The Social Lives of Books: Literary Networks in Contemporary American Fiction
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THE SOCIAL LIVES OF BOOKS: LITERARY NETWORKS IN CONTEMPORARY AMERICAN FICTION A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH AND THE COMMITTEE ON GRADUATE STUDIES OF STANFORD UNIVERSITY IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Ed Finn May 2011 © 2011 by Edward Frederick Finn. All Rights Reserved. Re-distributed by Stanford University under license with the author. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution- Noncommercial 3.0 United States License. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/us/ This dissertation is online at: http://purl.stanford.edu/mk148kb9574 ii I certify that I have read this dissertation and that, in my opinion, it is fully adequate in scope and quality as a dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Ursula Heise, Primary Adviser I certify that I have read this dissertation and that, in my opinion, it is fully adequate in scope and quality as a dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Franco Moretti I certify that I have read this dissertation and that, in my opinion, it is fully adequate in scope and quality as a dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Frederick Turner Approved for the Stanford University Committee on Graduate Studies. Patricia J. Gumport, Vice Provost Graduate Education This signature page was generated electronically upon submission of this dissertation in electronic format. An original signed hard copy of the signature page is on file in University Archives. iii iv Abstract Long-established models of literary production are changing dramatically as the digital era continues to blur, and at times erase, the divisions between authors, critics and readers. Millions of cultural consumers are now empowered to participate in previously closed literary conversations and to express forms of mass distinction through their purchases and reviews of books. My project argues that these traces of popular reading choices constitute a fresh perspective on elusive audience reactions to literature, one that reveals distinct networks of conversation that are transforming the relationships between writers and their readers, between the art of fiction and the market for books. Employing network analysis methodologies and ‘distant reading’ of book reviews, recommendations and other digital traces of cultural distinction, I develop a new model for literary culture in America today. Through readings of the fiction and reception of Thomas Pynchon, Toni Morrison, David Foster Wallace and Junot Díaz, this model outlines the fundamental requirements for contemporary literary fame. My introduction lays the groundwork for the methodological tools I have developed to pursue this project and situates them in the critical traditions of literary reception, cultural capital and contemporary media theory. With these tools in hand, I describe the digital ecologies that have emerged around literature online and their value for studying the choices and connections that are made by professional critics and scholars as well as a much larger sample of contemporary readers. The project draws on two primary datasets: first, a corpus of professional and consumer book v reviews collected from nationally prestigious reviewing newspapers and magazines along with consumer reviews from Amazon (the latter dating back to 1996); second, networks of recommendations based on consumer purchases and book ownership drawn from the websites Amazon and LibraryThing. Using Named Entity Recognition and collocation-based networks allows me to compare the use of proper nouns like titles and author names in professional and commercial literary networks. These noun networks reveal not only the distinctions between everyday readers and more traditional arbiters of literary taste but the ways in which popular authors are increasingly carrying on multiple independent and complex literary conversations. My first case study, in Chapter 1, explores the nature of contemporary literary fame through Thomas Pynchon, whose carefully guarded anonymity does not prevent him from living in Manhattan and dining with literary cognoscenti. This very postmodern prominence makes him an ideal candidate, an author who has gone to great lengths to communicate with readers almost entirely through fiction. Pynchon’s literary networks link together a dizzying array of cultural zones, from continental philosophy to jazz, from Joseph Schumpeter to The Simpsons . I argue that Pynchon’s ironic distance from capitalism is reflected in the networks his readers construct around his difficult, weighty tomes. This anti-consumer consumption draws together the aspirations and anxieties of both the 1960s counterculture and the techno-scientific corporate behemoth, leading readers into their own acts of critical production, ranging from Pynchon wikis and mailing lists to an encrypted broadcast of The Crying of Lot 49 in semaphore from an office building in San Jose. vi In stark contrast, Toni Morrison has been both highly visible as a writer and hugely successful at allowing the mass marketing of her work without compromising artistic integrity. Clearly America’s most critically and commercially successful author, Morrison has tirelessly sought out her readers and worked to form literary communities around her writing, most prominently through her long collaboration with Oprah’s Book Club. Considering Morrison’s career in light of the trope of the “talking book,” in Chapter 2 I argue that her unswervingly political fiction nevertheless succeeds in appealing to a huge range of audiences. Her unique gift for welcoming academics and Oprah viewers alike into stylistically challenging, emotionally charged books also encourages a personal, readerly investment that turns consumers into stake-holders in national literary conversations about race, gender, social injustice and the quotidian struggles of love. While her professional critics tend to interpret these lessons in the context of African American literary history, everyday readers understand Morrison’s political arguments through her characters and a much broader referential lens, from William Shakespeare to Gabriel García Márquez. The evolution of literary conversation is generational as well as digital, and if Morrison successfully adapted to the mass medium of television, younger authors are engaging in more complex interactions with the wealth of new media spawned by the Internet. Considering two “Generation X” writers who have captured national attention through particularities of authorial identity, I argue that authors as well as publishers are beginning to adapt to a shifting balance of literary power. For Junot Díaz and David Foster Wallace, novelistic style has become a vehicle for intricate metanarrative interjections, leading to narrators who live out the larger challenges of vii authorial identity in a heavily mediated world. As the barriers separating readers from ordained critics crumble online, these younger writers are increasingly interacting with audiences that are both collaborative and vocal. For Díaz and Wallace, this has meant a sustained engagement with a new style of intellectual discourse, the language of nerds. Tracing these two writers’ career arcs, Chapter 3 lays out the final elements of my model of contemporary literary culture: a reading society that demands new forms of authorial reflexivity to mirror the collaborative, iterative nature of digital literary conversations. The project concludes with a brief consideration of the exciting prospects and challenges for contemporary fiction in a world that reads more than ever but is growing disaffected with the material realities of literary production. Digital literature remains in many ways trapped in formal adolescence as the media foundations for electronic writing continue their rapid evolution in both hardware and software. At the same time, new forms of reading and modes of literary culture paradoxically reinforce traditional genres and canonical boundaries even as the potential functions of narrative are rapidly expanding in digital spaces. My coda considers the literary potential of emerging digital platforms for collaborative reading and reviewing, as well as the ways in which authorship is becoming a role increasingly distributed and multiplied by social media, particularly the subtle fictive gradients emerging in our own stories as mediated through platforms like Facebook. I close by arguing that contemporary literature is, slowly, rising to meet the intellectual and ontological challenges of a world that is increasingly defined by digital texts and governed by digital readers. viii Acknowledgements This project began when I started to think about the networks of people and ideas that make writing possible. As I traced out the links and nodes of contemporary literary culture I grew increasingly conscious of the debts I owe to my own intellectual networks and all the ways they have made my writing possible. I am especially grateful to my committee for their unwavering support of an unorthodox critical experiment. Ursula Heise has been a stalwart advisor for a student who packed off to Phoenix and completed most of this work 700 miles away. She has proven an invaluable source of practical advice and insightful criticism, always ready to time out of her herculean schedule and chat with me in the digitally mediated presence of sundry dogs, turtles, parrots and numberless desert fauna. Franco Moretti lent his unflagging intellectual energy and infectious