Comments | academics_anon: literary reception disappearing

speedracer05 in academics_anon

literary reception disappearing

May 03, 2007 14:05

Does this outrage/frighten anyone in the literary field interested in studying/currently studying literary reception and book history. As a 2008 grad school hopeful interested primarily in these fields, it makes me fear for my future ability to do reception work on contemporary lit. *Sigh* at those who feel book reviews are becoming irrelevant.

general-musings-on-academia

Comments 8

poldy May 3 2007, 19:27:43 UTC

I do not see how it would hinder your ability to work on the reception of contemporary literature, since there are more online reviews (of dubious literary quality but still interesting as evidence of reception). It seems more worrisome for newspapers than for academics.

watermisbehaves May 3 2007, 20:21:17 UTC

Seconding poldy and heyiya. Newspapers have for sometime been dying off...even major newspapers like the Chicago Tribune cut actual inches off of their paper in 2000/2001. I'm sure when the dust settles you will find some of your favorite book reviewers working with online book sites. This reminds me of a lot of online journals .... sure you'll always have crappy non-peer reviewed free for all journals online, but you also have well established nearly decade old peer-reviewed well run ones i.e. thirdspace. So, I wouldn't worry...this seems to just be in keeping w/ the times (or the NY times lol)...nothing is irrelevant just because of its medium.

heyiya May 3 2007, 19:43:48 UTC

I don't see the problem: why can't you just get with the program and study reception as it appears online? There are lots of ways to archive internet ephemera and lots of sites that already do so. Do you feel that online culture is insufficiently intellectual for the analytic uses of the literary elite?

speedracer05 May 3 2007, 20:39:08 UTC

No, I certainly don't "feel that online culture is insufficiently intellectual." Perhaps I'm just a bit addicted to Indiana Jones-like adventurer feeling I derive from endless hours of scouring reviews archived on microfilm and dusty library shelves. I am not seriously frightened for my research, just a little disheartened at the whole situation of book reviews.

piefessor May 3 2007, 22:45:38 UTC

Unrelated to anything, but I've neer run across anyone using the same icon as me and it is very surreal!

piefessor May 3 2007, 22:46:02 UTC

That was supposed to be "never," I'm not being all pretentious.

blairette May 3 2007, 23:14:24 UTC

Newspaper articles are just one way to measure reception of literature by different strata of society. I think the biggest problem one would have with blogs is that the blogger's socioeconomic status is hard to pin down because the internet is still fairly anonymous; but then again, much more can be said about individual commentators online than can be said of the readers of any given newspaper supplement.
But then, I am considering opinion on literature to be interesting for sociological purposes. You might not be approaching it from that angle at all.

pansette May 5 2007, 05:37:06 UTC

It's only problematic if you're working under the premise that elite sources are the correct ones. The democratization of reviews via the internet actually would mean you have a greater number of reviews, and not just ones that get the thumbs up from the editors of the Times Literary Supplement. These reviews are also likely to be given to more popular and genre fiction, rather than the preference print reviews tend to give at times to those books with "literary" pretensions. If anything, the trend ought to be a boon to your research, not a detriment.