Alright. I’ve got to admit it. Twitterature bothers me.

You can read my original post about it here.

I’ll admit that the book could be funny, after all there’s clearly a bit of humor that has gone into its production, however I dislike the way this book was put together and marketed.  It seems to me in poor taste that a couple of undergraduates will make money off of what are essentially low-quality CliffsNotes.  It also seems in poor taste to me that Penguin’s website for the book only hints at the comedy, while also strongly pushing the notion that shortened, comedic, and easy-to-read blurbs about literary classics are more accessible and enjoyable for the modern reader.

The only reason I’m making yet another post about this book is this comment I received on my earlier post on the subject:

“Just now saw this. It’s quite inaccurate. First, the Guardian “slam” was posted in June 2009, when Twitterature was first announced. The book wasn’t published until November in the UK and December in the US. So Ms Pauli couldn’t know what she was talking about, as there wasn’t a book to read. The site, as it was, was clearly marked as a holding place for an updated site — which now has a few examples of Twitterature (though not so much as to make buying the book moot; one need not apologize for wanting to make a little money from having intelligent fun), and it has been since totally redesigned. There’s also a long list of the overwhelmingly positive press the book’s received. Ms Pauli’s comments smack of absolute certainty in the absolute absence of fact. And you simply passed on the misinformation. Now, you may read the book and not like it; that’s fine. But much effort was put into the book, like the authors having read all but one of the 81 books they repurposed using the twitter haiku. Bottom line: this is a humor book. It doesn’t threaten our literary canon. And anyone who can’t see that, well … just takes themself way too seriously.

“PS: While slamming a very orginal idea, Ms Pauli, in the same breath, solicits more of the same, asking readers to submit their attempts at twitterature. Eating one’s cake and having it, too? Precisely.”

Firstly, it seems totally unnecessary to direct most of these comments at me, when most of his frustrations lie with the author of the Guardian article on Twitterature which I had linked to. After all, knowing your audience is one of the key components of writing good literature. Anyhow, just to respond to his comments, I don’t believe that either myself or Ms. Pauli claimed to have read Twitterature before we blogged about it. For the record, I STILL haven’t read it (though if the authors would like to send me a review copy, I’d be happy to poke through it and make some comments) but that doesn’t make me feel as though I don’t have the right to criticize the idea behind the book.

Furthermore, the authors of this book (and Bob, the commenter above) are clearly missing the point of Twitter. Twitter is an online, real time feed of updates that all must be 140 characters or less. Publishing in print a volume containing summaries of literary classics in 20 tweets or less is hardly the same thing. Firstly, they’re not tweets, because they’re not online, and they’re not accessible to everyone. They’re not posted to Twitter (unless the authors are trying to make the argument that every typed phrase under 140 characters is a tweet, which seems like a bold claim). Secondly, constraining each classic to 20 tweets or less totally destroys the point of likening this to Twitter in the first place. As far as I’m concerned, rewriting literary classics in pithy, 2800 character or less blurbs has nothing to do with Twitter, and it seems a whole lot more like a 9th grade humanities exercise than a book I’d like to be reading.

However. That may not even be my biggest beef with this whole thing. The worst thing about Twitterature, which I didn’t even know until I read this comment from Bob, is that the authors didn’t even read all of the books that they summarized. Which classic did they decide wasn’t worth their time, I wonder, and what did they do? Read Sparknotes? Bob may think that reading 80 of the 81 books summarized qualifies as “much effort” but I don’t. Clearly, Bob, you’ve never talked to someone doing their doctoral research.

So. Are YOU going to read Twitterature? I’m sure listening to the controversy surrounding the novel (novel?) has made it seem intriguing, however I strongly dislike the idea of promoting this kind of writing and this kind of marketing.  The cover of the book even has an enormous grammatical error sprawled right across it (though I’m not sure who blame more–Wall Street for printing it, or Penguin for re-printing it).  What are we paying editors for these days?

And when I say I dislike how the book is marketed, I don’t mean simply that I dislike their use of the Twitter name to get attention without actually following any of the guidelines that make Twitter Twitter.  I also mean that I dislike that the promotion of the book focuses more on the simplicity of the text than on the comedy therein.

“Penguin’s founder Allen Lane took the view that there was a huge untapped readership for great works of literature, so he set about making the classics available to them in cheap editions that the majority of people could actually afford. Hardbacks became paperbacks; huge books became pocket-size. Twitterature takes this logic and pushes it one step further: it reduces the contents, too.”

I have no problem with making books cheaper so more people can read them, but I do have a problem with the idea that condensing great works of literature to make them more accessible is the next step in a logical progression.  I find it dubious that two students from the University of Chicago think that great works of literature need to be dumbed down for the masses, yet this seems to be how the book is advertised.

Perhaps Twitterature is a hilarious book.  I wouldn’t know, having not read it.  However, the fact that the book misuses the name Twitter, markets itself as a serious rework of literary masterpieces when it’s really just a series of comedic re-tellings, and that the authors didn’t even read all of the books they summarized makes me feel strongly prejudiced against this book.   It’s your choice, dear reader.