Convergence Culture:Some people fear that web-text may threaten the practice of reading, but literary blogs make the web a vibrant and informative place, writes Haydn Shaughnessy
The web is a medium for fast eyes, its most improbable boast that people read what's on those millions of new websites. The truth is, most people only scan. The proliferation of text into billions of pages means that those of us who engage fully with electronic culture become attention-deficit. We're forever on the lookout for novelty.
The Millions, a blog about books, comes as a relief. The sentence: "Each time I read anything she writes, whether it's a novel or an essay, I learn just a little bit more about the potency of precise narrative," hardly seems to belong on a website. Readers don't generally, I guess, scan blogs and then play around with the alliterative power of the author. The potency of precise narrative - good sentence!
It's a fair bet that web-text is depriving many people of the attention and the sensual relationship with language that leads to pleasure in books. So in the multimedia web-world is there room still for literature?
You do not normally find blog posts discussing, for example, the confusion that comes from the use of transitive verbs in newspaper headlines (but languagehat.com does), so as well as risking attention deficiency we're also a little less critically adept. And it's unusual to find an analysis of the Darmok language used in an early Star Trek episode (the Picard version) but it's there on http://tenser.typepad.com, which suggests to me that in addition to the attention problem and the dwindling power of critique, we're in danger of overlooking the collective ingenuity that people bring to language on the web.
Book publishers have adapted slowly to the new web. It's now possible to read biographical sketches of authors, a few pages from a new novel, or sign up to a novelist's fan site. And publishers have begun to make use of blogging material, particularly when its content is sexual (Belle Du Jour and Girl With a One Track Mind). But what they haven't done is utilise the medium to any great effect, a failing that extends to authors.
A laudable example for publishers is National Novel Writing Month, a website that encourages writers to exercise their skills and get to completion by writing a 50,000-word novel in a month, however badly. At least it's fun, it has an audience and it raises awareness of writing skills. The site is run by three authors who admit their lack of writerly edge.
One reason for the complacency of traditional publishers is a feeling that the technology of reading is about to change with the imminent arrival of better hand-held electronic readers and e-paper, a display format that feels and looks like paper but is no less a child of the electronic age than the computer.
In the vacuum left by their obvious confusion, web-text threatens to overwhelm the practice of reading, turning it into a volume sport.
How could publishers do it differently? Surprisingly, the world of literary websites and blogs is quiet on this, no doubt maintaining that to write in a literate and entertaining way, about literature, is enough.
I'm tempted to ask, but what about the capacity to interview each other and to create the kind of book-lovers' videos that broadcasters have generally failed to do? Anybody who wants to access online video material of authors talking about their work has few choices. Booknotes.org is a collection of 800 interviews with the authors of leading non-fiction books but the fiction world is poorly served.
It's a distraction, though, because what most literary bloggers do exceptionally well is capture their love of books through writing about them. And unlike many areas of web writing, there is a financial infrastructure in place for the online book review and literary market. It's called Brainiads, an American initiative to sell advertising on behalf of intellectual and literary bloggers.
The literary blog is making the web a vibrant and informative place for book-lovers with a diverse take on language, literature and the surrounding world.
Did you know, for example, that the very rich are now able to order customised libraries?
They cost about £75,000 (€113,500) including fittings and books. It's that sort of information that so beautifully undermines the culture of volume.
• Haydn Shaughnessy edits the online magazine www.wripe.net.
Link up online
The Millions:one of the leading blogs on literature. www.themillionsblog.com
National Novel Writing Month:a website for people who can write, however badly. www.nanowrimo.org
Language hat:a stopping-off place for linguists. www.languagehat.com
Metaxucafe:a site that highlights posts from literary bloggers. www.metaxucafe.com.
Brainiads:sells ads for literary bloggers. www.brainiads.com
Duotrope:markets for short fiction and poetry. www.duotrope.com
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