Jonathan Franzen is serious about literature. “Serious writers and readers,
these are my people,” he reportedly said at a Tulane talk. In recent interviews he has expressed
contempt for technological shifts affecting those writers and readers, shifts he
finds deeply unserious, from social
media to the self-publishing boom being facilitated by Amazon.com.
Franzen is one of America’s most accomplished contemporary novelists. In
2010 the New York Times called his number one bestseller Freedom a “masterpiece of American fiction.” Oprah
Winfrey crowned it one of her Book Club picks. He also made the cover of Time magazine in 2010, the first living
novelist in a decade to do so. His
2001 novel The Corrections won the National Book Award for Fiction
and was a Pulitzer finalist.
He didn’t earn those kudos by screwing around on the worldwide web. Franzen
disables his internet connection when he writes, and has
contempt for the time-sucking, narcissistic ephemera of social media. Twitter
he calls “unspeakably irritating,” and Facebook he slams as a “private hall of flattering mirrors.”
As you might guess, Franzen is very Old School about ebooks too, which he finds unsettling: “A screen always feels like we could delete
that, change that, move it around. So for a literature-crazed person like me,
it's just not permanent enough.”
As for the technology that now enables anyone
to self-publish, not just “serious writers,” that too disturbs Franzen’s
literary sensibility. In an article for the Guardian Review, he sharply criticized Amazon.com’s dominance as an online platform for
self-published writers. He came close to likening head honcho Jeff Bezos to the
anti-Christ for the changes his company has wrought for writers and readers
alike: “Amazon wants a world in which books are either self-published or
published by Amazon itself, with readers dependent on Amazon reviews in
choosing books, and with authors responsible for their own promotion.”
What Franzen doesn’t acknowledge is that in the old publishing model,
authors are already responsible for their own promotion unless they’re
bestsellers like him, which is rare. Publishers concentrate their promotional
efforts behind rainmakers like Franzen and largely leave midlevel authors and
below to fend for themselves in the marketplace, and that’s why social media have
become necessary and effective tools for getting the word out about one’s book.
Whether literary elitists like it or not, “quality control and literary reputations”
are becoming determined by the marketplace, not the publishing gatekeepers. Yes,
Amazon browsers have to wade through “all the noise and disappointing books and
phony reviews,” as Franzen puts it. But his “serious” readers, who rely largely
on book review publications anyway rather than Amazon recommendations, will have
no trouble finding works by writers of his caliber, and amateur writers who may
not have Franzen’s talent, but who yearn to express themselves and fulfill
their authorial dreams, are now free to do so. Their books may or may not be
any good, but the work, the achievement, the self-expression, are meaningful to
those writers. And thanks to social media, those amateurs and midlevel writers
can be more proactive about getting their work noticed.
As for the Amazon customer reviews, many of the reviewers are topnotch,
intelligent and insightful, and frankly, I trust them as much as I trust the New York Times Book Review. Throw in the
bonus ability to sample the contents of a book on Amazon for yourself, and it’s
hard to see how their technology is obfuscating things for book lovers.
Franzen has some valid points. He’s not wrong about the trivia and
narcissism of social media, although he doesn’t appreciate their political and
information-sharing value. I share his preference for the comforting presence
of a physical book, but I also appreciate ebooks and audiobooks for their
convenience. There are legitimate concerns about Amazon; I wouldn’t want them
to monopolize publishing the way they drove brick-and-mortar bookstores out of
business and monopolized bookselling, for example.
But when he sees the nexus of Amazon, social media, and self-publishing as
degrading things for “serious” writers and readers, I think his perspective isn’t
shared by all the lesser-known writers out there for whom that nexus gives them
more opportunity for creative expression, purpose, and success.
(This article originally appeared here on Acculturated, 10/4/13)
