10 ways digital books are changing our literary live

The Hermitage Bookshop in Cherry Creek North, decidedly old-school with its oak furniture and elaborate Persian rug, isn't where you'd expect to find a fan of e-books, but listen to owner Bob Topp: "E-books have increased the purchase of print books," he says.

"It's easy for people to read the Sunday paper, look at a book review, and 10 minutes later, they've got that e-book on their Kindle. More people reading is good. I think it's way too early to say that the e-book will kill the hardback."

Topp doesn't use an e-reader, but his wife does. She praises its ability to store hundreds of novels in a slim, mobile device that weighs less than most of the venerable collectible books on the Hermitage shelves.

Certainly, digital publishing is changing the way people consume books — how and where they acquire books, and how and where they read. Here are 10 examples, old school versus new.

PRINT BOOKS: We joined book clubs.

DIGITAL BOOKS: We discuss them in booklogs. Readers extract favorite (or hated) passages from books to comment on in dedicated blogs, aided by Google, which is indexing and ranking individual book pages and passages, based on online chatter. Read a perplexing or inspiring passage and then instantly browse comments from other readers — effectively, a global book club. This option takes reading a book from being an individual activity to a group sport.

Some examples: bookblog.net, book-blog .com, and Kirkus Review's kirkusreviews .com/meet-the-bloggers, an aggregation of book blogs.

PRINT BOOKS: We find them in libraries, bookstores and bookmobiles.

DIGITAL BOOKS: For people who own personal computers, e-readers, smartphones, iPads and other tablets, there's 2 4/7 access to libraries and bookstores for purchasing, borrowing and downloading material.

However, people who don't own those devices are left behind. Underfunded schools, for example, barely have funds for printed books, much less e-books, e-readers or laptops, educators say.

"I hate to see our increasingly divided culture leave the poor further behind by making texts available mostly in unaffordable and impractical formats," says Denver School of the Arts literature teacher Gregg Painter.

PRINT BOOKS: Scribble notes in the margins.

DIGITAL BOOKS: We use Kindle's Public Notes virtual annotation application.

Want to see how this works? Go to kindle.amazon.com, click on "Most Popular," then "Books with the most public notes," then on a title to bring up a list of note-writers, and clicking the "+" sign next to each name to see an individual's notes.

Notes aren't necessarily illuminating — "Note: look up ostergarden in wikipedia," writes Joel Gianoli in "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo." (It's a farm in Sweden.)

But they could be. Imagine looking up the notes that previous students leave in e-textbooks. Or seeing Jon Stewart's comments in the margins of Sarah Palin's latest tome.

PRINT BOOKS: Write to a favorite author, hope for a response by mail.

DIGITAL BOOKS: Visit a favorite author's Facebook page to send a message and a friend request; follow that author's Twitter feed. Fort Collins author Lauren Myracle, whose latest book, "Shine," has its own Facebook page, maintains at least three Facebook pages that are followed avidly by fans who exchange views with her.

"Last night I read 'The Corsage' and you were absolutely right! Very scary stuff! It took me two hours to try and sleep last night," wrote fan Emma Dougherty.

Loveland historical mystery writer Charlotte Hinger calculates that she spends nearly as much time promoting her books on Facebook and other social media as she does researching and writing "Lethal Lineage" and her other books. Her Facebook page quotes Agatha Christie, and her wall updates fans on book signings, reviews, conferences and her progress on her new novel, "Hidden Heritage."

PRINT BOOKS: Collect an author's autograph at a bookstore reading.

DIGITAL BOOKS:Use Autography, which debuts next month. It's a software program that allows writers to autograph an e-book using an iPad. The writer calls up his book, inserts a blank page between the title page and the first chapter, and then inscribes the blank page. The process takes less than three minutes, and authors can e-mail their inscriptions remotely.

PRINT BOOKS: Want to publish a book? You'll need a proposal, an agent, an editor, a publisher and a marketing department

DIGITAL BOOKS: Want to publish a book? There's an app for that, and authors can be quite successful. Amanda Hocking, JA Konrath and Karen McQuestion all are authors as famous for their aggressive self-promotion as for their books. However, self-publishing isn't always a good thing.

"There are a lot of crummy self- published books," says Colorado agent Jodi Rein.

"But a lot of good writers are choosing to go that route, too. It can be great for writers, because they can keep more of the profits. Who's going to be the gatekeeper? It used to be that you'd walk into a bookstore and know that the books had been vetted by editors and publishers. If anyone can get published, do books still have value?"

PRINT BOOKS: Donate used books to charity, sell them to a secondhand bookstore.

DIGITAL BOOKS: "Used books" don't exist. Purchased books remain indefinitely on e-readers. Amazon Kindle books are automatically backed up on Amazon servers, so if a reader loses a Kindle or wants to upgrade, the books on the old Kindle move to the new one. The Kindle app will do the same thing for an iPad, iPhone, Blackberry, Android, Windows Phone, plus Macs and PCs.

PRINT BOOKS:Swap books with friends.

DIGITAL BOOKS: Until recently, the options were mostly limited to loaning your e-reader (and the books on it) to friends, or resorting to pirated files. Amazon's Lendle allows users to share certain (not all) Kindle titles for 14 days, similar to the way libraries arrange e-book loans.

The borrower doesn't need a Kindle, just a Kindle reading application for PC, Mac, iPad, iPhone, Blackberry or Android.

PRINT BOOKS: Find an unfamiliar word in a book? Get a dictionary, look up the meaning.

DIGITAL BOOKS:Use your e-reader to highlight the word and click on it, and the definition will display at the bottom of the page. This function is available on newer e-readers, including the latest Kindle, which includes the New Oxford American Dictionary.

PRINT BOOKS:Collecting rare books, including first editions and antiquarian books.

DIGITAL BOOKS:There's no equivalent so far. Hermitage owner Bob Topp says he sees quite a few new customers who've become fans of an author after reading several digital books.

"It's a whole new group of people discovering a new world of older books, a dimension they never knew about," he says.

"They come into our store, and the look in their eyes is 'Book! I just gotta touch a book!' They've read the e-book on the plane, but now they want a book they can hold in their hand."

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SOURCE: http://www.denverpost.com

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How is literature relevant today?

# I would argue that literature is relevant to today's generation in the same way it was relevant to my own (born in 1970) generation.

Literature has always been relevant only to those who care. Literature has been (at least since my youth) an optional thing. You could easily go through life without truly encountering "good" literature. I think it is the same now.

For those who care about it, literature continues to be relevant. It continues to allow people to explore and contemplate the human condition. That, too, has not changed.

So I guess I don't see a real difference between literature's relevance today and its relevance to my generation.

## I think there are all kinds of things in literature that are still relevant, and if you consider a rather wide range of books to be literature, even more are relevant.

If you read any science fiction, it is still a wonderful place where the moral and ethical questions raised by powerful new technologies are raised and dealt with. These can be particularly helpful to those willing to pay attention to them as our society generally fails to raise these questions and rushes headlong into any new technology without pausing for breath.


### Literature and technology are not mutually exclusive. In fact, with the use of technology, literature can reach a far wider audience than ever. Technology is merely a vehicle - literature is the passenger. Literature remains a great unifying and illuminating force - one of the ways in which we learn and celebrate ideas, share experiences, connect to our pasts, gain insights into other cultures and share in hope for the future.

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this quoted from www.enotes.com

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Twitterature: Celebrating a Form of Poem in 140 Characters

As literary coincidences go, it might not carry quite the same cosmic portent as Halley’s Comet appearing in the month of Mark Twain’s birth. But Monday happens to be both World Poetry Day and the fifth anniversary of the moment when a young American software designer named Jack Dorsey sent out to the world the first message using the service that soon became known as Twitter.

The ambrosial stuff of poesy it was not, except maybe to Dilbert fans: “inviting coworkers.”

But the confluence of these two events — both having to do with humanity’s deep and sometimes uncontrollable need to communicate — is occasioning a fresh outpouring of opinion about the future of Twitter as a vehicle for real creativity, not just for entertaining train wrecks like Charlie Sheen’s.

For much of Twitter’s life, the idea that its 140-character stricture could be a crucible for a new kind of ambitious writing has been, more than anything else, a punch line. The 2009 publication of “Twitterature” — a book in which 80 works of Western literature are boiled down into Twitter messages (“Laertes is unhappy that I killed his father and sister. What a drama queen! Oh well, fight this evening.”) — didn’t help matters.

But there’s evidence that the literary flowering of Twitter may actually be taking place. The Twitter haiku movement — “twaiku” to its initiates — is well under way. Science fiction and mystery enthusiasts especially have gravitated to its communal immediacy. And even litterateurs, with a capital L, seem to be warming to it.

For two years, John Wray, the author of the well-regarded novel “Lowboy,” has been spinning out a Twitter story based on a character named Citizen that he cut from the novel, a contemporary version of the serialization that Dickens and other fiction writers once enjoyed.

“I don’t view the constraints of the format as in any way necessarily precluding literary quality,” he said. “It’s just a different form. And it’s still early days, so people are still really trying to figure out how to communicate with it, beyond just reporting that their Cheerios are soggy.” (Mr. Wray’s breakfast-food posts are, at the very least, far funnier than the usual kind: “Citizen opened the book. Inside, he found the purpose of existence expressed logarithmically. From what he could tell, it involved toast.”)

The linguist Ben Zimmer said he thought the growing popularity of the service as a creative outlet could be ascribed to the same “impulse that goes into writing a sonnet, of accepting those kind of limits.” But he admitted that his favorite Twitter literature in recent weeks has not been exactly Shakespearean: the wildly profane and popular Twitter musings that purported to be by the Chicago mayor-elect, Rahm Emanuel, but whose real author was recently revealed to be the rock journalist Dan Sinker.

“The deeper you got into it,” Mr. Zimmer said, “the more novelistic it became, and it was really compelling. It’s almost impossible to see it working in a traditional novel format. But as a Twitter creation it was hilarious, and worth every word.”[nytimes.com]

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Urban Fantasy: Fantasy or Paranormal?

And yet another mystery about publishing for me.

My system is to enter all the books I receive into a database and let my readers pick the ones they want to read and write about. I give the author’s name, title of book and type of book (usually using the spine definition as a guide to help them decide if it’s a book they are interested in). As I was going through the 4 boxes of books that came in while I was traveling, I noticed several that were now being classified as fantasy that were considered paranormal at one time. Among them were the reissued Charlaine Harris Sookie Stackhouse books.

Now, Dictionary.com describes fantasy as imagination, especially when extravagant and unrestrained, while paranormal’s definition is beyond the range of normal experience or scientific explanation.

I thought I understood it before when I considered Neil Gaiman’s Stardust as fantasy and anything vampire or were-animal paranormal. Now I’m just confused. (And I thought figuring out the difference between paranormal and urban fantasy was difficult)


Then there’s the use of the words "novel" or just plain "fiction." What does that say about the book? Back to Dictionary.com. Fiction is the class of literature comprising works of imaginative narration, especially in prose form and novel’s definition is a fictitious prose narrative of considerable length and complexity, portraying characters and usually presenting a sequential organization of action and scenes. The vast majority of what I receive are fiction. No help there. And novels are iffy. I think of Gone With the Wind when I think of a novel, not a book with only 200 pages.

Of course, lately there’s been quite a few that don’t say anything on the spine. What the heck does that mean? The publisher isn’t sure what the book’s about?

I realize that it’s not always easy to classify a book and we’ve had whole discussions on where they should be placed in book stores and libraries, but help me out here folks. What do these words mean to you? And does it matter? Help or hinderance when the story doesn’t really hold up to the word describing it?[http://blogs.publishersweekly.com]

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Sex, violence and the supernatural in Urban Fantasy Book

Until I cracked my first urban fantasy book a couple years ago, I would have guessed that the genre was some sort of kinky Zane meets “The Lord of the Rings” thing. Not so.

Urban fantasy is a subset of fantasy defined by place; the fantastic narrative has an urban setting. Many urban fantasies are set in contemporary times or contain supernatural elements. Wikipedia…

The genre is also sometimes dubbed “supernatural romance.” At any rate: Fantasy…romance…those books are not generally my bag. But when the first season of HBO’s “True Blood” wrapped, I was jonesing for more sex, intrigue, female heroes and monsters, so I tucked into Charlaine Harris’ series that spawned the popular show. After quickly dispensing with every book in the Sookieverse, where a telepathic waitress and her neighbors in fictional Bon Temps, La., deal with the “coming out” of the world’s supernatural population, I moved on to Kim Harrison’s “The Hollows” series. Harrison’s world centers around a red-headed, leather-clad half-witch half-demon and her partners, a foul-mouthed pixie and a surly, bisexual vampire. Harrison’s nine volumes consumed, I sampled one Laurell K. Hamilton Anita Blake book before finishing the whole of her Merry Gentry series, which follows the exploits of a fae princess and her multi-hued band of lovers. (No, not black, white and brown–more like green, lavender and rainbow with the errant pointy ear or tentacle.)

I’ve developed a fondness for the urban fantasy genre. The books make fast, fun reads. But for me, someone who is drawn to issues of race and gender, even trashy, literary confections represent an opportunity for social analysis. As you may have guessed by the descriptions of some of the more popular urban fantasy series, the genre is all about creating new worlds with new societal norms. In urban fantasy, werewolves walk among us, Elvis really is alive (or undead) and the American Vampire League fights for the rights of marginalized former people. What I find curious, is that though their chosen genre frees them from the replicating the hierarchies of the real world, most authors of urban fantasy still manage to re-create common biases surrounding race, gender and sexuality.

For instance, the aforementioned series feint at subverting mainstream beauty standards–heroines may be ginger-haired, rather than blonde, short rather than statuesque, and much is made of their supposed physical “imperfections” (Rachel Morgan’s curly hair and freckles, Merry Gentry’s large breasts). But important female characters are generally white (or white identified in the case of Anita Blake), slim and young. And paragraphs are spent on the description and worship of their pale skin and its beauty. (The villains in Hamilton’s Merry Gentry series delight at threatening to mar the heroine’s pure, white skin.) Whiteness becomes fetish. Darkness is often equated with menace.

People of color are rare in the urban fantasy worlds I have explored. When present, they are one dimensional, sometimes stereotypical, and they often embody the “magical __________” archetype. (Think Keasley, Rachel Morgan’s elderly black neighbor) Women of color are even more rare than men, and they never, ever exist on an equal plane with the books’ white heroines.

Harris, Hamilton and Harrison’s ass-kicking heroines are refreshing departures from women in traditional action stories, who exist to be saved. These women can save themselves (and a few others besides). Still, Hamilton and Harris, in particular, focus on how much men want to save them. In other words, we are to believe that Merry Gentry is an exceptional woman partially because she is the object of extraordinary attention from men–mortal and otherwise. A significant part of her worth is tied to the male gaze. She may be tough and capable, but she remains just conventionally pretty enough, young enough, vulnerable enough and energetically sexual enough (Merry complains vigorously of wanting to perform more fellatio with her male lovers) that every man wants her and yearns to protect her. And don’t get me started on the torture porn aspects of some of these novels. These heroines are repeatedly choked, bitten, knocked unconscious and sexually threatened. Sookie Stackhouse is always recovering from some beat down.

I’m not the only one who thinkgs the urban fantasy genre is ripe for analysis. A new book explores race, gender, sex and other issues in Laurell K. Hamilton’s Anita Blake vampire hunter series. In Ardeur (BenBella. $14.95), 14 writers pull apart Hamilton’s most famous character.

In the book, my blogging friend Mikhall Lybansky writes about vampires as a stand in for traditionally marginalized people and also tackles the “Magical Negro” of the Anita Blake series:

There are, to be sure, a handful of non-White characters, including her mentor Manny Rodriguez[2], but other than Manny, none have prominent roles and only Luther, the human bartender who works the day shift at Dead Dave’s[3], is ever essential to the plot. As such, Luther can be seen as the series’ symbolic representation of the racial other, in general, and blackness, in particular. Indeed, unlike other non-white characters, Hamilton takes some extra effort to establish Luther’s blackness. Luther is not merely black; he is “a very dark black man, nearly purplish black, like mahogany” (Guilty Pleasures, 120).

Although human, there is something vaguely magical about Luther. He is fat, but his fat is “rock solid, almost a kind of muscle” (120), and despite being overweight, chain-smoking, and on the up side of 50, he is apparently never sick. Luther represents a literary and film device known as the “magic negro[4]“, a supporting, usually mystical fictional character who, by use of special insight or powers, helps white people figure things out. This is Luther’s role. He is Anita’s informant, the person who somehow seems to know some bit of information that Anita happens to need. He seems to be a good guy, and he seems to like Anita. Indeed, Luther’s collegial (and plutonic) relationship with Anita could be viewed as a representation of racial harmony. Film critics and race scholars see it differently. As Washington Post film critic Rita Kempley pointed out in The Black Commentator, magic negro characters[5] may be “likable, valuable or redemptive, but they are without interior lives. For the most part, they materialize only to rescue the better-drawn white characters.” Read an excerpt of Lybansky’s essay at his blog at Psychology Today…

Ardeur, edited by Hamilton herself, who responds to the essayists’ analysis of her work, also includes a piece by Natasha Fondren, who explores the “domestication” of Anita Blake over the book series:

Anita Blake is a monster killer, a sometimes murderer, a once-in-awhile torturer. She’s an executioner of vampires–the shortest executioner of vampires in the United States–but don’t let that fool you: Anita Blake has the highest kill count of any vampire executioner in the nation, possibly the world. And that’s just counting the legal kills.

She’s not exactly someone you want to take home and introduce to your mother, someone you imagine making dinner, walking the dog, or droing the kids off at soccer practice.

…

In the end, it is the wild monsters who tame Anita, who show her how to love, and who give her the comfort of home and family.

Melissa L. Tatum, a writer with a background in law, explores the absence of a strong judicial system in the Blake books. Cathy Clamp looks at the series’ humor.

It is an interesting choice to have the creator of the Anita Blake series edit Ardeur. I wished sometimes, while reading the book, to have the essayists’ analysis alone without interjection or “answer” from the author. That aside, the book is well worth a read if you are an Anita Blake fan or someone like me, who can’t help dissecting urban fantasy.

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Tami, originally published at What Tami Said

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A Brief History of Vampires in Literature

Between Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight novels and Charlaine Harris’ Southern Vampire Mysteries (also known as the Sookie Stackhouse or True Blood books) vampires are the hottest thing in literature these days. But this genre, where gothic horror often meets romance, is no johnny-come lately; the vampire has a long, colorful history in literature.

The first instances of vampire tales originally appeared in eastern European folklore. Some of these stories began to trickle into western European literature in the 18th century, and German and English authors started to put their own spin on the myths.

The short German poem, The Vampire (1748) by Heinrich August Ossenfelde, is often cited as being the first major work to mention these mythical undead creatures but vampires really became a popular phenomenon in the 19th century. read more about this topic here

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On Vampire Romance Books

It should be no surprise that there is a big trend on nowadays for vampire romance books. Romance fiction books have been extremely popular throughout history, with well-known love stories from Shakespeare to Emily Bronte and Jacqueline Susann. Women young and old turn to romance fiction books to fulfill a part of their lives that may not exist in their own realities. Romance fiction books offer a new view of love and life, set in a modern setting or in history. Now the trend has turned to fantasy romance books with vampire books like Twilight by Stephenie Meyer.

Vampire romance books offer another view of the romantic world. Not only do they provide the love interest desired in the stories, but they offer an alternate world that does not exist in normal life. Vampire romance books allow the reader to go beyond normal life into a fantasy that cannot possibly exist—one where the hero (or heroine) as the love interest cannot possibly compete with normal folk because they are far above them. It is a safer way for normal people to experience romance. The reader does not have to compare their real life with what is portrayed in the book because it is ludicrous to think that it can possibly exist, therefore it allows them a more in-depth romantic experience.

These new romance books based on a fantasy realm offer the reader more of an escape. The world of vampires provides super-heroes that only dreams are made of. Take the main character in vampire books like Twilight (Edward). He is inhumanly beautiful with extraordinary powers. His love of Bella goes deeper than any normal human can imagine. Any women reading Bella and Edward's love story is enraptured and wants that type of deep devotion for themselves. Of course, in real life this is impossibility—but it is nice to dream of.

And that is what vampire romance books are good for. They are the stuff that nurtures our dreams and fantasies. They create a place where normal people can escape to (and long for). It is easier to wish for something that cannot possibly happen so in the end you are not disappointed when all your fantasies don't come true.

Vampire romance books also offer a certain level of danger and thrills. What can be more thrilling and exciting than the hero risking his life to protect the woman he loves? What can be more romantic than the hero saving the beautiful maiden and them living happily ever after? It is exciting to think of the hero or heroine risking their safety to be in the company of a dangerous creature like a vampire just because of love. The vampire novels can create a stimulating new world where danger lurks, giving it that bit of excitement needed to create good contemporary romance books.

From early on in books like Bram Stoker's Dracula, people have always been intrigued by vampires. In today's contemporary romance books it seems as if it is a natural progression to include vampires as the good guys—the love interests for weaker, helpless everyday people. When a normal human is involved with a vampire, it almost elevates them to a fictional, fantasy level that cannot be achieved in real life.

Vampire romance books fill a niche in the romance book market that has hitherto been left wide open. People young and old love fantasy romance books and vampire novels are a trend that won't soon be forgotten. [www.articlesbase.com]

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Where Will The Vampire Trend End Next?

We’ve gone from Dracula (Vlad the Impaler) to Edward (Ed the Sparkly), from Nosferatu to Sookie sucking. So where will the vampire trend go over the next 10 years? Here’s my best guess.

1. The Vampire Channel (spinoff of the Lifetime Channel) debuts on cable. Red Neck Diaries starring David Duchovny becomes an instant hit.

2. Fangee (from Pixar Studios) is number one at the box office for three weeks. The “tickle me Fangee” doll results in parking lot campouts and toy aisle fist fights for Christmas.

3. John Carpenter and Wes Craven team up to create the cheesiest, bloodiest vampire movie ever made with a bad 1980′s style heavy metal rock soundtrack. No, I mean, even worse than their last ones. The thousands of gallons of fake blood used on the film causes a minor ecological disaster in southern California.

4. The Judd Apatow gang (40 Year Old Virgin, Pineapple Express) bring you Stakey Bud, a comedy about a gang of slacker stoners who get fed up when the drug business is taken over by vampires, and decide to take back their streets for honest dealers that don’t ask “How much will you bleed for weed?”

5. The Emo trend/style is officially replaced by Vampo. Vampo bands sweep the college campuses. Hot Topic stores see record sales, although their hard-core shoppers are none-too-happy that vampire fashion has become polo shirts, khakis and loafers.

6. Jerome Corsi, Glenn Beck, and Sean Hannity all write books offering proof that Obama is a vampire, filled with absolutely indisputable, fair and balanced facts. Fear of socialism, fascism and communism is replaced by fear of vampirism among their follower-isms.

7. In response to Marvel Zombies, DC comics releases DC Vampires, which embraces the full spectrum of vampire stereotypes. Batman becomes a brooding bat-like creature who patrols the night. Superman sparkles in the yellow sun that grants him his powers (and stalks the girls at Teen Titan headquarters). Wonder Woman becomes slutty. And Aquaman – well, who cares really.

8. The vampires finally get fed up with the ruining of their image, reveal themselves to be real, and eat everyone.

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Randy Henderson stays crunchy in milk. His fiction has appeared in Alienskin Magazine, The Harrow, and From the Asylum. He likes milkshakes. He recently graduated from Clarion West. He has a robot monkey army. And most importantly he has won the prestigious “Fantasy Friday Blog for a Beer” award five times (to date). For his genre-related musings, go to his blog.

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The Problem With Comic Book Critique

Comic book and graphic novel criticism is rarely found outside of niche publications such as Wizard, or the many fan-driven sites that litter the web. Occasionally a mainstream newspaper will publish an article on the medium as a whole, or offer a retrospective on an under appreciated author, usually Alan Moore; but for the most part it is rare to come across comic reviews in any shape or form. I used to believe that this was simply down to media prejudice - and largely it probably is - but when I decided to dedicate my precious spare time to the joys of graphic novel criticism, I soon learnt that the "funny books" were far from the easiest medium to offer an objective evaluation of.

In the era of Stan Lee, comic plots rarely extended beyond an issue. The Fantastic Four would thwart Doctor Doom's plans for world domination and still be home in time to laugh at the Thing's working class idiosyncrasies. While this limited the writers somewhat, it did allow for episodic adventures that were entirely self-contained. Casual readers could pick up the occasional issue and never be far behind the soap opera antics of their favourite characters. Of course, pre-80s comics were considered an enjoyable but disposable pastime. Most were binned after being read, and forgotten soon after.

Naturally, things have changed. Sequential art is now accepted as an art form, though whether such an acceptance entails any benefits is another matter altogether. The contemporary comic book has become a far slower affair, with the sort of storyline that would have filled a single issue back in the sixties now stretched across several. While this makes for far superior graphic novel narratives, it does alienate the casual reader, and leaves the regular collector dangling on tenterhooks before the serial has had time to resume. More importantly, this approach to serial storytelling has rendered the reviewing of individuals comic issues a little pointless - who reviews the first half of a film, or a television drama only up to the first commercial break?

Of course, we could leave the reviews until our favourite series are collected in trade paperback format, but this approach is equally problematic. Many series have reached double digit number of volumes. Should each volume of The Sandman, The Walking Dead, or Y: The Last Man be reviewed individually, or should the series be critiqued as a whole? If comic book critics were to wait until a series had concluded before laying down their position, then very few new books would get the endorsement that quality appraisal offers.

Of course, there are no answers here. The comic medium will continue to suffer the prejudice of literary circles, and isolate those with only a passing interest. But I love the fact that any individual can have his say on the internet, and would rather be guided by the opinions of another comic enthusiast than the tepid, uninspired drivel from a mainstream film or videogame magazine that has temporarily jumped aboard the superhero zeitgeist. With or without mainstream attention, the comic book appears to be stuck comfortably in its niche. Is that such a bad thing?

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Carl Doherty occasionally assumes the guise of a freelance writer specialising in cultural nonsense of the pop and junk varieties. For more of his pungent diatribes on the twisted world of comic books, including a daily graphic novels review, and his weekly webcomic The Scribe, visit Shelf Abuse Graphic Novel Reviews

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Graphia: The Graphic Novel and Literary Criticism

46.2, Fall/Winter 2008
William Kuskin, editor

The comic book is currently undergoing a renaissance. Re-branded the Graphic Novel, comics now command bookstore aisles and Pulitzer Prizes alike. Much of the academic discussion surrounding this form would sequester it as belonging to an autonomous discipline and deserving of a specialized analytic. In contrast, Graphia argues that comic pamphlets and graphic novels are ill-served by the notion of rupture and so seeks to integrate them into Literary Studies. Thus its eleven full-length essays observe that literary formalism provides a rich framework for reading the complex verbal and visual troping inherent the comics page. Realizing this, however, Graphia also argues that the profound figural depth of these pages is latent in all the arts that would travel by the book. Rather than appropriating the graphic novel for Literary Studies, then, Graphia suggests that comics are unbound by any single discipline and recalls such openness for literary criticism in general.


view the table of contents (pdf)

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Cyber-Literature: When literature falls across Internet

Writing has long been considered a lonely profession, but when prose gets put on the Internet, the instant feedback makes writing not so lonely any more. Not many people who are fond of writing actually end up getting their work published in books, magazines or in newspapers. However, the Internet opens a new door to aspiring writers. A new term "Cyber-literature" has been catching on.

For many cyber-literature lovers, the day starts like this:

"I turn on my computer, the first thing I do is find out whether anyone left comments on what I posted the previous day."

Giving herself the net name "echo-bird", the girl is a postgraduate at the Shanghai-based Fudan University. She became addicted to online writing two years ago. She is among the millions of Chinese who post their writing on the internet. What on earth is the attraction of online writing? People give different answers:

"The biggest attraction is that I can write down whatever is on my mind, I do not need to worry whether it caters to a certain magazine or newspaper."

"To post your writing online is easy, it doesn't involve complicated procedures like when contributing an article to magazines or newspapers."

"I can receive feedback as soon as I post my work online."

Cyber-literature came to China in the mid 1990s when several literary web sites were set up, but at that time, the internet acted merely as a new carrier for traditional literature, with most of the works simply scanned and posted "as is."

It was not until 1998 that online writing's popularity really skyrocketed. A modern love story entitled "First Close Touch" written by Taiwan writer Pizi Tsai got widely spread on the net. Its free writing style and modern language quickly attracted people. For most Chinese people, it was their first encounter with cyber-literature. The fever continued as the story was later published and adapted into a movie and stage drama.

From then on, more and more people started posting their stories, poems, articles and other works online, sharing them on various BBSs (Bulletin Board Systems) or literary websites. One of the sites that receives the most hits is rongshuxia.com, the world's largest aggregator and publisher of literature in the Chinese language. Set up seven years ago, Rongshuxia provides a platform for writers to show off their talents.

Lu Jinbo, chief editor of the website, is a famous online writer himself. He explains the development of this literary website. ��"In the beginning, we received two or three articles a day, but now, this number has surpassed 5,000. Over the past seven years, more than 100,000 people have had their articles published here."

These keen writers don't get paid, but their online writing fever never cools down. Lu Jinbo says:

"Among the visitors, over 60 percent are students, and college students account for a major part of participants. Our website is merely a platform for these writers."

"Writing is a desire to express one's thoughts. Writers want their works to be appreciated and commented on by others. This is for self-fulfilment. Each entry posted online here could possibly be viewed tens of thousands times. These online writers have just as many readers as professional writers."

Unlike professional writers who put words on paper for a living, most of the online writers take up writing only in their spare time��in other words, when they feel like writing something. But there are some netizens who eventually become professional writers and whose writing skills are widely acknowledged. 45-year-old Ning Ken is one of them. Two years ago, his long story "The Veiled City" was posted online won him one of the most prestigious awards in China��the Lao She Literary Award, which was named after the renowned Chinese with the same name. This was the first time the award has been given to a piece of work posted online. Ning Ken recalls.

"I benefited from the internet. After I sent out my articles to publishing houses, I waited and waited but there was no reply. So I put it online. I didn't expect that it would become so popular among online readers."

The story has now been printed to books, realizing a dream of the writer, who was soon adopted by the Beijing Writers' Association.

A famous writer now, Ning Ken says he still likes to put his works on the internet first.

"When I finish a piece of writing, I usually put it on the internet before sending it to magazines. I want to hear others' comments first. People's suggestions and even their criticism give me inspiration."

No one can deny the impact of the internet on aspiring writers. Writing without limits and writing for feedback are the big advantages of posting works online. Moreover, in most cases, writing anonymously gives people more freedom when writing. This leads to greater creativity.

However, as newcomers join more online writing circles there are raising doubts about the quality of the online entries. Easy access leads to quite a number of shoddy articles. Many critics say subjects popular on the internet are not deep enough, many concentrating on giving vent on one's dissatisfaction about love and life while paying little attention to larger social problems.

Regarding this phenomenon, Li Qing, secretary-general of the Beijing Writers' Association, says every coin has two sides. She feels people should look more at the good points of online writing.

"Among online writers, many of them have special talent. The Internet has helped us find a lot of good writers whom otherwise we may have missed."

By the end of last year, the number of China's netizens reached 80 million, a drastic jump from the 620,000 users recorded in 1997. As this number keeps growing, cyber-writers will keep increasing as well.

Source: CRI

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Black American Literature at Year 2000: A New Presence (Part 2)

Equally fascinating is the rise of black American writers in the so-called sub-genres such as science fiction and crime thrillers. Octavia Butler -- in books such as Kindred (1988), mixing 20th-century black sensibilities with 19th-century history in a time warp -- has brought a new perspective to black American literature. Walter Mosley has advanced the status of the black American mystery story beyond the earlier work of George Schuyler, Chester Himes and Ishmael Reed by combining that form with the black migration narrative. With Easy Rawlins as his protagonist in books such as Devil in a Blue Dress (1990), Mosley's novels are vivid because of the confrontation of black migrants from Texas and Louisiana with present-day Los Angeles, California. Striking within the mystery genre is the presence of several women writers. In books such as Blanche Among the Talented Tenth (1994), Barbara Neely deftly transforms a familiar black character in popular culture -- the maid -- into the savvy, observant sleuth housekeepers often are or can be. Valerie Wilson Wesley's novels, including Where Evil Sleeps (1996), focus on Tamara Hayle, a private investigator who -- through her particular circumstances of being black and a single parent -- finds both insight and personal motivation. And Pamela Thomas-Graham, in A Darker Shade of Crimson (1998) and other novels, has brought the mystery novel, and a black heroine, into the hallowed campuses of Ivy League universities.

Black Americans traditionally have made significant contributions to poetry and drama, and they are doing so today as well. Rita Dove -- honored with a term as poet laureate of the United States in the early 1990s as well as a Pulitzer Prize -- certainly is one of the more exceptional poets of the current generation. Her latest collection, On the Bus With Rosa Parks (1999), her seventh, is a wide-ranging venture into family relationships, building upon the motif and affection that is at the heart of her earlier volume, Mother Love (1995). Dove has distinguished herself recently as a playwright, with The Darker Face of the Earth, her take on Sophocles' Oedipus, set on a Southern U.S. plantation during the 19th-century slave era. It is being staged at various venues across the United States. In collections such as Thieves of Paradise (1998) and his earlier Neon Vernacular (1993), among others, Yusef Komunyakaa, another Pulitzer Prize-winning black American poet, has distinguished himself through fierce takes on war and race, even as he is caught up in images of art and music, with a style that resonates with hints of blues and jazz. And Marilyn Nelson, whose poetry invariably has reached deep into memories of her own childhood as she focuses on interfamilial relationships and women's status in society, deals with freedom and status and black American heroism in a recent volume, The Fields of Praise: New and Selected Poems (1997).

In drama, the issue is frequently not just what is new and important but also what is accessible in written text form. Fortunately, publishers retain in print many of Langston Hughes' timeless dramas of years ago, and continue to publish the ongoing series of works by Pulitzer drama honoree August Wilson, a cycle of 20th-century dramas -- one set in, and reflecting, each decade -- that includes The Piano Lesson, Seven Guitars and Fences. These pieces overflow with memory and history, strong characters and intergenerational lessons. His latest work, King Hedley II, recently had its world premiere at a resident professional theater in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, even as his last piece, Jitney, is making its way to Broadway.

For the first time since the 1960s and 1970s, when works by James Baldwin, Charles Gordone, Joseph Walker, Amiri Baraka, Ron Milner and others found their way to the printed page, publishers are amenable to issuing play texts. As a result, besides Wilson, readers can turn to collections by Pearl Cleage (Flying West and Other Plays, 1999) and Suzan-Lori Parks (The American Play and Other Works, 1995) and the quite riveting performance art pieces by Anna Deavere Smith. Smith worked first in the aftermath of racial tensions in Brooklyn, New York, in 1991, and similar strife in Los Angeles, California, in 1992, to produce two pieces of documentary theater -- blending journalism, oral history and drama -- that she has taken to a number of theaters across the United States. She reproduced these one-person stagings in two volumes, Fires in the Mirror: Crown Heights, Brooklyn and Other Identities (1993), and Twilight Los Angeles, 1992: On the Road: A Search for American Character (1994).

Some young playwrights, about whom favorable word of mouth is spreading, have yet to see their works on the printed page for mass audiences. One of the more gifted of these writers is Cheryl L. West, a onetime social worker, whose early piece centering on an AIDS patient, Before It Hits Home, was followed by Jar the Floor, a hearty, hilarious and yet heartbreaking piece about four generations of African American women gathering for the 90th birthday of the oldest of their number. West is decidedly in the tradition of Lorraine Hansberry and August Wilson in her embracing of family and in the contemporaneity of her work.

No discussion of black American literature can ignore the literature of the public forum -- both the achievements of black writers in nonfiction and the rise of the black public intellectual and the books accompanying that ascent. The academy has played a role in this, since many intellectuals and authors have held academic positions and are in the forefront of developing courses in African American studies. Still, these individuals would not have such public personae without the new venues now available in our generation -- in print journalism, electronic media and other outlets. The jazz expertise and social commentary of Stanley Crouch (Always In Pursuit, 1999), the complexities of feminism and love in the writings of bell hooks (All About Love, 2000), personal family histories such as the blended heritage of journalist James McBride (The Color of Water, 1996) and the erudition of Henry Louis Gates, Jr., on diverse components of African American history and experience (Colored People: A Memoir, 1994; Ten Ways of Looking at a Black Man, 1998), all are components of black American literature as it flourishes today.

In assessing how black American literature has taken on the significance it currently boasts, we should note that it is prominent and pervasive because it has a full life of its own outside the academy. Toni Morrison clearly is not dependent on an academic audience. August Wilson no longer needs a drama school environment for initially mounting his plays. A raft of writers -- including Barbara Neely, Walter Mosley, Terry McMillan -- are highly popular while remaining outside the "canon" of black American literature. One factor is the proliferation of book clubs in the United States in the past decade; enrollment is as pervasive in African American communities as elsewhere, and African Americans tend to read the works of their fellow African Americans. To be sure, many book clubs are seeking out books that can be regarded as life-changing or inspiring, rather than works for the college course outlines.

Thanks to one particular book club, sponsored by television personality and actress Oprah Winfrey, debuting books by African American novelists Breena Clarke and Cleage received unprecedented publicity. In River, Cross My Heart (1999), a story centered on the politics and power of faith-based communities, Clarke, a young Washington, D.C., native, depicts the dynamics of her native city during the 1920s, in the throes of segregation. Dramatist Cleage's What Looks Like Crazy on an Ordinary Day (1998) is an offbeat, unexpectedly humorous look at some of life's crises and tragedies, dappled with its author's inherently pungent imagery. The same held true for Breath, Eyes, Memory, a story about the impact of a family's transit from Haiti to the United States. This first novel by Edwidge Danticat -- a Haitian American writer who, in a span of less than a half-decade, has become known by a wide readership as a luminous portrayer of the recent history of her native country -- also was a selection of Oprah's Book Club. This one, however, is destined to have a second life among students, for its critical and artistic value.

Indeed, in a tentative way, Danticat's writings are evidence that while black American literature now has a robust life beyond the academy, it also has a continually evolving place within it. Think here less of the courses in place, some since the 1960s, but rather of the certain conviction that black American literature is vital as a field of study for anyone seeking to know the literature of the United States. The number of graduate students including black American literature among their oral examination fields is rising; so, too, are the numbers of dissertations addressing black American authors -- particularly when combined, intriguingly, with writers representing various groupings. And the roster of universities in other countries granting higher degrees for the study of black American literature is also on the ascent.

What of the future? Two issues readily appear. First, will black American literature continue to be mainstreamed? How will promising works continue to become the stuff of conversation in the marketplace? Second, how "national" will black American literature remain in a world that is increasingly more global in approach and transnational in outlook? In part, this will depend on how, or whether, the definition of black American writer will evolve. Will the writer be an inhabitant of the Americas as a whole, of the circum-Atlantic world, or just of the United States?

The issue may have been with us for some time, but this might be a propitious time to reframe and renew the debate.


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Robert B. Stepto is professor of African American studies, American studies and English at Yale University. He is the author of Blue As The Lake: A Personal Geography (1998, Beacon Press), and From Behind the Veil: A Study of Afro-American Narrative (1991, University of Illinois Press).

this article originally taken from http://usinfo.state.gov/journals/itsv/0200/ijse/stepto.htm

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Black American Literature at Year 2000: A New Presence

by By Robert B. Stepto

During the 1960s, as the civil rights movement expanded, there was a feeling in U.S. literary circles that black American literature was in the midst of a second renaissance, following the Harlem Renaissance of the pre-World War II era.

A case certainly could be made for this view. The 1960s saw the emergence of the Negro Ensemble Company in New York City, and countless smaller theater troupes across the country, as well as the more radical black arts movement in both drama and poetry. Publications proliferated, from new titles from major publishing houses to new journals to extensive efforts to republish hundreds of out-of-print titles -- such as the reissuance, in 1969, of Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937). Furthermore, the first courses in black American literature appeared in the catalogs of a number of colleges and universities. On the one hand, students worked toward graduation by studying black American literature; on the other hand, a demand suddenly sprang up for qualified teachers of this literature.

What began in the 1960s surged in the decades that followed, and surely appears to be continuing as a movement and as a literary tradition at the turn of the new century. This expansion has been so dramatic that one is tempted to say that the second renaissance is over, not because "the Negro is no longer in vogue" (the fate of the Harlem Renaissance), but because the black American is both in vogue and in the mainstream. It is fair to say that if the Depression of the 1930s killed the Renaissance of that era, prosperity has enabled the second renaissance to thrive. Today, black American literature is no longer so marginal, so novel or so limited in its readerships that its fate is uncertain. Today, virtually every strand of writing in the United States includes a wealth of prominent black American authors, to the extent that no one definition of the black American writer prevails.

While it is obvious that black American talents are working in all major literary genres, what may be less obvious is what new directions they are taking within those disciplines. In fiction, for example, while historical accounts are not new, what does seem intriguing is the fresh effort to write the stories of slavery. Toni Morrison's Beloved (1987), for instance -- which may have been the catalyst for her Nobel Prize for Literature -- is a striking example of the new imagining of slavery. Rather than offering the familiar tale of the revolt-leading male slave (versions of which began in 1853 with Frederick Douglass' The Heroic Slave), it presents the story of Sethe, a female ex-slave who killed her child rather than see her subjugated. Then, too, Charles Johnson's stories and novels are fresh in terms of vision and sensibility. The opening premise in his National Book Award-winning 1990 novel, The Middle Passage, is that the Negro hero is so hapless that when he stows away aboard a ship to avoid marriage he unwittingly chooses a slave ship. This is the essence of blues humor, born of slavery. Yet it took until a decade ago for an author to risk finding that humor in the story of the agonizing middle passage from Africa to the Americas that was at the heart of the slave trade.

In other words, black American writers of literature are self-confident enough these days to be able to come at a well-worn subject in a different way -- even expressing criticism of something they might not have criticized before. In that sense, they are following in the wake of historians of the African American experience of the last quarter of the past century who paved the way for new perspectives.

In keeping with the adage that new experiences occasion new stories, black American writers of late have been writing about new venues and neighborhoods, new schools, friends and work situations. This may be part of the reason why they are reaching new audiences. As a result, Terry McMillan -- in books like Waiting to Exhale (1992) and How Stella Got Her Groove Back (1998) -- can depict successful black women finding love in varied surroundings and gain a wide readership as well. Darryl Pinckney, in High Cotton (1992), can attract and amuse readers with his take on the corporate lunchroom. Andrea Lee's Sarah Phillips (1984), Trey Ellis' Home Repairs (1993) and Right Here, Right Now (1999) and Connie Porter's All-Bright Court (1991) represent the work of three young writers who, in symbolizing a middle-class milieu, incisively render relatively new black situations.

Profile: JOHN EDGAR WIDEMAN -- HIS OWN MAN

At a time when black American literature is thriving, when authors of long standing are lionized as they run familiar courses and new writers surface to be categorized into well-worn compartments, there -- sui generis -- is John Edgar Wideman.

It is difficult to itemize the disparate elements of his personal history without seeming to strain credibility. Consider: Born in Washington, D.C., in 1941, and raised in Pittsburgh (Pennsylvania), he is the son of a working-class family, a onetime basketball hero at the University of Pennsylvania, a Rhodes scholar at Oxford University, holder of a degree in 18th-century literature, a novelist and memoirist with an endless string of enviable critical successes and a faithful readership, a married man and the father of a star player in the U.S. professional women's basketball league. He is an esteemed professor of English at the University of Massachusetts. Among other honors, he won the PEN/Faulkner Award for his fifth novel, Sent For You Yesterday (1983), the only prize judged and funded by writers. Indeed, he has been called "the black William Faulkner," and "the softcover Shakespeare" -- a reference to the folio of paperback editions of his various titles.

And then there is the other side of the frame.

He is the author of Brothers and Keepers (1984), centering on the relationship between a successful man and his imprisoned sibling, convicted of murder and sentenced to life behind bars. It is not a novel. It is a family memoir. And he is the author, among other magazine articles, of a searing piece in Esquire some years ago about a father and a son who, having gone astray, killed a classmate. It, too, is nonfiction.

Two lives lived. It's the stuff of stories. But it's all true.

His personal traumas, one can imagine, have enriched his creative gifts. But the reader will not know anything more than the writer wants revealed, in books such as Fatheralong: A Meditation on Fathers and Sons, Race and Society (1994). As he said in a Washington Post interview, "I'm not putting up my life as material to explain anything to anyone. I'll put it this way. It's a formulation. My life is a closed book. My fiction is an open book. They may seem like the same book -- but I know the difference."

Most likely, this writer -- because of his literary gifts -- would have been as profound, as impassioned and as insightful if none of the tragedies had befallen his family, no matter what subjects he might have explored. What his eyes have seen, what his ears have heard in the inner cities of Pittsburgh and elsewhere, including the music, have given his fiction a depth and a fragmented beauty that few of his peers can match.

In novels such as Damballah (1981), Hiding Place (1981) and Sent For You Yesterday -- familiarly known as The Homewood Trilogy -- he penetrates, incisively, the Pittsburgh neighborhood of his youth as it was and as it is. The Cattle Killing (1996) is a period piece, centered on a yellow fever epidemic in Philadelphia. Two Cities (1999), his most recent novel, it set against a backdrop of present-day Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, and constructed along musical lines -- blues, jazz, Motown, gospel, classical and funk.

Wideman has observed that he once yearned to write books that both his family in Pittsburgh and literary scholars could read and enjoy. The fact that his books have a wide following in the mass-market audience, and that a two-day international celebration of his work was slated for April 2000 at the University of Virginia, indicates that he may have achieved that seemingly elusive objective.

-- M.J.B

to be continued....

Robert B. Stepto is professor of African American studies, American studies and English at Yale University. He is the author of Blue As The Lake: A Personal Geography (1998, Beacon Press), and From Behind the Veil: A Study of Afro-American Narrative (1991, University of Illinois Press).

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