Ceux qui s’intéressent au futur de la littérature ne voudront pas manquer cet article publié dans le Village Voice en décembre dernier: Bloggers Vs. an Author: No one Wins.
Il y est question des changements dans le monde de l’édition, des tournées de livre qui tournent horriblement mal et de la rencontre souvent douloureuse entre les auteurs et les blogueurs.
« The state of publishing is such that you can get all these great things, but people don’t talk about the work. They talk about you, » says Strauss. « There used to be serious critics and an audience. . . . Now, the audience is also in the critic business. » The model becomes Amazon, « where any cranks complaining about books can have the same weight as The New York Times. »
This should provide an example of Web democracy in action. But consider the fact that every writer I know nudges his friends and relatives to offset the mob rule by sending their own glowing reviews to Amazon and similar sites. The result is a culture where everything is a five-star book, and everything is fraudulent. It’s not so much democracy but a corruption of the public square, one that doesn’t so much improve writing as it forces each writer to become his own corporate PR department.
For Strauss, the result is a sort of vast, cultural « rot, » extending across art, music, and cinema, as well as writing. « We have created sort of a post-talent age, » where what began as the heroic overthrow of cultural elites has now devolved to the craven capitulation to the mob: « It’s commercial elitism as opposed to intellectual elitism. »
L’article se termine tout de même sur une toute petite note d’espoir à propos de l’apport du Web en général et des blogues.
Yet Hitt still feels that the potential of the blogosphere to revive an older, more valid form of argument far outweighs the weird, angry graffiti.
« The Internet’s returned us all to these sort of 19th-century critics who are trying to judge us by our voice, who are trying to hear the way our soul came through, » says Hitt. « Television just turned us all into courthouse gabbers. [That sort of] punditry is much more awful than anything the blogs have to offer. »