Only the literary elite can afford not to tweet
Anne Trubek
When I go to my office in the morning, I can talk with the
editor of the Washington Post Book Review section about what he is reading,
with author Gary
Shteyngart about a review ofZadie
Smith's novel or to the president of theModern
Language Association about the state of the humanities.
But when I leave my office - logging off Twitter and going
out the back door of my house - I can walk my dog up my leafy street and talk
with baristas about the Browns, but rarely do I interact with book-review
editors, novelists or literary critics. I live in Cleveland, a city that
supports few such full-time jobs.
Twitter has offered me an intellectual community I otherwise
lack. It cuts the distance, both geographic and hierarchical. Not only can I
talk with people in other places, but I can engage with people in different
career stages as well. A sharp insight posted on Twitter is read, and RT'd
(retweeted), with less regard for the tweeter's resume (or gender or race) than
it might be if uttered at, say, a networking event. Social media is a hedge against
the white-shoe, old-boys' networks of publishing. It is a democratizing force
in the literary world.
I credit Twitter with indirectly and directly allowing me to
change careers from academic to freelance writer, to garner book contracts and
to launch a new magazine. Plus, it has introduced to me colleagues with whom I
practice what broadcast journalist Robert
Krulwich calls "horizontal loyalty," or aiding others in
similar career stages. Without social media, my ideas would have likely been
smaller murmurs, my career more constricted and my colleagues fewer.
So I have a short fuse when people pillory Twitter, and not
because it is so darned easy to do. I respect anyone's decision to not discuss
novels online. I understand the hazards of a constricted form overseen by a
large company. And I am concerned about loss of privacy. But tweeting is a new
literary form and, like all genres of writing, it can be banal
or sophisticated.
I have even less patience for famous authors who
disparage Twitter.
During an era of diminished sales and publicity budgets,
book publishers look to authors to promote their own work. Writers submitting
book proposals are often expected to list who follows them. Being good at
social media has become an asset similar to having a good radio voice or
being telegenic.
Jonathan
Franzen, in his latest screed against social media, takes on the pitfalls
of this new expectation of writers. Referring to one very active author on
Twitter, he argues that now, "literary novelists are conscripted into
Jennifer-Weinerish self-promotion." There is some truth to the claim that
authors are pressured to tweet. But when he then disparages "yakkers and
tweeters and braggers" as shallow, he leaves writers with no way out. We
are both forced to Tweet and labeled superficial for so doing. The only way one
can opt out is to be very rich and famous already, too big for publishers to
pressure us to help sell more copies. As my friends and I joke (on Twitter),
"Only Franzen has the luxury of not being on Twitter."
Sure, it can be annoying to feel pressured to promote
oneself on Twitter. But that is only one facet of the way it has altered
publishing. Twitter also offers access to resources many lack. If Twitter opens
doors for those who would otherwise just have to keep knocking, why not
encourage them to yak? If Twitter allows young writers and thinkers to engage
with scholars and poets and critics - without having to take out usurious
student loans - why dismiss them as shallow? Franzen, as well as Dave
Eggers - who has just published a dystopian, anti-social-media novel -
have become the new old men, even though both are middle-aged. It is precisely
because they became famous before social media that they have been able to be
away from it, and thus remain ignorant of its complexities.
If there is a problem in literary fiction, it may be that
some of our best writers have missed out on one of the most exciting and
transformative moments in American letters. Social media is primarily
text-based; it propels people to write more than they have in decades -
centuries, perhaps - and it is complex, fluid and resistant to simple
conclusions. No wonder so many writers love it. Luckily, I now know many of
them, and with them I talk, alone in my study.
Anne
Trubek, founding editor of Belt (beltmag.com), has written more than 22,000
tweets. To comment, go to
More info here>>>
