Turning and Turning the Widening Gyre

...the author cannot hear the reader.

For years, Yeats' "The Second Coming" has echoed in my head as the drumbeat of the ontological shift, the slide into the postmodern. Perhaps, this constant [mis]reading of the poem will aggravate some, but it's my battleflag. A battle flag rooted in a British Literature Survey class with Doc Marsden back in 2000. Back then, John Barth was about the coolest thing I'd ever read, and 'epistemology' v. 'ontology' was a war I only vaguely understood. But the visceral image of Yeats' poem--"the widening gyre...the center cannot hold" drove me to imaginings of black holes, to the embrace of plurality's structured chaos, and now a decade later, I still hear the echo of this poem, but it's feel is changing.

I'm teaching a comp class focusing on the death of the newspaper, but it's not too far to see a similar corollary in the literary journal realm. This isn't the first time I've visited the topic, but recently if:Book ran an article on Ted Genoways' essay in Mother Jones recanting "The Death of Fiction?" Barring the fact that the notion of fiction dying is probably the most overqualified argument ever--Barth covered it back in the 60s, and if I were to dig, I'm sure I could go back to the beginning of the written word and find someone who proclaimed "everything that can be written has been written." (But as a thoroughly postmodern aside: Doesn't everyone have to eventually in one of their infinite versions of themselves proclaim that fiction is kaput?)

Despite the tiredness of Genoways' argument, he wrangles some truly frightening numbers:

Last summer, Louis Menand tabulated that there were 822 creative writing programs. Consider this for a moment: If those programs admit even 5 to 10 new students per year, then they will cumulatively produce some 60,000 new writers in the coming decade. Yet the average literary magazine now prints fewer than 1,500 copies.

That's a recipe for a whole lot of letdowns. And while I think it's both sobering and important for all aspiring writers to face such facts, Genoways like many doomsayers, doesn't really give us much hope for change. He concludes:

To pull out of this tailspin, writers and their patrons both will have to make some necessary changes—and quick. With so many newspapers and magazines closing, with so many commercial publishers looking to nonprofit models, a few bold university presidents could save American literature, reshape journalism, and maybe even rescue public discourse from the cable shout shows and the blogosphere. At the same time, young writers will have to swear off navel-gazing in favor of an outward glance onto a wrecked and lovely world worthy and in need of the attention of intelligent, sensitive writers. I'm not calling for more pundits—God knows we've got plenty. I'm saying that writers need to venture out from under the protective wing of academia, to put themselves and their work on the line. Stop being so damned dainty and polite. Treat writing like your lifeblood instead of your livelihood. And for Christ's sake, write something we might want to read.

To which I say, No shit Sherlock. Genoways' solution echoes many others I've seen, and it really does very little to help solve the problem. Ok. We get it. Too many writers writing things no one wants to read, and not enough readers reading in the first place. Personally, I see contemporary realism's inability to compete with visual media as one of the cornerstone problems surrounding today's fiction industry. But my problem isn't necessarily your problem, and to sit here and whine about perceived problems with the industry isn't going to really drive any sort of solution from anyone.

So let's do something.

For hundreds of years, since Gutenberg actually, we've relied on the printing press. But now we have the Internet. And despite what the technological curmudgeons, the Neil Postmans, the Sven Birkerts, might say, our wired world is here to stay.

But it's a young, angry baby. It eats everything in its path. And it grows, oh it grows so fast that you can't keep it in fitting clothes for more than an eyeblink. But it's our baby. And as parents, we are beholden to it, and it to us.

It's time to start modeling, molding, shaping. The Future

Relying on the printing press for anything is increasingly antiquated. You won't find many arguments touting increased reading rates for kids these days, unless such arguments are about reading Facebook walls, fashion blogs, and online news.

Which brings me back to Transmedia.

As the Internet grows, so too do the number of writers trying to make it big. More of us are getting published online, and more journals are either going straight to online only or offering a hybrid between print and online. While print fiction still offers more clout, conceivably this could change. And Transmedia fiction can help usher that change.

With so many new writers emerging onto the scene, and publishers literally buried under a slushpile of [bad] fiction, Transmedia fiction offers perhaps one of the best solutions for our growing problem.

Let's examine its boons:

1. It fosters a community of writers -- As writers, we don't operate well in a vacuum. The more people we have to discuss our works with, the better said works become.
2. As a community, Transmedia groups would build thematic collectives, which would easily cater to a wider audience -- Think about this. I've spent considerable time trying to find literary journals that write what I want to read. It's hard work, especially if you're on a budget. But online Transmedia collectives can easily be controlled by tags and keywords. Looking for some metafiction? There's a tag for that. How about post-apocalyptic salon/day spa drama? There's a tag for that too. Very easily like minded people can gather and produce consistently interesting and tightly focused fiction. This is far harder to accomplish in the print world.
3. There are no boundaries on the internet. We don't have to deal with pretension. An ass-good 14 year old can be giving constructive criticism to captain three-PHD and be none the wiser. The abstraction of the Internet facilitates fierce collaboration without traditional stigmas of race, education, age, nationality, and gender.
4. People like free things, and Transmedia exercises should inherently be Creative Commonsed and more or less free to be consumed. Most emerging writers aren't making money on their fiction anyway (as most publishers just do the contributor copy thing these days), so it shouldn't be a hard leap to make your content available free of charge. Plus somewhere down the road, if/when you do get real popular, I'm sure someone (if not just LuLu) will want to sell your internet-published serialized book. And then you'll have your $20 monthly royalty checks.
   
5. Such communities can operate/become part of your favorite social networking application. Why not have a Facebook group dedicated to writing stories about people with chronic nightmares about having a bad case of Pickle farts?
6. And when Joe Average starts reading these facebook stories, perhaps, he too will join our ranks and churn out his own pickle fart nightmare. Even if Joe's story isn't destined for a Pushcart, it's a lurch in the right direction, a win for literacy.

No, Transmedia isn't perfect. There are lots of potential pitfalls here as well. But the scope of our problem with fiction isn't that it's dying, rather the format we are used to is starting to break down. Too many people are too connected to the Net to be bothered with print reading. Fiction isn't dying, but a change in gameplan is needed. And as I continue to mull over the status of my own writing, and where I want to see myself as an author, more and more the thought becomes--Transmedia is the only way to go.