NYTimes has a story on digital publishing by Motoko Rich. What do we need to remember, as ‘the times, they are a changing’?
In the context of history, the changes that today’s technology will impose on literary society may not be as earth-shattering as some may think. In fact, books themselves are a relatively new construct, inheritors of a longstanding oral storytelling culture. Mass-produced books are an even newer phenomenon, enabled by the invention of the printing press that likely put legions of calligraphers and bookbinders out of business.
The book, as we know it, will survive and perhaps even flourish, if writers play with the format, explore and extend creatively its forms of materiality. That may mean integrating the reader and creating a new set of literary cultural assumptions that the author and reader may share. Or it could mean exploring different forms of story telling. Mere railing against technology, as Mr. Updike did a few days ago, would take us nowhere.
So given the nature of specific changes and experiments, the question is: who is the author, if he is not already dead in multiple ways? Read on.
When Mark Z. Danielewski’s second novel, “Only Revolutions,” is published in September, it will include hundreds of margin notes listing moments in history suggested online by fans of his work. Nearly 60 of his contributors have already received galleys of the experimental book, which they’re commenting about in a private forum at Mr. Danielewski’s Web site, www.onlyrevolutions.com.
Rich quotes Danielewski at some length at the end and that paragraph is also worth reading:
Mr. Danielewski said that the physical book would persist as long as authors figure out ways to stretch the format in new ways. “Only Revolutions,” he pointed out, tracks the experiences of two intersecting characters, whose narratives begin at different ends of the book, requiring readers to turn it upside down every eight pages to get both of their stories. “As excited as I am by technology, I’m ultimately creating a book that can’t exist online,” he said. “The experience of starting at either end of the book and feeling the space close between the characters until you’re exactly at the halfway point is not something you could experience online. I think that’s the bar that the Internet is driving towards: how to further emphasize what is different and exceptional about books.”
It’s for writers (of books) to take up that challenge of establishing what is different, exceptional and valuable about books.
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