“The Death of the Novel has Been Greatly Exaggerated”: Kathleen Fitzpatrick Says it All
Just wanted to pass along this short and thoughtful interview with Kathleen Fitzpatrick, associate professor of media studies at Pomona College and one of the founders of the digital scholarly network MediaCommons recently published in the NEH Humanities Magazine. Fitzpatrick is one of a growing number of scholars who are embracing the changing media landscape instead of pushing back on it with fear and anxiety.
It’s not a lengthy interview, and I’d encourage you to read the whole thing. However, there are two parts I want to zero in on…
How new media offers opportunities to scholarship, rather than taking them away:
You’ve been thinking about the state of scholarly publishing. What are the current problems?
The short answer is that the current system of scholarly publishing is dying, and dying fast; the business model under which much of it operates is utterly unsustainable, and the parts that are sustainable are destroying the budgets of our libraries. Plus, the systems of valuation and assessment through which scholarship operates today are hindering rather than promoting real innovation. (I’m obviously really cheery on this subject.)
What would your ideal scholarly press look like?
First off, I don’t want it to be a press. It should be an all-digital, open access network, based in the university but structured as an academic unit rather than as a revenue center. It should use an open, communal process of post-publication peer review. It should be brave—and scary. My dean told me after I got tenure that he hoped my next project would startle and confuse him. That’s what I want from the next generation of scholarly publishing.
Why literature is not in jeopardy:
The first video MTV aired was the Buggles’ “Video Killed the Radio Star.” Has the television killed the novel?
The death of the novel has been greatly exaggerated. If not, how could we possibly have a project like Infinite Summer, in which hundreds of people are reading Infinite Jest together?
Or will the Internet kill it?
It might change it, but it won’t kill it. In fact, the Internet gives the lie to many of our anxieties about the state of reading right now; so many people are reading and writing so much online that it becomes crystal clear that ‘no one reads anymore’ really means ‘no one reads anything I think is good anymore.’
With all of the emphasis on digital will anyone read an actual book made of paper in twenty years?
Absolutely! The actual book form isn’t dying, any more than radio died when television came along. It’s just that radio developed a particular niche that wasn’t replicated by television. Similarly, books will survive, but the kinds of things we want to read in print versus the kinds of things we want to read digitally will gradually differentiate.
Well, hooray to all of this. As an e-book lover and a social media marketer, I feel like I’m called upon fairly frequently to defend the changing media space in which I play. It’s always nice to read reasoned calls to just RELAX about things a bit and then go forth and INNOVATE. Yes, it’s hard for writers, readers, marketers and consumers to cut through the signal right now. But I think we’re working on adapting the right filters. In the meantime, I’m happy to be one of the damn lot of scribbling women on the internet.
And as a lapsed academic, it’s really great to see that leaders like Fitzpatrick have emerged from inside the Academy.
Read the whole interview!
