Sunday, August 04, 2002
Tonight a friend from the Honey Bear Bakery passed me an academic article on Ayn Rand. Haven't read one of those for a few years. It made me think about the unique code of language academics use to talk about literature. Maybe I'll talk more about that in another post.
But the article made me think about the connections between authors. I read Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius and I see the disruption between reader and author and think about Kurt Vonnegut's novels and self-deprecating/self-aware way of presenting a story. And HWOSG was a monster hit much like David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest was a few years ago, with a very similar audience. So there's a few connections.
But Jan Karon is doing an entirely different type of writing, attracting a more midwestern, conservative type of reader that wants a straightforward moral tale with good characters. People who read these might be willing to make the jump to Barbara Kingsolver's Poisonwood Bible. And Kingsolver fans would read Kissing the Virgin's Mouth, and possibly Zadie Smith's White Teeth. And White Teeth fans definitely intersect with the audience for Dave Eggers.
I've been reading Nexus: Small Worlds and the Groundbreaking Science of Networks. It talks about small worlds theory, where much of our universe can be described in terms of these connections between people, species, ecosystems, etc. (think Six Degrees of Separation). While reading this, I'm thinking about technology and the web (there are some excellent chapters explaining the internet's network structure).
I'd like to see a website that connects authors with other authors by who writes in a similar style, who's work relys on previous writers, who reads whom, and other connections between authors. Everyone. All the classics that are still read today, all the comtemporary authors. Everyone. And all of us readers and booksellers and academics, we can fill in the links between the authors. A grad student can briefly explain why Sherman Alexie is related to Joyce Carol Oates. Tom Robbins can get on and list the authors he feels most influenced by. Helen Fielding can tell who she reads the most and the site will put links from her to those writers. It's a Six Degrees game waiting to happen.
This is the kind of project I'd like to see an English Department build. Anyone know of something like this?
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But the article made me think about the connections between authors. I read Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius and I see the disruption between reader and author and think about Kurt Vonnegut's novels and self-deprecating/self-aware way of presenting a story. And HWOSG was a monster hit much like David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest was a few years ago, with a very similar audience. So there's a few connections.
But Jan Karon is doing an entirely different type of writing, attracting a more midwestern, conservative type of reader that wants a straightforward moral tale with good characters. People who read these might be willing to make the jump to Barbara Kingsolver's Poisonwood Bible. And Kingsolver fans would read Kissing the Virgin's Mouth, and possibly Zadie Smith's White Teeth. And White Teeth fans definitely intersect with the audience for Dave Eggers.
I've been reading Nexus: Small Worlds and the Groundbreaking Science of Networks. It talks about small worlds theory, where much of our universe can be described in terms of these connections between people, species, ecosystems, etc. (think Six Degrees of Separation). While reading this, I'm thinking about technology and the web (there are some excellent chapters explaining the internet's network structure).
I'd like to see a website that connects authors with other authors by who writes in a similar style, who's work relys on previous writers, who reads whom, and other connections between authors. Everyone. All the classics that are still read today, all the comtemporary authors. Everyone. And all of us readers and booksellers and academics, we can fill in the links between the authors. A grad student can briefly explain why Sherman Alexie is related to Joyce Carol Oates. Tom Robbins can get on and list the authors he feels most influenced by. Helen Fielding can tell who she reads the most and the site will put links from her to those writers. It's a Six Degrees game waiting to happen.
This is the kind of project I'd like to see an English Department build. Anyone know of something like this?
