After several years in the Core, it may seem like the line dividing authors and readers is impermeable.
The author’s task is to write—an act performed in solitude, often after or during an existential or epistemological crisis, and frequently achieved under the influence of caffeine, religion, sex, or other addictions. The reader’s task, on the other hand, is to interpret and attempt to understand the work. This often involves puzzling over the meaning of a comma, the symbolism of a fingernail, or slapping another John Donne enthusiast at a Jacobean literature convention who dared suggest that Donne’s 1612 manuscript was superior to the 1613 version.
Authors and readers, it seems, are hopelessly segregated into two different groups that never overlap—after all, you can’t go back to the fourth century B.C.E. and ask Plato to clarify his Theory of Forms.
However, the modern era has seen a blurring of this division. Writers are producing works that actively demand and depend on reader participation (the term for this is ergodic literature), requiring more effort than passively moving one’s eyes along lines of text and occasionally turning pages. Examples include Mark Z. Danielewski’s claustrophobic House of Leaves, in which some pages contain only a few words of text arranged in strange ways to mirror events in the plot, Ayn Rand’s play Night of January 16th, in which members of the audience form a jury that chooses one of two endings, and Marc Saporta’s Composition No. 1, Roman, a novel with shuffleable pages.
Writers are also collaborating and interacting with readers in new ways. Tao Lin, author of six works and the forthcoming Shoplifting From American Apparel, has successfully sold six shares of 10 percent of the U.S. royalties of his as-yet-unwritten second novel to readers for $2,000 per share. Readers can now literally invest in contemporary authors, and even potentially influence their work: on Tao Lin’s blog, “*,” a reader named Wells commented, “If I buy a share, will you stop using quotation marks to a sarcastic effect?” to which Tao Lin responded two minutes later with, “yes, email me.”
Readers do not just influence how authors write—readers are now becoming authors themselves. In One Hundred Days of Monsters, Stefan G. Bucher filmed himself illustrating an ink-blot monster every day for 100 days and posted the videos online. Fans submitted stories and histories about each monster, the best of which evolved into a full-length book.
Similarly, Not Quite What I Was Planning: Six-Word Memoirs by Writers Famous and Obscure from Smith Magazine presents the best of over 15,000 submissions. Inspired by Hemingway’s famous six word memoir, “For sale: baby shoes, never worn,” the 800 or so memoirs included in the collection display a brilliant array of emotion, from the tragic (“After Harvard, had baby with crackhead”) to the inspirational (“Being a monk stunk. Better gay”). Some memoirs suggest a story (“I still make coffee for two”) while others are more philosophic in nature (“I’m enjoying even this downward dance”). While it was interesting to read the contributions of more well-known figures and gratifying to see the Columbia reference (“From Colombia to Columbia: 27 years”), my favorite memoirs were the ones that resounded with my own experience—for example, the reassuring “Painful nerd kid, happy nerd adult,” “Adopted? Are you fucking shitting me?”, and the very familiar “Clawed my way out of Tennessee.” And in a collection of 800 memoirs, there are bound to be a few among the shocking, strange, silly, and sad that resonate with any reader (what Columbia student wasn’t a “Philosophical teen, surrounded but sometimes lonely”?).
However, these works maintain a strong editorial presence. In the case of Not Quite What I Was Planning, editors at Smith Magazine selected and arranged the best submissions. When the line between the author and reader blurs too much, as in self-publication, a risk develops that an author could publish despite a lack of necessary literary skills and editorial input. A good example of this is a book I found on my most recent trip home: my book. Submitted by my well-intentioned parents and published in 1996 by a vanity press called Chimeric, My Family—written by me—includes such literary gems as “I am 5. I am a good girl” and “Dave is a dog. He slobbers all over me.” Fueled by technological advances such as the photocopier, blogs, and internet-only presses, former readers and their helpless children are becoming authors at astounding rates.
On one hand, this is great news—you no longer have to wait, twiddling your thumbs, anticipating a publisher’s acceptance or rejection of your Great American Novel/Avant-Garde Poetry Collection/Book of 365 Positions. On the other hand, neither does your illiterate next door neighbor who thinks his Gmail chats are of the highest literary caliber. So, what does this mean for the future of authors and readers—will it be liberating or terrifying? At this point, you must choose your own adventure.
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