Hi Amy! This is such a beautiful complement to Michael's post. It reframed his ideas for me and gave shape to some things I thought and felt as I read his post but didn't have words for at the time. Thanks for that!
I love your theory about what makes some writing art and other writing not-art, or why some writing enables "transportation" (what a cognitive psychologist might call the state of "being-there") and others doesn't. I wrote a piece on the science behind "narrative empathy" a while ago and one of the most interesting things I came across in my research was a study by literary scholar Frank Hakemulder. He found readers experienced transportation when they read a first-person fictional account of an Algerian woman living in a fundamentalist culture but not when they read a similar nonfiction critique. Why?
Like you, I wonder if it has something to do with both the intentions of the writer and the expectations of the reader and how those two factors change based on context. I don't approach writing a Tweet the same way I do an essay, for instance. Nor do I read them the same way. (At least in this hypothetical example since I'm not actually on the Twitter!)
I also wonder if it has something to do with our expectations for writing versus speaking. When I write an essay, I write how I think. When I write a Tweet, I write how I speak. It's been interesting (curious? frustrating?) to witness the shift in journalistic writing over the past decade or so as blogs and then social media became ubiquitous. It's so talky now. Gimmicky. Glib. Where are the long sentences filled with long ideas; the clauses and pauses; the craft, the care, the contemplative mind? Have the expectations of readers changed, too?
What does this mean for art that is born in the digital space? I don't read Auden or Larkin to be in conversation with them. I read them to access their minds and their emotions, so I can think and feel, too. I want to be transported so I can be transformed. Will artists intend to create that kind of intimate, one-to-one connection in a space that is designed for many-to-many dialogue? And will digital readers still expect it?
Thank you, Liz! :) I love this: “when I write an essay, I write how I think. When I write a Tweet, I write how I speak” — One thing I’d add is that when I was using social media, and especially over the year when I was trying to leave (and so spending weeks off and then getting sucked back on), I became more aware of how social media affected the way I think... I mean, this is true of everything from in-person life experiences to spending too much time working on spreadsheets — what enters the mind reshapes the goings-on there. But when you are immersed in that high-speed, glib-and-gimmicky space you start to think that way, and if you imagine even some of your readers as half-listening, maybe-trolls looking to publicly humiliate someone, the inclination towards a defensive “I didn’t care away” tone is almost necessary to social self-preservation. But that defensive crouch precludes any real human connection. And what I discovered was that leaving those spaces and that way of thinking was necessary to my self-preservation in a different way — the preservation of a self that isn’t part of, or scared of, a mob.
Because I teach college I get to meet, year after year, newer younger people. The first-year students I’m teaching right now could easily be the kids of the first students I taught when I was still in graduate school. And they’ve been soaking in this digital tumult for most of their lives. My sense is that yes, compared to earlier years of students, it is a little harder for them to be vulnerable, or to try for more intimate written connections, or even to be still enough to hear those invitations to intimate written connections in the things they read. But it is definitely not impossible, and I think in most of them there’s actually a deep craving for those moments. Many of my students tell me that they went to years of summer camps where technology was banned, and so they have windows of memory proving to them how much better their conversations and friendships can be when they shut off the quick-hit feed.
One last thing I want to add about the difference between reading a nonfiction account and a fictional story — when we read nonfiction, and we “register” that it’s nonfiction (even if we’re not told, but we feel it is), we read with certain social meters switched on in our minds — am I being lied to? Is this something I need to tell others? Is this the truth-of-my-in-group? Will others in my group care? Will I be outcast if I care and they don’t? But when we’re reading fiction, or we register what we’re reading “as fiction” (so it’s written in a way that feels like stories), all those social mental meters get switched off, because now we’re in the land of the three little bears and three little pigs and three little billy goats gruff, Cinderella and Spiderman and Harry Potter and Archie Bunker and the rest, the world where you don’t have to think about those things, and you can be immersed in this alternate realm of seemingly low-stakes fantasy, where, if in the end, you happen to end up learning something or caring about something new, it feels authentic and from within you, not something you had to judge and decide and defend, but just... real. Because it’s fake! It’s one of the many wild paradoxes of the world of writing. Truly writers should adopt as their shield the image of a “pair of ducks” =)
It gives me hope to know your students still care--still crave, even--the kind of deep connection that poetry and fiction can give us. That realness that comes from the fakeness :). It's funny how social media can be the inverse--it's real communications that breed false perceptions. Staying away from social media has been an act of self-preservation for me, too, but I've been living in the wilds beyond Facebook so long sometimes I get lonely and wonder what's happening there. Thanks for reminding me I'm not missing anything ;)! And thanks for creating this space for conversation and contemplation. It's a nice alternative to the shallows.
Hi Amy! This is such a beautiful complement to Michael's post. It reframed his ideas for me and gave shape to some things I thought and felt as I read his post but didn't have words for at the time. Thanks for that!
I love your theory about what makes some writing art and other writing not-art, or why some writing enables "transportation" (what a cognitive psychologist might call the state of "being-there") and others doesn't. I wrote a piece on the science behind "narrative empathy" a while ago and one of the most interesting things I came across in my research was a study by literary scholar Frank Hakemulder. He found readers experienced transportation when they read a first-person fictional account of an Algerian woman living in a fundamentalist culture but not when they read a similar nonfiction critique. Why?
Like you, I wonder if it has something to do with both the intentions of the writer and the expectations of the reader and how those two factors change based on context. I don't approach writing a Tweet the same way I do an essay, for instance. Nor do I read them the same way. (At least in this hypothetical example since I'm not actually on the Twitter!)
I also wonder if it has something to do with our expectations for writing versus speaking. When I write an essay, I write how I think. When I write a Tweet, I write how I speak. It's been interesting (curious? frustrating?) to witness the shift in journalistic writing over the past decade or so as blogs and then social media became ubiquitous. It's so talky now. Gimmicky. Glib. Where are the long sentences filled with long ideas; the clauses and pauses; the craft, the care, the contemplative mind? Have the expectations of readers changed, too?
What does this mean for art that is born in the digital space? I don't read Auden or Larkin to be in conversation with them. I read them to access their minds and their emotions, so I can think and feel, too. I want to be transported so I can be transformed. Will artists intend to create that kind of intimate, one-to-one connection in a space that is designed for many-to-many dialogue? And will digital readers still expect it?
Thank you, Liz! :) I love this: “when I write an essay, I write how I think. When I write a Tweet, I write how I speak” — One thing I’d add is that when I was using social media, and especially over the year when I was trying to leave (and so spending weeks off and then getting sucked back on), I became more aware of how social media affected the way I think... I mean, this is true of everything from in-person life experiences to spending too much time working on spreadsheets — what enters the mind reshapes the goings-on there. But when you are immersed in that high-speed, glib-and-gimmicky space you start to think that way, and if you imagine even some of your readers as half-listening, maybe-trolls looking to publicly humiliate someone, the inclination towards a defensive “I didn’t care away” tone is almost necessary to social self-preservation. But that defensive crouch precludes any real human connection. And what I discovered was that leaving those spaces and that way of thinking was necessary to my self-preservation in a different way — the preservation of a self that isn’t part of, or scared of, a mob.
Because I teach college I get to meet, year after year, newer younger people. The first-year students I’m teaching right now could easily be the kids of the first students I taught when I was still in graduate school. And they’ve been soaking in this digital tumult for most of their lives. My sense is that yes, compared to earlier years of students, it is a little harder for them to be vulnerable, or to try for more intimate written connections, or even to be still enough to hear those invitations to intimate written connections in the things they read. But it is definitely not impossible, and I think in most of them there’s actually a deep craving for those moments. Many of my students tell me that they went to years of summer camps where technology was banned, and so they have windows of memory proving to them how much better their conversations and friendships can be when they shut off the quick-hit feed.
One last thing I want to add about the difference between reading a nonfiction account and a fictional story — when we read nonfiction, and we “register” that it’s nonfiction (even if we’re not told, but we feel it is), we read with certain social meters switched on in our minds — am I being lied to? Is this something I need to tell others? Is this the truth-of-my-in-group? Will others in my group care? Will I be outcast if I care and they don’t? But when we’re reading fiction, or we register what we’re reading “as fiction” (so it’s written in a way that feels like stories), all those social mental meters get switched off, because now we’re in the land of the three little bears and three little pigs and three little billy goats gruff, Cinderella and Spiderman and Harry Potter and Archie Bunker and the rest, the world where you don’t have to think about those things, and you can be immersed in this alternate realm of seemingly low-stakes fantasy, where, if in the end, you happen to end up learning something or caring about something new, it feels authentic and from within you, not something you had to judge and decide and defend, but just... real. Because it’s fake! It’s one of the many wild paradoxes of the world of writing. Truly writers should adopt as their shield the image of a “pair of ducks” =)
It gives me hope to know your students still care--still crave, even--the kind of deep connection that poetry and fiction can give us. That realness that comes from the fakeness :). It's funny how social media can be the inverse--it's real communications that breed false perceptions. Staying away from social media has been an act of self-preservation for me, too, but I've been living in the wilds beyond Facebook so long sometimes I get lonely and wonder what's happening there. Thanks for reminding me I'm not missing anything ;)! And thanks for creating this space for conversation and contemplation. It's a nice alternative to the shallows.
Glad to have spurred this lovely reflection!