21 Century Literature Syllabi
By Robert Nagle
Here’s Robert Lanham’s Internet-Age Writing Syllabus:
Students will analyze the publishing industry and learn how to be more innovative than the bards of yesteryear. They’ll be asked to consider, for instance, Thomas Pynchon. How much more successful would Gravity’s Rainbow have been if it were two paragraphs long and posted on a blog beneath a picture of scantily clad coeds? And why not add a Google search box? Or what if Susan Sontag had friended 10 million people on Facebook and then published a shorter version of The Volcano Lover as a status update: "Susan thinks a volcano is a great metaphor for primal passion. Also, streak of my hair turning white—d’oh!"
(By the way, I visited the McSweeney’s booth at SXSW last year. Apparently I had assumed that McSweeney’s was a net-only publisher. In fact, not only do they produce lots of print books, the books I saw were some of the most beautiful and exquisitely designed books I had ever come across. I wanted to hold every one of them and buy the whole lot. Unfortunately you can’t really appreciate the books as objects by looking at an online store).
Here’s a comic video about ebook business models . Produced by Mediocre Films.
More seriously, I just noticed that Blip.tv has the TOC 2009 panel videos. See for example the video of Rise of ebook panel, featuring David Rothman, Mark Coker, April Hamilton, Joe Wikert. These should be familiar names to people who follow this blog. Thanks to O’Reilly for posting these vids.
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