This is a multi-part message in MIME format. --------------E26E98F1C2C91BC26556053D Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit 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 --------------E26E98F1C2C91BC26556053D Content-Type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1; name="08feature.html" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Content-Disposition: inline; filename="08feature.html" Content-Base: "http://www.salonmagazine.com/21st/feat ure/1998/04/08feature.html"
- - - - - - - - - - = 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=
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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.
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:
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:
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:
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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