I am always suspicious of people who use the word "zeitgeist" in daily parlance. So...um...yuck. (Or am I being totally jaded?) Such a different tone from our friend's interview in yesterday's post. Sadly it is the editors who are the buyers, and the agents, the sellers, which means the editors set the tone for today's books. If you can't stomach the read. Here's the upshot: "This fall [HarperCollins Publishers] will publish 21 new hardcover and paperback original titles under the It Books imprint, focusing on pop culture, sports, style and content derived from the Internet, like a planned collection of Twitter posts called Twitter Wit." Oy.
Friday, March 6, 2009
Twitter me Zeitgeist
I am always suspicious of people who use the word "zeitgeist" in daily parlance. So...um...yuck. (Or am I being totally jaded?) Such a different tone from our friend's interview in yesterday's post. Sadly it is the editors who are the buyers, and the agents, the sellers, which means the editors set the tone for today's books. If you can't stomach the read. Here's the upshot: "This fall [HarperCollins Publishers] will publish 21 new hardcover and paperback original titles under the It Books imprint, focusing on pop culture, sports, style and content derived from the Internet, like a planned collection of Twitter posts called Twitter Wit." Oy.
twitter wit.
ReplyDeletethe best and brightest sayings you can get, in 140 characters or less.
don't you see that things are getting more and more dumbed down?
the imbeciles are in control.
"the imbeciles are in control"
ReplyDeletetrue that.
World's Greatest Twit could be the name of a compilation of LROD Comment threads. You know on NM's livejournal there's a whole side commentary about the commments here...
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The whole idea of making a new imprint for every editor who's kissed enough ass is pointless. The public's decision to buy celebrity/internet fluff books is not at all tied to whether or not there is an "it" stamped on the spine. In this economy, fluff books are the first thing to cut back on. You can get fluff for free online, why would anyone need to buy books for this?
It's a vanity. Today's imprint editor is tomorrow's fired-for-poor-sales editor. At best, it's something this Kania woman can put on her resume when she looks for a new job in two years. Good for her.
Ugh. Twitter makes me want to hurl. I have an account, but I almost never use it. And a whole book of it? I think I WOULD hurl.
ReplyDeleteheya isn't twitter fiction a natural evolution from flash fiction???
ReplyDeleteeverybody loves flash. 50 years ago? dey would have thought it was lazy and crazy.
hey how bout long long long fiction. can anyone keep a real narrative in their heads anymore? do people read. or is it all just soundbytes and cereal box reading now.
albert, i think they already have twitter fiction...check duotrope, i think there are some journals that have a 50 word limit on stories.
ReplyDelete50 years ago, Vonnegut was doing flash. Further back, so was Chekhov. They just didn't call it flash then.
ReplyDelete