Dear author

Malcolm Lawrence (malcolm@wolfenet.com)
Sat, 11 Apr 1998 01:12:17 -0700

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Here's a fascinating article I just found in Salon, all about what
happens when a novelist puts his email address on his book jacket. Can
you imagine being able to zap something off to jdsalinger@cornish.com?

Malcolm

http://www.salonmagazine.com/21st/feature/1998/04/08feature.html

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Salon | 21st: Dear author


3D"Salon"

3D"TIRED!









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T A B L E__T A L K

Hackers: Should you hire them or l= ock them up with nothing but a manual typewriter? Discuss the morality of= hacking in the Digital Culture area of Table Talk

- - - - - - - - - -

R E C E N T L Y

Po= pcorn with your operating system?
By Scott Rosenberg
Microsoft beams its vision of com= puting's future into your local multiplex
(04/07/98)
=

Gene blues
By Jeffrey Obser
Why you should think twice before= betting your life on genetic testing
(04/06/98)

21st Chal= lenge No. 7 Results
By Charlie Varon and Jim Rosenau
Virtual gyms, calculator implants= and other bright ideas for techno-schools
(04/03/98)

Beck= to the future
By Milo Miles
Defying copyright, purveyors of "= recombinant music" use the Net to make new sounds out of old shards
(04/02/98)
=

Mic= rosoft throws in the towel
Salon staff report
Software giant capitulates to gov= ernment, sets new course
(04/01/98)

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BROWSE THE
21ST ARCHIVES

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3D""

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BY PAMELA LiCALZI O'CONNELL | = The first and only letter I ever wrote to an author was to = children's writer Joan Aiken (I loved her "Wolves of Willoughby Chase"). = I was about 10 or 11 and wrote it in careful script on lined paper. When = I was ready to mail it -- could I have figured this out myself? -- I addr= essed it to the company whose name appeared on the copyright page. I don'= t know that I understood the word "publisher."

Weeks went by, then months. But one day, well after I had ceased expec= ting a response, an air-mail letter on periwinkle-blue stationery arrived= =2E A short, typed note thanked me for my letter and agreed with a tremul= ously offered assessment I had made of a particular character.

Even though I was still in the first flush of book love, I sensed that= I had successfully breached, in some small way, the mysterious barrier b= etween reader and author. Nearly 25 years later, I can easily conjure th= at sense of deep satisfaction. Yet, perhaps knowing that I had been ineff= ably lucky that first time, I never attempted to contact a writer I admir= ed again. =

That is, until last year.

A serious fan of what has come to be called Anglo-Indian literature, I= picked up a copy of Vikram Chandra's "Love and= Longing in Bombay." I had heard of Chandra's widely acclaimed debut nove= l, "Red Earth and Pouring Rain," with its monkey-poet narrator. I was eag= er to read him.

"Love and Longing" did not disappoint me. It comprises five long, sump= tuous and occasionally suspenseful stories, all told by a rather mysterio= us civil servant named Subramaniam to his cronies in a bar. As I read it,= though, I kept interrupting myself to revisit the blurb about Chandra on= the book's flap.

I was tantalized, for there, listed quite plainly, was his e-mail addr= ess. It was even phrased as an invitation: "He can be reached by e-mail a= t vchandra@mindspring.com."

He can be reached.

When I finished the book, I wasted no time. I sent him a message. A re= sponse came quickly, no more than a day or two.

Pamela,
Thanks!! I'm glad the book gave you pleasure. I've just started work on= a new novel, so it'll be a while coming ...

Best,
Vikram

In that instant, I felt my relationship to his work change forever -- = though in ways I still find hard to explain.

On one level, I was impressed, amazed even. Take a look through the d= isplays at Barnes & Noble or Borders; you'll find no other examples of l= iterary fiction where an author's e-mail address is supplied. Indeed, you= 'll find few examples of nonfiction with one -- even within the burgeonin= g category of digital culture books.

I imagined that Chandra must have some connection to the computing wor= ld -- a prior career? -- to explain this openness. One of the protagonist= s in "Love and Longing" is a programmer, and the occasional passage had = hinted at an appreciation for technology unusual in a literary novelist. = ("Where screens had scrolled they now snapped, lookups happened in a fla= sh, every process was twice or three times as fast. It was beautiful. She= had gone close to the metal and come out with a kind of perfection.")

I felt restrained from further messaging, though. I didn't want to tak= e advantage of whatever generous impulse had prompted Chandra to make his= address available. And so I tucked his message safely into a folder and = moved on to other books.

A few weeks ago I picked up the paperback version of "Red Earth" at a = book sale. I immediately turned to the back cover. There it was again: th= e same blurb, the same challenge to connect -- that's how I now thought o= f it. I bought the book.

Now I'm reading it and maintaining an e-mail exchange with Chandra at = the same time. My curiosity as to why he included the address and the res= ponse he's received needs to be sated -- I cannot finish the book until I= know.

My first message after a year-long absence elicited a long reply:

Pamela,

You'll have noticed that in both "Love and Longing" and "Red Earth" th= ere's a storyteller who tells stories to an audience. And that the audie= nce talks back. There seemed to me an opportunity, given the technology,= to let my listeners talk to me, to close the circle. If Sanjay the monk= ey and Subramaniam can do it, why not me? ...

So, as "Red Earth" made its way through production, I asked my various= publishers to put my e-mail address on the book. I did meet some resist= ance, especially from my British editor at Faber. He thought it was a da= ngerous thing to do, that I'd be inundated with "psycho mail," and be dis= tracted from my work. Also I think there was some fear that it would be = seen as a gimmicky, new-fangled thing for a literary writer to do. But I= insisted, and finally they all put it in. But in that first Faber editi= on of "Red Earth" the e-mail address is tucked away discreetly on the cop= yright page.

I should say also that before I published these books I kept away the = wolves that pursue close-to-starving graduate students/writers by working= as a computer consultant, programmer and software reviewer. In that wor= ld, it is good form to put your e-mail address in your byline, as you kno= w. So it seemed a natural thing for me to do.

I've since had a steady flow of e-mail from readers all over the world= =2E The overwhelming majority of it is positive. There are thoughtful, = insightful critiques; questions; quick pats on the back. There are alert= s about factual errors and typos; requests for interviews and readings; q= uestions from academics who are working on the texts. There are continui= ng conversations with some of these people. There were even some letters= from actual descendants of Colonel James Sikander Skinner, one of the pr= otagonists in "Red Earth," and this I found extraordinarily moving. Talk= about closing the circle.

The only really scary psycho mail I've ever received came through snai= l mail.

Best,
Vikram

So I had been right, Chandra had some direct knowledge of the tech wor= ld, though his reasons for including his address had as much to do with a= rtistic values as past work habits.

"Closing the circle." Is that possible, or even desirable? Generalizat= ions won't do here. The relationship between author and reader is fraught= with Freudian perils -- there are few things as intensely personal as r= eading. Authors may be justly afraid of allowing any breach of the wall. = Yet readers, given the chance provided by technology, may provide succor = in ways yet to be explored. =

Chandra is willing to find out. From another message:

I think the new technology can have the effect of short-circuiting th= e distances that we've come to accept in the recent past as immutable and= natural. I'm a storyteller; I don't very much like the idea of myself a= s the distant "author," a creature of the Romantic imagination and in som= e ways peculiar to the newly industrializing West. So if the current tec= hnology lets me get around the huge institutional structures of publisher= s, reviewers, big media, and speak more directly to the listeners, I take= the chance ...

I'm sure that there are writers who don't want any such feedback, who = would react with horror to the thought of actually communicating with the= great crowd out there. There's that very persuasive construction of art= ist as solitary prophet, who communes with his or her inspirations and de= mons in the desert, and comes back to gift the populace with an incandesc= ent vision. And then the often-baffled but dazzled audience is properly g= rateful and worshipful. It's a charming narrative, but I'm skeptical. S= anjay the monkey-narrator makes stories out of his own painful history, a= nd through this difficult process, during which he forges several interes= ting things in the smithy of his soul, he comes to some understanding of = his own morally ambiguous actions and troubled times. But he is also ver= y aware that his very life depends on the attentions of his restless and = resistant listeners, who are ruthlessly interested only in their own plea= sures. He describes them collectively as the "monster that I was about t= o face ... this fearful adversary -- an audience."

By contacting Chandra, perhaps I am "ruthlessly" pursuing my own pleas= ures, no more, no less. Instead of waiting for a local reading where I'd = be just one in a crowd, I've inserted myself into his electronic mailbox = and, by extension, his consciousness. =

But he did proffer an invitation. And now my connection to his work feels somehow stronger. I am more aware of the essential role I play as the audience. He has paid me homage. The story d= oes not live without me and those like me. Chandra e-mails:

As I work, as I write, I show the pages I produce to a small group of = people, my sisters, my mother, a couple of friends. These are faces I kn= ow, my family, and I understand what I have to do pull them in, to keep t= hem there. Once the story is out there in the world, it finds its own li= fe in the hands and ears and eyes of that many-headed monster, which is i= mpossible to fully know, or control -- Sanjay's crowd on the maidan outsi= de the house finally breaks up in violence. But these individual voices that come flo= ating in over e-mail, these mark at least some of the turns that the stor= y takes in its passage through the world.


SALON | April 8, 1998

Pamela LiCalzi O'Connell = writes frequently about Net culture.

EDITOR'S NOTE: Several readers wrote back to us to point out other exampl= es of fiction writers who have published e-mail addresses in their books. Th= e earliest cited seems to be Michael Chabon's "Wonde= r Boys," published in 1995.

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3D""



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