When I started college almost a decade ago, I planned to major in English or History to become a teacher. That didn't last long, but I do remember my handful of comparative literature classes I took to meet my humanities requirements. The author I remember the most is Kafka.
I loved learning about Kafka and his life, and how it affected the subject matter and tone of his work. And for a while now, I've been wondering who in our generation is going to be a "classic" author two, three hundred years from now. Specifically, will they have kept a blog, a Facebook, or any other kind of social media presence? And if so, how will that affect the way readers interpret their work?
Right now, classic literature students have history, maybe a handful of letters, and speculation about what an author's life was like. A century from now, they might have an author's blog to peruse and speculate about. The sheer volume of entries a dedicated blogger can produce in a lifetime would be staggering, and that's assuming all their social media entries are just about writing.
Most of these entries will be dated, right down to the time of day/night this future classic author posted the entry. For some people, social media has no boundaries. Political and religious views are shared. Funny selfies, drunk selfies, fashionista selfies . . . just selfies in general. (To clarify, I have nothing against social media, though I choose to keep my involvement superficial).
Imagine that a blogger somewhere is writing the next epic tragic romance. Now imagine that at the same time, they're blogging about their feelings are they struggle through a painful divorce from the person they assumed was the love of their life. Assuming that both survive the inevitable Google apocalypse, there will be bright-eyed students interpreting that epic tragic romance as they read the author's heartbroken blog entries.
I'm not sure what this will mean for literature, but I'm a little sad that I won't be around to see it play out.
ETA: Christ help me I think he finally stopped. If he opens his stupid fucking mouth again, I'm going to lose it.
Hi, Ydan
ReplyDeleteI love this blog entry! It is right on with our concern of what social media will do for literature and for authors.
But with the load of information authors may leave behind, it could take a lot of time and effort to wade through it all. I suppose biographers do this all the time. I read that President Truman left behind over 7 million papers when he passed away. Of course, he would not get the attention in a class room than say Robert Frost does.
-William
It might take a lot of effort, but I imagine some literature students would love to have reams and reams of information about their favorite writers. Dissertations have been written about a single essay.
DeleteIt'll mean that in school written texts will be even more vastly over-analysed than they currently are :D Interesting point, though. The relationship between author and reader is certainly changing due to social media.
ReplyDeleteIn high school and for the couple of comparative lit classes I took in college, I really enjoyed reading about the authors' life. Most of the time, I preferred to read stories "dry" so I could develop a sense on how I felt, then learn more about the author to see if it changed my view of the story.
DeleteFor example, the emphasis on the importance of a mother's love in HP took on a different meaning from me when I learned that Rowling's mother died while she was writing the first HP book.
You know?
ReplyDeleteYou're right. It never occurred to me before that years from now, students will be reading about the author's work and their blog entries.
I used to be so active on different social networks and I've developed deeper friendships with most of them that I can still call my friends up to now. So it's great, but it doesn't change the fact, that social media is also very superficial.
Now, I'm not that active, and I only use twitter more to share my posts and other people's posts.
It's truly different and such a gift when you know the author's life and how it affected their writing. You can use that for inspiration and avoiding mistakes they've committed.
Though, I suggest not getting too attached from personal experience. hehe..
I wasn't thinking much that individual writers would get too into their social media (no more than the general population anyway, but that lit students would just scrutinize their social media posts regardless, then go on to analyze stories based on what writers might have shared on social media at the time the stories were being written.
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