A Matter of Volume

Last August, something very important happened: I started listening to novels by Anthony Trollope. You might not think that "started listening to novels by Anthony Trollope" would be a major life event, but you would be wrong. Or at least you should be wrong, because I have personally found it to be life-changing. Since that time, Trollope has made up approximately 20% of my personality, with the remaining 80% being divided amongst tennis, my cat, and of course The Gilded Age.*

I know I've mentioned Trollope in at least two newsletters before, so if you've been paying attention you're probably not surprised to read that last sentence (and if you haven't been paying attention: how rude). Up until maybe two or three years ago, I had never been an audiobook person, or a books on tape listener when I was younger. Even podcasts were and still are iffy for me. All the elements have to come together for me to not only enjoy but commit to it, although when I do commit, I go all in. Such has also been the case with audiobooks, and in particular with Trollope novels as read by the late, great Timothy West. I could wax rhapsodic about Trollope – the way his characters seem to be real people much more so than with most other authors of his era but really of any era, with foibles and flaws and desires; the way this is surprisingly true of his female characters most especially; the way he seems to take real delight in the characters he creates and lets them be their own complex little selves across incredible overlapping galaxies of existence; the way as a narrator he speaks directly to the reader, often spoiling his own plots at the start of the novel without somehow taking away from any of the pleasure the reader has in those same plots as they unfold – and about Timothy West's magnificent characterizations and expressive reading style. But just as this is (unfortunately) not a newsletter about The Gilded Age, this is also (sadly) not a newsletter about Victorian literature. So I will attempt to get to the point.

Well, before I do, I should at least give a little more information. You probably know that in the 19th Century, many novels were published as serials, both in standalone installments as well as in existing weekly or monthly periodicals. Serialized literature had been around for a while, but only with the publication of Charles Dickens' The Pickwick Papers did it become a popular and viable format, as well as one that indicated the importance of the author. Many of the era's most famous authors and works first appeared in serialized format, including Dickens, Henry James, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (in fact Sherlock Holmes first appeared in serial form), Alexandre Dumas, Wilkie Collins (he invented the detective novel), Harriet Beecher Stowe, and, of course, Trollope. What set Trollope apart, however, was something he revealed in his autobiography, published posthumously: He wrote following a strict schedule and daily writing quota, and he did so for money.

To be clear, all of these writers were paid for their work, and often paid handsomely. In fact, authors were paid by line and by installment or episode, so if a novel turned out to be very popular, the author was encouraged to keep the novel going. You probably wondered why so many novels from this era are very long, and now you know! But not all writers were as fast or as prolific as someone like Dumas or Trollope. None of them admitted they adhered to writing a set number of words every single day, and they absolutely did not admit they wrote specifically for money. Even though all of these authors appeared in the most celebrated, commercial publications of their day and were paid based on how popular and how long their novels were, the idea that a writer followed a schedule rather than waited for inspiration to strike – for the muse to visit! – was anathema. So much so that this revelation seriously damaged Trollope's reputation as a writer.

Over time, this publishing model faded from prominence, in large part due – surprise, surprise – to the emergence of broadcasting. This created a sort of division in format: Entertainment and serialized fiction went to radio and television, while newspapers and magazines turned more to news and nonfiction. Obviously there were overlaps and the divide wasn't strict, since we have news on radio and TV, as well as fiction available in some magazines. Still, the decline of serialized fiction in print (or at least the decline of text-only serialized fiction, since comics, graphic novels, and manga are exceptions) and the rise of serialized fiction via broadcast hasn't reversed over the past century. Not even the emergence of the web changed it much, even though blogs obviously became such a massive outlet for writing and would have lent themselves well to serialized fiction. With few exceptions, it's interesting that serialized fiction in an audio format never much recovered from the decline of radio even with the resurgence of audio broadcast in the form of podcasts, and it's interesting to think as well that streaming made many shows serialized-in-name-only, since episodes are often released all at once and can be binged.

Sorry, I said I would get to the point, and I clearly haven't yet. To be honest, I'm not even sure what the point is this week, which unfortunately I mean both in respect to this newsletter and in a more [waves hands] general sense. Over the past few months, I've obviously thought a lot about writing and publishing, about readers and cultural trends, about commercial and creative endeavors, and obviously about building an audience and having consistent output that, if not serialized, is at least part of a bigger whole. I've thought about how technological advancements lead to changes in behaviors, and vice versa. I've certainly thought a lot about what kind of creator thrives in our current environment, as well as what kind of consumer. And then, over the past few weeks, I've thought about how much I would really like a break. Not even a vacation, although I could honestly use one as it's been a few years since I had a holiday that lasted more than four days. Just... a break. A few weeks of not writing a newsletter, a few weeks of avoiding the constant barrage of other newsletters, a few weeks of reading a very long Victorian novel or of dedicated writing on the thing I'm supposed to finish.

You might say to me, "Leah, you don't have to write this newsletter. This is something you're doing by choice." You'd be partly right. Certainly this newsletter is something I decided to do on my own time, and I do it for free, although thank you to the lovely people who opt in to paying for it since writing is work. But in the world we inhabit, on the internet we have built, is this something I do entirely by choice or entirely for pleasure? Twenty five years ago, on a blog, it would have been. Even now I write these installments to work through some of the ideas that are a part of my larger project. But can I simply opt out of having an online presence altogether if I want to write, especially in our current media and publishing landscape? And then, if I do keep at this, will I be able to make my voice heard? Do I have a way of knowing anyone can hear me, or is everyone out there as overwhelmed by everyone else yelling as I am?

One of the earlier promises of the internet – certainly one of the promises of the early web – was that it was the great democratizer. Gatekeepers would be knocked down. Voices that had historically been silenced or marginalized would be heard. Anyone could create, share, and build something of their own, be it a presence, a career, an audience, a brand. In some respects, these promises have been true, or at least were true for a while. Bloggers and then influencers challenged or even upended the status quo of many an industry, as most famously happened with fashion bloggers and photographers. Audiences, writers, and publications broke through many traditional barriers and gatekeepers. I can more easily find publications and creators from around the world on a wide range of topics than I could pre-web, and at least anecdotally I find the contributors and subjects of mainstream publications more varied and diverse than in prior decades.

But with every technological or cultural shift there are unexpected changes, and we've certainly experienced those with the internet. I guess no one sat and considered what it might be like if we could hear everyone's voice, all the time, at top volume. No one stopped to think that, as annoying as gatekeepers are, they were probably filtering out some of the stuff it wasn't worth our while to read, thus saving us from having to assess everything on our own or train algorithms or wonder what we were missing. We didn't think so much about what it would be like to always have the digital equivalent of a stack of unread New Yorker magazines from half the people we know, in the form of newsletters, blogs, tweets, Instagram posts, whatever. And I don't think we ever realized that democratization or no, in every age there are people who become most visible not always because they're the best but sometimes because they're best suited to the age.

This is no shade to Trollope, since I obviously love him, but he was prolific and thus well-suited to building an audience through serialized fiction. His ability to work on a strict schedule and quickly churn out words every day gave him a huge advantage. Dumas was the same. Not all writers fared as well, because the demands of weekly or monthly installments required working regularly and often at a pace they weren't equipped to handle. Similarly, a lot of wonderful writers today are great at churning out smart columns and at maintaining a decent online presence. But there are also plenty who excel at virality or at self-promotion, at consistently being the most vocal or loudest person on social media, or at relentlessly drawing the conversation back to themselves. They are suited to the age in a way many others are not, and those others suffer. I actually think Trollope would have been an exceptional blogger and would have killed at Twitter (in the pre-hellscape days). Honestly maybe I should try to be more like Trollope.

At least readers in Trollope's day, while they may have had many periodicals to choose from, didn't have to keep track of all the different things they want to read on every possible platform across the content-generating universe. Funny that I mentioned last August, because that's also when I briefly started working on a project with Pocket, the late, great "read-it-later" app that Mozilla bought ten years ago and sunset earlier this year. In the original days of Pocket, before it was acquired by Mozilla, it also had a social feature that allowed you to recommend articles to your followers. I never understood why Mozilla did away with this feature after they acquired the app, because while I think democratization of content is great as a theoretical concept, in practice I want help, both in promoting/sharing the content I create and in navigating/learning about/organizing the content I want to consume.

I think what interests me most in all this (besides Trollope) is thinking about how the technologies we build change the way content is created and the way content is consumed, as well as the types of voices it manages to elevate. We talk about all of this in broad brushstrokes when it comes to a platform like Substack, with their whole Nazi problem, but the Nazi problem is indicative of some other deeper, pre-existing problem. We've built systems that reward different kinds of volume: The louder and more persistent you are, the more presence you can command. Humans gatekeep, but our newer systems can be gamed in other ways, which makes them fallible too.

Just like I don't have a point this week, I don't have an answer, but I do have over 2000 words, so maybe we'll call it a win. I know Trollope would.

Until next Wednesday, I think. Although I may actually take a week or two break, and recycle some of the MM posts from the earliest days. We'll see!

Lx

*You will be happy but probably not surprised to learn that Julian Fellowes, creator of The Gilded Age, is a major Trollope fan.