{"id":2090,"date":"2022-08-09T15:25:12","date_gmt":"2022-08-09T13:25:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/?p=2090"},"modified":"2022-09-08T08:17:30","modified_gmt":"2022-09-08T08:17:30","slug":"chronicling-the-death-of-literature-ii-the-writer-as-influencer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/2022\/08\/09\/chronicling-the-death-of-literature-ii-the-writer-as-influencer\/","title":{"rendered":"CHRONICLING THE DEATH OF LITERATURE (II): THE WRITER AS INFLUENCER <\/strong>"},"content":{"rendered":"

The other article that has interested me and, in this case, appalled me is Laura Miller\u2019s \u201cThe Unlikely Author Who\u2019s Absolutely Dominating the Bestseller List\u201d<\/a> for Slate<\/em> on the current US top best-selling novelist: Colleen Hoover. Miller\u2019s analysis led me to Stephanie McNeal\u2019s similar piece, \u201cHow Colleen Hoover Became The Queen Of BookTok\u201d<\/a> for BuzzFeed<\/em>, published a few weeks before. <\/p>\n

\u201cCoHo is fans\u2019 nickname for the beloved romance and thriller author Colleen Hoover\u201d, McNeal writes. \u201cHoover, a 42-year-old mom of three from Texas, has published more than 20 novels and novellas over the past decade, capturing the hearts of book bloggers, #bookstagram, and more recently, #BookTok\u201d. Indeed, both journalists describe Hoover as a social-media savvy person who has mistress-minded her rise to the best-selling lists thanks to an astonishingly clever use of social media. Miller and McNeal stress that Hoover\u2019s current popularity is not a product of TikTok book reviewing (or booktoking) but the result of a decade of the author\u2019s relentless cultivation of each successive social network, as they rose and fell.<\/p>\n

I had never heard of Hoover but this is unsurprising as I have given up trying to make sense of the constant flood of novelties and, besides, I don\u2019t use social media, except Twitter (mainly to announce this blog\u2019s new posts). If Hoover is more astute than any other writer at publicising her work, then kudos to her. Her success, it must be noted, is very different from the word of mouth recommendations that propelled J.K. Rowling to the top of the best-selling lists worldwide, a phenomenon on which she had no direct influence and that came very much as a surprise for her publishers, Bloomsbury. Hoover started self-publishing until Atria offered her a home, generating in the process immense revenues for both. Again, if author and publisher understand their business so thoroughly, then they deserve their windfall. What worries me is the impact writers like Hoover are having on the reading habits of their admirers. And no, I have not read any of her novels nor do I intend to do so.<\/p>\n

My argument might make no sense, but I\u2019ll mention another woman writer of supposedly very high impact to establish a comparison. This is not based on sales, or on TikTok reviews, but on GoodReads comments. Nigerian-American author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is very well-known as the author of the novel Americanah<\/em> (2013) and the essay We Should All Be Feminists<\/em> (2014). In GoodReads, Adichie\u2019s novel has today 4\u201931 stars out of 5, with 329,795 ratings and 27,308 reviews; her essay is valued with 4\u201942 stars (246,407 ratings and 24,421 reviews). I will stress that books above 4 stars are, in my experience of using GoodReads, usually excellent and that anything below 3\u201970 is dubious. Now, let\u2019s turn to Hoover. Her novels are, except for a couple of duds, rated above 4, with the readers\u2019 favourite, It Ends with Us<\/em> (2016) rated 4\u201940, on the basis of, attention!, 1,406,095 ratings and 139,103 reviews. Sally Rooney\u2019s allegedly ground-breaking Normal People<\/em> (2019) only rates 3\u201983 with 899,160 ratings and 84,780 reviews.<\/p>\n

A rule of GoodReads and any other website rating texts of any type is that voters tend to dissent, so that works with close to five stars still find detractors. I always read first the worst reviews, since the five-star reviews are bound to be predictable (\u2018this is a masterpiece\u2019 and so on). Almost 16,000 readers rated It Ends with Us<\/em> with one star. I forgot to say that this is a romance novel and among the best-liked reviewers, Alissa Patrick complains about its clich\u00e9d plotline (\u201ca story about a guy who apparently has the magical penis to make you throw your convictions out the window just because he\u2019s hot and wearing hospital scrubs\u201d), whereas Olivia\u2019s criticism goes further, accusing Hoover of reducing \u201cdomestic abuse to a lovers quarrel and present[ing] a tactless caricature of the realities of abuse. I can acknowledge this may not have been the intention, but the elaboration in the author\u2019s note does not absolve this book of its reckless and irresponsible marketing\u201d. In contrast, the 5-star best-liked review by Aesta begins with \u201cIt Ends With Us<\/em> is one of the most powerful books of 2016 and one of the most raw, honest, inspiring, and profoundly beautiful stories I\u2019ve ever read. (\u2026) This is the kind of book that I want to give to every woman and just be like\u2026 READ THIS BOOK. NOW\u201d (https:\/\/www.goodreads.com\/book\/show\/27362503-it-ends-with-us). Sorry but no, thanks.<\/p>\n

I have been thinking about why Colleen Hoover\u2019s success annoys me so profoundly, not being myself an (envious) novelist and being quite open to reading anyone and everything. It is, besides, almost impossible to express an opinion without attacking the genres which she practices (romance, YA, thriller, women\u2019s fiction and paranormal romance) or her readers (mostly young women). I run the risk of being seen as an aged elitist feminist hag, which perhaps is what I am, but is not what I would like to be seen as. I believe that what depresses me is that, given how terminal the whole world of reading is\u2014with more people than ever reading, but with those who read not choosing the better options available\u2060\u2014so much readerly energy is being wasted. It is this nagging feeling that all those young readers would be much better off reading better books since, presumably, they do like reading. <\/p>\n

I am not as na\u00efve as to believe that the solution lies in reading the classics (I complained against Moby-Dick<\/em>\u2019s dullness just two posts ago) or that reading fiction for entertainment should be banned (I myself read science fiction for that purpose). What is depressing me is this tide coming mainly from America, but also widespread in Europe, by which you get in the more popular novels, or rather in the popular genres, a flat view of reality. Popular fiction has always been criticized for that, but somehow there came a point when romance, detective fiction, science fiction, fantasy, and so on could compete with the non-genre fiction in the depth with which they portrayed society (also because non-genre or mainstream fiction got shallower). <\/p>\n

I must conclude that what is concerning me is how in the absence of a better kind of writing, a less proficient type of writing is attracting all the interest. Both in genre and in non-genre narrative, the books promise in the blurbs and the enthusiastic reviews much more than they can give, most likely because the authors of the present are not themselves as well-read as the authors of the past. Since the readers are not well-read, either, the standards are being eroded and what passes now for a masterpiece (the words used by many GoodRead reviewers for Hoover\u2019s books) is really just a reasonably well-crafted, clich\u00e9-ridden novel of the kind that used to be called middle-brow and even low-brow.<\/p>\n

Perhaps I envy Hoover\u2019s readers because they describe very intense reading experiences in which they have been swept off their feet. I only get this feeling very rarely, finding myself putting up with books rather than enjoying them. Possibly, the more one reads, the more one sees any book\u2019s seams and the less one is willing to enjoy the ride. I still think, though, that the reading world is upside down (arguably, it has always been so) and that there are out there many other novelists worth reading and promoting. Or perhaps not, and ours is the era of the Colleen Hoovers and of the writer as influencer. It used to be the case that authors became public figures on the strength of their publications, and I believe that this is now the opposite: first you build yourself as a wannabe influencer and then you build a fanbase before you\u2019re really ready to produce any solid work. <\/p>\n

Commenting these days with one of my nieces (she\u2019s 13) on her books for the summer, she introduced me to Joana Marc\u00fas<\/a>, a twenty-two-year old author from Majorca, who started her career by giving away her first novel online and cultivating a fanbase on Wattpad (https:\/\/www.wattpad.com\/). Wattpad, the web where you share your fiction and receive feedback from readers, is a wonderful idea, but although it connects new writers to readers and publishers, it is hardly a platform to encourage the renewal of narrative clich\u00e9s, as it thrives like all social media on likes and popularity. Wattpad Studios promises now to turn stories into smashing film and TV adaptations. So, social media are indeed killing literature by having not only taken away from young people the leisure time that many used to invest on more creative pursuits, but also by turning writers into influencers that care more about monetizing talent than about developing it.<\/p>\n

I do not know how this might work, but I am (almost) sure that if we compare a novel by, say, romance queen Danielle Steele to one by Colleen Hoover, we might notice a significant difference in quality, in favour of the former. I am beginning to sound like George Eliot when she launched her ferociously misogynistic attack \u201cSilly Novels by Lady Novelists\u201d<\/a> (1856) (published anonymously in the Westminster Review), which is not my intention. Nonetheless, I will borrow from her essay the idea that the \u201cgreatest deficiencies\u201d not only of women writers but of all authors writing today \u201care due hardly more to the want of intellectual power than to the want of those moral qualities that contribute to literary excellence\u2014patient diligence, a sense of the responsibility involved in publication, and an appreciation of the sacredness of the writer\u2019s art\u201d. Instead, we find \u201cthat kind of facility which springs from the absence of any high standard\u201d and plenty of \u201cfutile authorship\u201d fuelled by vanity\u2014that deeply human quality which those who developed the social media exploit so well.<\/p>\n

As for the sacredness of the writer\u2019s art, and the art itself, I\u2019m afraid nobody knows any longer what it really consists of.<\/p>\n

I publish a post once a week (follow @SaraMartinUAB). Comments are very welcome! Download the yearly volumes from https:\/\/ddd.uab.cat\/record\/116328, and visit my website https:\/\/gent.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/. The Spanish version of the blog is available from https:\/\/blogs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/es\/ <\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The other article that has interested me and, in this case, appalled me is Laura Miller\u2019s \u201cThe Unlikely Author Who\u2019s Absolutely Dominating the Bestseller List\u201d for Slate on the current US top best-selling novelist: Colleen Hoover. Miller\u2019s analysis led me to Stephanie McNeal\u2019s similar piece, \u201cHow Colleen Hoover Became The Queen Of BookTok\u201d for BuzzFeed, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":98,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[134,217,252,276,440,484,515],"class_list":["post-2090","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","tag-colleen-hoover","tag-george-eliot","tag-influencer","tag-joana-marcus","tag-social-media","tag-tiktok","tag-wattpad"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2090","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/98"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2090"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2090\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2193,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2090\/revisions\/2193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2090"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2090"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2090"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}