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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?

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Glad to have spurred this lovely reflection!

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