{"id":10832,"date":"2019-05-03T16:35:54","date_gmt":"2019-05-03T14:35:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cognitionandculture.local\/?p=10832"},"modified":"2023-08-07T12:03:44","modified_gmt":"2023-08-07T10:03:44","slug":"why-read-a-big-book-quantitative-relevance-in-the-attention-economy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cognitionandculture.local\/blogs\/inge-van-de-ven\/why-read-a-big-book-quantitative-relevance-in-the-attention-economy\/","title":{"rendered":"Why read a big book? Quantitative Relevance in the Attention Economy"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

In a 2016 essay in the Chronicle of Higher Education<\/em> that functioned as a teaser for her book Making Literature Now<\/em>, Amy Hungerford, Professor of English, boldly revealed that she refused to read David Foster Wallace\u2019s Infinite Jest<\/em>, the notorious thousand-page monster novel. Hungerford has her reasons. Among others, including misogyny and the undeserved hype created by the commercial publishing industry, she mentions the constraints on her reading time in defense of her choice of not allotting a month of her life to reading this doorstopper. She refers to Gabriel Zaid, author of So Many Books: Reading and Publishing in an Age of Abundance <\/em>(2003), who \u201cargues that excessively long books are a form of undemocratic dominance that impoverishes the public discourse by reducing the airtime shared among others\u201d (Hungerford 2016). In her defense of not reading, Hungerford evokes the need for pragmatic resource allocation.<\/p>\n\n\n

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This makes sense. In our present-day\ninformation age, we are bombarded with unprecedented volumes of input from\ndifferent channels. Especially in today\u2019s \u2018attention economy\u2019 (Fairchild 2007),\nthe enormous amounts of texts available, vying for our eyes and brains with\nother forms of information and entertainment, make the modulation and\nallocation of attention a daily-faced issue. The attention economy is a notion\nthat originated in marketing, describing the principle where we assign value to\nsomething according to its capacity to attract views, clicks, likes, and\nshares\u2014these are currency in a world saturated with media. Information is not\nscarce by any means: cognitive effort, energy, time and most importantly,\nattentional resources, are. By this logic, no reader in her right mind should\nspend a month immersed in Wallace, or Pynchon, or Vollmann. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Except that we do. These last decades\nhave witnessed the publication of exceedingly large works, from P\u00e9ter N\u00e1das\u2019s Parallel\nStories<\/em> (2005) to Eleanor Catton\u2019s The Luminaries <\/em>(2013). Also,\nunder the influence of sophisticated forms like narratively complex TV-series,\nwe are witnessing a revival of the serialized novel as an innovative form,\nshorn of its long-standing association with \u2018low-brow\u2019 culture. Authors like\nVollmann and Mark Z. Danielewski have applied themselves to extended series of\nliterary novels that take decades to write and that demand exceptional stamina\nfrom authors and readers alike.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Not only has the production of big\nbooks all but ceased with the information age, their reception is also going\nstrong. Blurbs and reviews mention the imposing dimensions of novels like Karl\nOve Knaus\u00e5rd\u2019s or Elna Ferrante\u2019s as an asset<\/em>, as if it were a mark of\nliterary quality in itself, and bookish hipsters walk around with tote bags and\nmugs with the text \u2018I Like Big Books and I Cannot Lie.\u2019 Wherein lies the\nunique, and some might say uniquely anachronistic, appeal of big books in our\nhighly competitive, fast-paced media landscape?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mark O\u2019Connell has expounded an interesting theory about readers\u2019 complex relation to the long, difficult novel (he mentions William Gaddis\u2019s The Recognitions<\/em>). This relation he likens to the phenomenon of the Stockholm syndrome, the survival mechanism by which hostages start to feel a loving connection to their abductors. The victim starts to interpret every little abstention from violence as act of kindness or even love, constructing a good side to the perpetrator in order to cope with the terror of the situation. Admitting that the analogy might be a bit of a stretch, O\u2019Connell points to the imperative posed by the monumental novel\u2019s length, which is part command, and part challenge, a mix of pleasure and frustrations:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The thousand-pager is something you measure yourself against, something you psyche yourself up for and tell yourself you\u2019re going to endure and\/or conquer. And this does, I think, amount to a kind of captivity: once you\u2019ve got to Everest base camp, you really don\u2019t want to pack up your stuff and turn back. (2011)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

This should then explain why \u2018survivors\u2019\nof such novels tend to be more positive in their assessments than is perhaps\nstrictly warranted by their literary merits. After you finished the reading,\nO\u2019Connell believes, there is a true sense of accomplishment that stems as much\nfrom your own sense of achievement in having finished (\u2018conquered\u2019) the work,\nas the author\u2019s achievement in having written it. I think the reverse holds as\nwell: quitting 500 pages in\u2014like I did with Murakami\u2019s 1Q84<\/em>\u2014is a bit\nlike leaving your partner after fifteen years and two kids: you already put in\nso much work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The\nidea that the costs associated with attention and behavior need to be\ncounter-balanced or justified through compensatory payoffs is one that runs\nthrough the social sciences. You see it for instance in economic games,\ninformation theory approaches to, say, language processing; and in Relevance\nTheory, as developed by Dan Sperber and Deirdre Wilson (1985). Relevance theory\ndeals with the allocation of cognitive resources in understanding written and\noral communication. Cognitive effort <\/em>can be\naffected by factors like logical or linguistic complexity, ease of retrieval\nfrom memory, perceptual salience, et cetera. Cognitive effects <\/em>range from providing the answer to\na question, strengthening a pre-existing belief, correcting a mistaken belief,\nto settling a doubt, or suggesting a hypothesis. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The\ndescriptive principles of relevance theory include the so-called Communicative\nPrinciple, which holds that every \u201costensive stimulus\u201d (every linguistic\nutterance addressed to hearers or readers in particular) \u201cconveys a presumption\nof its own optimal relevance,\u201d whether or not this presumption turns out to be\njustified (Sperber & Wilson 2004, 612). Considerations of relevance help in\nthe inferential process, as they guide the comprehension process towards an\ninterpretation that fulfils expectations of relevance. Relevance is then the\ntrade-off or balance between cognitive effort and cognitive effect; the higher\nthe relevance, the more beneficial an attempt at interpretation is (Wilson\n& Sperber 1986; 2004). We expect what we are told or what we read to bring\nsufficient effect to be worthy of our attention, without causing us unnecessary\neffort of comprehension.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If we now apply these insights to the monumental\nnovels under discussion, as has been done before with literary style (Cave\n& Wilson 20018) and modern art (McCallum et. al. 2019), we\ncould say that here, a quantitative concept of relevance is at work. The material<\/em> dimensions of these texts and\ntheir carriers are expected to metonymically point to what they \u2018contain\u2019. We\noften assume that big novels are large-scale both literally and sensorially,\nbecause they are in narrative scope and themes, implying a correlation between\nquantity and quality, which Bertram E. Jessup has called \u201caesthetic size.\u201d\nAesthetic size explains why we \u201cspeak with evaluative intent of a large canvas,\na big building, a long poem, a major composition and a sustained performance\u201d\n(1950, 31). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, the\nsheer material dimensions weight, length, bulk, size, and number of pages steer\nour interpretations, even before the reading experience, towards a readiness to\nassume they will have something important to say that is not containable in\nbooks of normal size. We suspect them to be worth the trouble, to be not unnecessarily<\/em> big and complicated. We\nexpect them be of what Aristotle (1968) called \u2018appropriate size\u2019. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The cognitive effort, here, lies\nmostly in our scarce attentional resources, and the cognitive effect is that of\nan extraordinary reading experience\u2014part pain, part pleasure. In an interview conducted by K\u00e1ri Driscoll and me,\nDanielewski not only admitted to placing such high demands on his readers, but\nalso suggested these readers should be warned: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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You need a lot of imagination. You need a lot of skill. One of the things I\u2019ve been toying with recently as I\u2019m finishing volume five of The Familiar <\/em>is to actually create a kind of reader rating system that somehow alerts readers, like skiers, that you are on a difficult trail. Because I feel the way that books are currently presented, everyone assumes, or in some degree feels entitled to be able to read everything that\u2019s put out there. And I feel it\u2019s a disservice to people who are good readers, who spend a great deal of time reading difficult books and can make their way through hard texts. \u2026 <\/em>It\u2019s a lot to ask that of readers. (2018, 149)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

That would be a clever ruse to carve out, and then appeal to, an elitist, skilled audience seeking to differentiate themselves from the Twilight<\/em> or Hunger Games<\/em> crowd. This high demand on readers\u2019 skills makes his works an informative\u2014albeit, in this case, failed [1]\u2014experiment in to what extent an audience can be seduced to devote time to experimental serialized literature within an attention economy. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

David Letzler (2017) has even\nentertained the intriguing (yet not empirically tested) hypothesis that\n\u2018meganovels\u2019 with a high degree of \u2018useless\u2019 text (or cruft, in his parlance),\ncould offer a training in the allocation of attention. In his interpretation,\nnovels like Infinite Jest<\/em> or House of Leaves <\/em>do cause unnecessary\neffort in terms of message<\/em>, asking us to plow through pages and pages of\nirrelevant gibberish. But in doing so, they have the cognitive benefit of\nhoning our skills in the allocation of attentional resources\u2014skills that are of\nundeniable import today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When I choose to\ndevote my precious leisure time to high cost\/high benefits stimuli like reading\nBola\u00f1o\u2019s 2666<\/em>, this will obviously\ndetract from consuming many low cost\/low benefits stimuli, such as reading an\narticle titled \u201c24 Everyday Things You Never Even Knew Had A Purpose\u201d, or\nbinge-watching Crazy Ex-Girlfriend <\/em>on\nNetflix. This comes to down strategy: the latter are less risky, whereas the\nformer necessarily entails a gamble and hinges on a willingness to make more\nmeaningful investment, with the risk of being let down (those hours with 1Q84<\/em> or Joshua Cohen\u2019s Witz<\/em> that I\u2019ll never get back). This\nrisk is especially present in the case of contemporary instead of canonical\nnovels, as we probably trust that taking a chance on Crime and Punishment<\/em> could not be a complete waste of time. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In conclusion, relevance theory helps answer the question why and how big books still enter in the competition for our attention, just like (and with!) our vacation pics on Instagram and cat videos on YouTube. If I do not, like Hungerford, say no to novels like Infinite Jest<\/em>, it might just be that my investment of effort leads me to search for additional inferences that justify the effort. \u2018I Like Big Books\u2019 becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.<\/p>\n\n\n

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References <\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Aristotle. On the Art of Fiction:\n\u201cThe Poetics.\u201d<\/em> Trans. L.J. Potts. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1968.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

O\u2019Connell, Mark. \u201cThe Stockholm Syndrome Theory of Long\nNovels.\u201d The Millions<\/em>, 16-05-2011.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hungerford, Amy. \u201cOn Refusing to\nRead.\u201d The Chronicle of Higher Education<\/em>, 11-09-2016.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cave,\nT., and D. Wilson. Reading Beyond the Code<\/em>. Literature and Relevance\nTheory. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2018.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Driscoll, Kari, & Inge van de Ven \u201cBook Presence and Feline Absence: A\nConversation with Mark Z. Danielewski.\u201d Book Presence in a Digital Age<\/em>, eds. K\u00e1ri Driscoll and Jessica Pressman. London: Bloomsbury.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fairchild, Charles. 2007. \u201cBuilding the Authentic Celebrity: The \u2018Idol\u2019 Phenomenon in\nthe Attention Economy.\u201d Popular Music and Society <\/em>30, no. 3: 355 \u2013 75.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jessup,\nBertram E. \u201cAesthetic Size.\u201d The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism<\/em>\n9.1, 1950. 31-38. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Letzler, David. The Cruft of Fiction<\/em>.\nMega-novels and the Science of Paying Attention. Lincoln: University of\nNebraska Press, 2017.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

McCallum, Katie, et al. \u201cCognition, Emphasis,\nand the Viewer\u2019s Experience of Fine Art.\u201d OSF Preprints, 20 June 2018. Web.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sperber, Dan, & Deirdre Wilson. Relevance: Communication and Cognition<\/em>. Wiley-Blackwell, 1995.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wilson, Deirdre, & Dan Sperber, On Defining\nRelevance. In Philosophical Grounds of Rationality. <\/em>Oxford University\nPress, 1986.243\u2013258. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wilson, Deirdre & Dan Sperber. Relevance Theory. In The Handbook of Pragmatics. <\/em>Oxford: Blackwell, 2004. 607\u2013632. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n[1] Announced as a 27-volume series with two publications per year, further publication of The Familiar<\/em> was put on hold after the first five volumes in 2018, due to insufficient sales numbers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In a 2016 essay in the Chronicle of Higher Education that functioned as a teaser for her book Making Literature Now, Amy Hungerford, Professor of English, boldly revealed that she refused to read David Foster Wallace\u2019s Infinite Jest, the notorious thousand-page monster novel. Hungerford has her reasons. Among others, including misogyny and the undeserved hype created by […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1923,"featured_media":11025,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[292],"tags":[],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nWhy read a big book? 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