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Hey, Writers on Twitter: Stop Being So Nice to One Another
By Jacob Silverman | Posted Saturday, Aug. 4, 2012, at 12:03 AM ET Slate.com
Against Enthusiasm
The epidemic of niceness in online book culture.
The writer Emma Straub has 9,192 Twitter followers. That might seem like a lot for an author whose first novel,
, hasnt even come out yet. But Emma Straub is really good at Twitter. Shes funny Laura Lamonts Life in Pictures
and charming and evinces great enthusiasm for the books and stories of the fellow authors and critics in her social
sphere. Outside of Twitter, Straub writes for many bookish publications, she's the daughter of the novelist Peter
Straub, and she runs a small design outfit with her husband that's made posters for everyone from Passion Pit to
Jonathan Lethem.
The other day, Straub posted a picture of herself wearing a big flowery crown and holding a hot-off-the-presses copy
of her new novel. She signed the post, Yours, in love with everyone, Emma. On Twitter and Tumblr, the news was
RTd and Liked and responded to with great excitement by friends and fellow writers and fans, including the Twitter
feed of the literary website the Rumpus; followers of Straub on Facebook know that the site has already picked the
book for their monthly book club.
But lets say youre part of this web of writers, fiction-lovers, literary editors, and readers in the social-media world,
and youre assigned a review of . What if you dont like it? Or what if you like it, but Laura Lamont's Life in Pictures
not unreservedly? Are you willing to say so? Would you be willing to critique Straubs novel after watching her life
scroll out on social media over the last yearindeed, after likely being the recipient or admirer of some small word
or act of kindness on Straubs part?
To the uninitiated, this might seem immaterial, or like the kind of navel-gazing tabulation of credentials that can
make the New York literary world insufferable. As a relatively recent arrival to New York, I can say that both are
true. But it also matters, because the situation of someone like Straub epitomizes the mutual admiration society that
is today's literary culture, particularly online.
Im using Straub, of course, as an illustrative example rather than as a subject of critique. (I could have begun this
essay with scores of other authors with recent or forthcoming books who are also engaged users of social media,
from Jami Attenberg to Nathan Englander to Cheryl Strayed to J. Robert Lennon.) I havent read Straubs novel, and
indeed early reviews have been (presumably honestly) positive. And Im not suggesting that Straubs online persona
is disingenuous in the leastshe seems legitimately delightful, and what is social media for if not making
connections with people interested in the same things as you? But if you spend time in the literary Twitter- or
blogospheres, you'll be positively besieged by amiability, by a relentless enthusiasm that might have you believing
that all new books are wonderful and that every writer is every other writer's biggest fan. It's not only shallow, it's
untrue, and it's having a chilling effect on literary culture, creating an environment where writers are vaunted for
their personal biographies or their online followings rather than for their work on the page.
Whereas critics once performed one role in print and another in lifeRebecca West could savage someone's book in
the morning and dine with him in the eveningsocial media has collapsed these barriers. Moreover, social media's
centrifugal forces of approbationretweets, likes, favorites, and the self-consciousness that accompanies each public
utterancemake any critique stick out sorely.
Not to share in the lit world's online slumber party can seem strange and mark a person as unlikable or (a worse
offense in this age) unfollowable. This kind of rationalization might mostly take place in our lizard brains, but I'd
argue that it's the reason why the literary worlda famously insular community to begin withhas become mired in
clubbiness and glad-handing.
And why not, you might say. Why shouldnt writers and lovers of literature construct an environment that's wholly
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comfortable and safe? When your time comes, when your book is published or you finally land that big feature, don't
you want some applause too? But that constant applause is making it harder and harder to hear the voices of
dissentthe skeptical, cranky criticisms that may be painful for writers to experience but that make for a vibrant,
useful literary culture.
In recent years, the symbiotic fields of journalism and publishing have been particularly adept at stoking fears of
their own demise, as they prepare to kneel before the moneyed monoliths of Google and Amazon. But unlike
journalism, publishing is actually doing not badlynot well, you might say, but certainly not in a spiraling decline.
Boosted by self-publishing, book sales are relatively stable; e-books have taken off; and the industry seems to have
learned some lessons from the music business, whose Luddite failure to embrace digital distribution in the early
aughts stands as the media industry's pre-eminent cautionary tale. Where publishing is endangered is in criticism and
coverage, in the culture that should buttress it.
Though books pages have evaporated from newspapers over the last decade, blogs, Web magazines, and journals run
on shoestring budgetsplaces like the , the , , and the Quarterly Conversation Boston Review Full Stop Los Angeles
are springing up to take their place, along with some enduring legacy brands. (The Review of Books New York
blog is often as good as anything in its print edition.) Review of Books
But the atomization of literary journalismand the attendant problem of getting paid for ithas led to its being seen
as embattled. Reviewers have responded by circling the wagons, apparently thinking that they will catch more
readers (and institutional support) with honey than with argument, dissent, or flair. Editors are complicit too, as some
publications don't publish negative reviews at all, treating even considered pans as hatchet jobs. s Lev Time
Grossman has said that he wont review books he doesnt like. He recently published an essay titled I Hate This
Book So Much: A Meditation, which he drained of any details that might be used to identify the book or the writer.
For quite some time, NPR.orgs main books feature was called Books We Like, and negative reviews were
discouraged; critical voices have since slowly seeped into the site but are still rare. Other outlets milk page views
(and Amazon affiliate fees) from slideshows, listicles, and guest posts from famous authors that read like repurposed
jacket copy. Each of these is a victory for a publicist, but not for readers.
Reviewers shouldn't be recommendation machines, yet we have settled for that role, in part because the solicitous
communalism of Twitter encourages it. Our virtue over the algorithms of Amazon and Barnes & Noble, and the
amateurism (some of it quite good and useful) of sites like GoodReads, is that we are professionals with shaded,
informed opinions. We are paid to be skeptical, even pugilistic, so that our enthusiasms count for more when theyre
well earned. Todays reviewers tend to lionize the old talk-show dustups between William F. Buckley and Gore
Vidal or Noam Chomsky (the videos are on YouTube), but theyre unwilling to engage in that kind of intellectual
combat themselves.* They praise the bellicosity of Norman Mailer and Pauline Kael, but mostly from afar. Mailer
and Kael are your rebellious high school friends: objects of worship, perhaps, but not emulation. After all, its all so
messy, and someone might get hurt.
Instead, cloying niceness and blind enthusiasm are the dominant sentiments. As if mirroring the surrounding culture,
biting criticism has become synonymous with offense; everything is personalones affection for a book is
interchangeable with ones feelings about its author as a person. Critics gush in anticipation for books they havent
yet read; they <3 so-and-so writer, tagging the authors Twitter handle so that he or she knows it, too; they exhaust
themselves with outbursts of all-caps praise, because thats how you boost your follower count and affirm your place
in the back-slapping community that is the literary web. And, of course, critics, most of them freelance and hungry
for work, want to appeal to fans and readers as well; so to connect with them, they must become them.
Twitter and Tumblr form the superstructure of todays literary world. The salons and independent bookstores are
disappearing, so this is where we congregate, allowing us to collapse geography at the expense of solitary thinking.
This is where links are passed around, recommendations exchanged, news spread, contacts and friendships made. It
is also where everyone is selling himself and where debate and dissent are easily snuffed. As litblogger Mark
Athitakis recently tweeted, Twitter defaults into an affirmation engine. It's easier to enthuse than discuss.
But that affirmation is the habitual gesture of the Internet. We like, favorite, and heart all day; it is a show of support
and agreement, as well as a small plea for attention: On Tumblr, which Look at me, I liked this too. Follow back?
has become a favorite home for writers and has taken on the role of a literary curator, promoting content and
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sponsoring events, dissent is engineered out of the product. We dont want to allow you to have your feelings hurt
on Tumblr, a company designer recently told the . David Karp, Tumblrs founder, New York Times Magazine
enthused about the sites heart icon: Everybody loves everybody, through the chain.
The problem with Liking is that its a critical dead-end, a conversation nonstarter. Its opinion without evidenceor,
really, posture without opinion. For every +1, THIS, or <3 we offer next to someones fawning tweet, a
feeling is expressed without saying much at all. And in the next review or essay, it will show.
A better literary culture would be one that's not so dependent on personal esteem and mutual reinforcement. It would
not treat offense or disagreement as toxic. We wouldn't want so badly to be liked above all. We'd tolerate barbed
reviews, some quarrels, and blistering critiques, because they make our culture more interesting and because they are
often more sincere reflections of our passions. If we all think more and enthuse less, when I do truly love Laura
, youll be more likely to believe me. Lamonts Life in Pictures
This article originally referred to William F. Buckley by his sons name, Christopher Correction, Aug. 3, 2012:
Buckley. (Return to the corrected sentence.)