necessarily, and I think the way you think is certainly valid, not a betrayal of anything. It’s just that having the idea of an audience in mind that is more than myself I don’t think is healthy to the creation of art, in a general sense. If I start thinking about, well I should change this thing because that would make more sense to more people, than I’m not being honest, I’m catering, numbing, I’m suddenly thinking of the ‘message’ in a political way, or I’m being something that other people want me to be first and what I want to be second. It’s a diluting of my ‘self’ for the sake of the communicative act but at the sacrifice of what I actually want to communicate. So my thinking is, if my work brings an audience, than the work was meant to have an audience, if not, than it wasn’t meant to. That’s the only way to approach it while ensuring what I am communicating is honest and is exactly what I want to communicate.
I still don’t really understand why having a large readership matters. If writing is a communicative act, and you yourself acknowledge the unique one-on-one conversation that occurs, why do you desire a one-on-greaterthanone?
It’s not that I don’t agree with you necessarily, and I think the way you think is certainly valid, not a betrayal of anything. It’s just that having the idea of an audience in mind that is more than myself I don’t think is healthy to the creation of art, in a general sense. If I start thinking about, well I should change this thing because that would make more sense to more people, than I’m not being honest, I’m catering, numbing, I’m suddenly thinking of the ‘message’ in a political way, or I’m being something that other people want me to be first and what I want to be second. It’s a diluting of my ‘self’ for the sake of the communicative act but at the sacrifice of what I actually want to communicate. So my thinking is, if my work brings an audience, than the work was meant to have an audience, if not, than it wasn’t meant to. That’s the only way to approach it while ensuring what I am communicating is honest and is exactly what I want to communicate.
Darby,
Many of my favorite writers write about of that mindset. It’s not wrong. It’s just alien to me and my process.
Darby,
Many of my favorite writers write about of that mindset. It’s not wrong. It’s just alien to me and my process.
totally
totally
fair enough, kyle, and christopher. what i said was based on the lecture he gave. not saying he’s a bad guy or anything, just that i vigorously oppose that one statement
fair enough, kyle, and christopher. what i said was based on the lecture he gave. not saying he’s a bad guy or anything, just that i vigorously oppose that one statement
The ones reading the most “literary” books are brunettes. Coincidence?
The ones reading the most “literary” books are brunettes. Coincidence?
Fucking HTMLGIANT, geez.
Fucking HTMLGIANT, geez.
Kirby Puckett hated Lee K, from what I hear. In terms of short story writers, a lot of Lee’s stories right rank up there with Tobias W’s. I’m blanking on the story name now, but in college I read a LKA story where a son played golf with his estranged father. Tension and drama ensued, well modulated, and the story ended with the son “out of nowhere” flying forward with a punch (kick?). The story blew me away. When I read his Kirby Puckett/”Youth on Mars” story, I was ready to be deflowered in the basement.
I say all that to express shock that LKA would advocate writing for the lady on the bus. Since I didn’t attend the lecture and maybe missing some context, I will say that perhaps there is more to it? I hope so. Otherwise, like James, I am stuck with this horrible image of a lady on the bus, tsk-tsking my negativity, fucked up characters, etc. Maybe I approach writing from a different point than some thers. I practice law and will be doing that until June 2032 when I can retire. When I stay up late writing or do so on the train, I’m certainly not thinking of some big-haired lady on the bus.
During all my years riding the train into DC, I have seen maybe five books being read that looked of some interest (all by the same woman). Mainly the other riders have grocery store paperbacks – Z is for Zoo-fucking Apes on the Lam – and then NF books by Limbaugh, O’Reilly, Hannity, or maybe the Bible or computer programming books or books.
I read an interview by some self-proclaimed “unknown” author who said his true hope in life was just once getting on a plane or train and seeing someone reading one of his novels. How sad and painful, the fact that likely won’t happen. I don’t think he was being tongue and cheek. I think it really was his “dream”. I don’t know, that strikes me as painful and, on some level, resonates, but on others makes me think he should be focusing on the work itself and not some schmo train rider who probably skims half the book anyway.
I personally would love to team up with James Patterson and write a book about serial killing and crooked cops. Then I’ll get back to writing what I want.
Kirby Puckett hated Lee K, from what I hear. In terms of short story writers, a lot of Lee’s stories right rank up there with Tobias W’s. I’m blanking on the story name now, but in college I read a LKA story where a son played golf with his estranged father. Tension and drama ensued, well modulated, and the story ended with the son “out of nowhere” flying forward with a punch (kick?). The story blew me away. When I read his Kirby Puckett/”Youth on Mars” story, I was ready to be deflowered in the basement.
I say all that to express shock that LKA would advocate writing for the lady on the bus. Since I didn’t attend the lecture and maybe missing some context, I will say that perhaps there is more to it? I hope so. Otherwise, like James, I am stuck with this horrible image of a lady on the bus, tsk-tsking my negativity, fucked up characters, etc. Maybe I approach writing from a different point than some thers. I practice law and will be doing that until June 2032 when I can retire. When I stay up late writing or do so on the train, I’m certainly not thinking of some big-haired lady on the bus.
During all my years riding the train into DC, I have seen maybe five books being read that looked of some interest (all by the same woman). Mainly the other riders have grocery store paperbacks – Z is for Zoo-fucking Apes on the Lam – and then NF books by Limbaugh, O’Reilly, Hannity, or maybe the Bible or computer programming books or books.
I read an interview by some self-proclaimed “unknown” author who said his true hope in life was just once getting on a plane or train and seeing someone reading one of his novels. How sad and painful, the fact that likely won’t happen. I don’t think he was being tongue and cheek. I think it really was his “dream”. I don’t know, that strikes me as painful and, on some level, resonates, but on others makes me think he should be focusing on the work itself and not some schmo train rider who probably skims half the book anyway.
I personally would love to team up with James Patterson and write a book about serial killing and crooked cops. Then I’ll get back to writing what I want.
ha! nice.
ha! nice.
[…] in Denver, a Broncos Cheerleader is reading about mavens, and connectors. (Thanks HTML […]
David: The story you’re remembering is “Final Proof of Fate and Circumstance” — a good one!
Others worth your time: “One of Star Wars, One of Doom,” “The Talk Talked Between Worms,” “What Y Was.” Plenty of others, too.
As a longtime student of Abbott’s, I have to say that I think he uses a lot of the prescriptive talk as a provocation and something to push against. Whenever somebody turned in a story that broke all the “rules” and it was nonetheless hugely powerful, he’d praise it and help it find a home. Many of these stories later ended up in the Best American series.
Also, if you read his work, you’ll see a real restlessness with regard to formal experimentation, language, etc., which seems to me to speak louder than the provocations.
One thing I learned from his classes was the value of having the full toolkit of writerly strategems, and also of having an understanding of the strengths and weaknesses that accrue to each kind of sentence, each variety of point of view, each structure, etc., so that when it came time to write a story, it was easier to understand how to make choices that served it. This part of my education has been most valuable post-MFA and post-first book, when I’m struggling to make a novel that fires on all cylinders and does something I’ve not seen a novel do before. To this end, I’m happy to have labored under his prescriptions: In order to do something new, for a writer as slow-witted as me, it might first be necessary to understand how to do all the stuff that’s been done before, to know how it works, and to transgress informed by the full weight of this gathered intelligence.
David: The story you’re remembering is “Final Proof of Fate and Circumstance” — a good one!
Others worth your time: “One of Star Wars, One of Doom,” “The Talk Talked Between Worms,” “What Y Was.” Plenty of others, too.
As a longtime student of Abbott’s, I have to say that I think he uses a lot of the prescriptive talk as a provocation and something to push against. Whenever somebody turned in a story that broke all the “rules” and it was nonetheless hugely powerful, he’d praise it and help it find a home. Many of these stories later ended up in the Best American series.
Also, if you read his work, you’ll see a real restlessness with regard to formal experimentation, language, etc., which seems to me to speak louder than the provocations.
One thing I learned from his classes was the value of having the full toolkit of writerly strategems, and also of having an understanding of the strengths and weaknesses that accrue to each kind of sentence, each variety of point of view, each structure, etc., so that when it came time to write a story, it was easier to understand how to make choices that served it. This part of my education has been most valuable post-MFA and post-first book, when I’m struggling to make a novel that fires on all cylinders and does something I’ve not seen a novel do before. To this end, I’m happy to have labored under his prescriptions: In order to do something new, for a writer as slow-witted as me, it might first be necessary to understand how to do all the stuff that’s been done before, to know how it works, and to transgress informed by the full weight of this gathered intelligence.
“Final Proof of Fate and Circumstance”! Thanks, Kyle, I couldn’t find the title anywhere I looked.
I look forward to reading more of Abbott’s work, including the stories you listed. Thanks for that. I went to Ohio Wesleyan Univ back in the day, studying under Robert Flanagan, who knew/liked Abbott a hell of a lot. We got Tim O’Brien to come speak to our class and some other great local writers (Austin Wright/Annabel Thomas) but for some reason didn’t get Abbott to come just up the road. Flanagan also got PF Kluge to come to our school and read from his hilarious take-down of Kenyon College.
More importantly, I’m keeping the following language from you so that next time someone bashes all MFA programs I can remember this:
To this end, I’m happy to have labored under his prescriptions: In order to do something new, for a writer as slow-witted as me, it might first be necessary to understand how to do all the stuff that’s been done before, to know how it works, and to transgress informed by the full weight of this gathered intelligence.
“Final Proof of Fate and Circumstance”! Thanks, Kyle, I couldn’t find the title anywhere I looked.
I look forward to reading more of Abbott’s work, including the stories you listed. Thanks for that. I went to Ohio Wesleyan Univ back in the day, studying under Robert Flanagan, who knew/liked Abbott a hell of a lot. We got Tim O’Brien to come speak to our class and some other great local writers (Austin Wright/Annabel Thomas) but for some reason didn’t get Abbott to come just up the road. Flanagan also got PF Kluge to come to our school and read from his hilarious take-down of Kenyon College.
More importantly, I’m keeping the following language from you so that next time someone bashes all MFA programs I can remember this:
To this end, I’m happy to have labored under his prescriptions: In order to do something new, for a writer as slow-witted as me, it might first be necessary to understand how to do all the stuff that’s been done before, to know how it works, and to transgress informed by the full weight of this gathered intelligence.