Immediacy and Fame
In my left hand desk drawer is a postcard, sent to me by Margaret Atwood. If ever there was a fire in my house, it is entirely possible that this would be one of the things I grab, along with my 200G backup drive and the dog.
When I was a freshman in college, I had to take an introductory English class, and in that class we read (among other things) a Margaret Atwood book, although which one it was escapes me now. A huge Atwood fan, I had already read it several times before, and was looking forward to discussing it in class with my professor, himself a noted scholar in the field of Canadian Authors. But his lecture was not the stuff of my academic dreams. He opened by noting that Atwood’s novels were not written with a feminine voice, and that was what made them better books, that she could write in a strong masculine way rather than the weak feminine way of all other female writers, and that moment, as he kept droning on and on about her ‘masculine’ writing style, was the moment that I first realized that a professor could be wrong, and could be imparting that wrongness as knowledge.
So of course I started arguing him, and my point, and I still believe it, is that the definition of ‘feminine’ is that which females do, and nothing more, and that judgements upon what is ‘feminine’ and what is ‘masculine’ tend to be driven by societal bias assigning postive and negative characteristics based on gender, with positive characteristics tending toward being ‘masculine’ and weaker characteristics being assigned as ‘feminine’. And therefore wasn’t Atwood by default writing with a feminine voice, since she is a female? And why is it so threatening to say that strength can be as much the provence of women as men, and that the notion of strongness and femininity are not mutually exclusive?
And then I was ejected from class.
I was so angry about this lecture and about the way this professor was teaching it, that I wrote Margaret Atwood a letter about it, and about how discovering her books had changed me as a reader and how much I appreciated being able to read them. It was short, written fast, and mailed off, and I didn’t think about it again, until I got a postcard back from her. The front is a picture from Cat’s Eye, and the back is a standard printed card that thanked me for my letter. But underneath that, Margaret Atwood handwrote this: Your professor sounds like a dork. Not very ‘masculine’ (real men don’t whine about women…) Margaret A.
It was the most astonishing thing to me - that she had read my letter, that she had responded to it. I mean…Margaret Atwood! Pre-internet, there was a tremendous gulf between readers and writers. We could write them fan mail, and perhaps they would respond, or not, but for the most part, sending a letter to a writer was an entirely one-sided experience.
As a reader,the removal of barriers between writer and reader is one of my favourite things about the internet, but it also makes me wonder about the nature of writing, given that we all now have a platform on which to do it. I remember the anticipation of waiting for my local bookstore to stock Po Bronson’s The Nudist on the Late Shift, four long years after his last book. Because that is how it used to work - the platform for reading authors was print, and books take time, and printing them takes time, and so as readers of particular authors, we waited to read what they wrote next.
Today, though? I read Po Bronson’s Blog.
And he isn’t the only author writing online. I read Neil Gamain’s online journal, even though I don’t read his books, because it is a wonderful peek behind the curtain at a writer’s life. A friend recently sent me a link to Robert Jordan, a fantasy writer, whose blog is hosted by one of his fan sites. I can remember clicking a link titled only ‘Jennifer’ on a friend’s links list only to discover that her ‘Jennifer’ was Jennifer Weiner, whose books can usually be found on the tables up front at my local Borders. Alice Hoffman doesn’t have a blog, but I still feel like I know her a little better after visiting her official web site.
The immediacy of it is astonishing to me. Read a book, like the book, check out the author’s blog. Leave comments for the author, add them to your blog’s link list, and there they are, just like all of your other internet friends, talking about walking out of the house with their shirt on inside out, their recent chemo, their current projects. And I can’t help but wonder what it must be like for them - writing has historically been a very isolating profession, and again, years to write a book, and wait for feedback. Today writers can post what they are working on, solicit feedback, interact with their fans, attract new readers, and connnect with other writers, using the same tools they write their books with. This immediacy transforms the writer/reader relationship. Today readers can email their favourite authors, post comments on their blogs, provide immediate praise or jeers, feel like a part of that author’s life online.
I wonder though, how it has transformed the business of writing. It is an interesting idea, writers writing for free. Does it sell more books, less books, attract fans, repel fans? I don’t know. I only know that I might have to email Margaret Atwood and see if I can’t convince her to start blogging.