THE ART OF FICTION - HOW AUDIENCES ARE CHANGING WITH TIME
The general appetite for stories at all stages of seriousness is insatiable, no matter what means they are delivered. Since the invention of movable type in the mid-15th century, the audience for written stories has increased with ever-accelerating rapidity. With years, the development in general literacy which has gone hand in hand with industrialization has increased even further in the past hundred. Public libraries, which date from the mid-19th century, make it possible and normal for millions who can not afford to buy books to read them. Since about 1935, new methods of book production have created a worldwide read public, and have taught people en masse to buy books — in the form of paperbacks — with the same freedom they buy magazines with. It is not uncommon today for a novel to be read within a few years of its original publishing by millions of people all around the world.
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| Noah's Ark, from The Psalter of St. Louis (French, about 1260). Such richly decorated books were made only for wealthy patrons. Until as late as 1715, when the English library above was opened, books in most libraries were chained to the shelves. |
Until just over a century ago, story writers addressed an educated public that was only a small section of the population, numerically. And in this century, novelists such as Henry James, Thomas Mann, Joyce, Proust, and Lawrence wrote for an audience that was at first necessarily small. What they wrote demanded capacities of understanding and appreciation far beyond those that novelists would normally require.
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| Such richly decorated books |
Until as late as 1715, when the English library
above was opened, books in most libraries were
chained to the shelves.
One perception of great art is that because of the high levels of intellect, empathy, and knowledge requested by its audience, it is incapable of being enjoyed by all but a small elite. Those who hold this view fear the constant increase of inferior works that do not require great judgmental qualities and taste for their enjoyment. They believe that standards of artistic excellence will be lowered, and the power to recognize them will be reduced.
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| A15th-century woodcut showing an early printing press. |
One perception of great art is that because of the high levels of intellect, empathy, and knowledge requested by its audience, it is incapable of being enjoyed by all but a small elite. Those who hold this view fear the constant increase of inferior works that do not require great judgmental qualities and taste for their enjoyment. They believe that standards of artistic excellence will be lowered, and the power to recognize them will be reduced.
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| (attributed to Johann Gutenberg of Mainz) |
The reading audience expanded rapidly after the invention of movable type
We can not tell if this is really going to be so, because the problem is completely new. Nevertheless, the probability of its occurring needs to be recognized; it would be ludicrous to believe that in intellect and awareness, to say nothing of knowledge, different human beings will not differ significantly from one another. For while we in the Western world have almost universal schooling, there is nothing near the same proportion of higher education as yet.
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An episode from Tintin, a Belgian comic strip
followed by some 15 million readers. Such comic
strips reach a world-wide audience because they An artwork endures because it speaks from generation to generation to men. Unless book sales are to be taken as a literary quality test, then by now Tolstoy, Dickens, Dostoevski, Balzac, Melville, Jane Austen, and Chekhov have proven more popular than even the most successful bestsellers of our day.
strips reach a world-wide audience because they
tell a story through pictures and a minimum of text.
Modern book production techniques make the world's
classic available to millions in cheap but well-designed
pocket editions-like the range of paperbacks shown on
right, which includes examples from Germany, Spain,
Sweden, China, America, and England.
We need not be too frightened of the sheer scale of the urban population. For one book alone or for a few, this is not an audience; it is an audience for thousands of books. Yes, the mainstream market is made up of several smaller audiences; and the smallest of them may be the most important because it is indeed the opinion and interest of the few who decide which books are to be read in the coming years. What also matters is that the best will be offered to all current viewers-and there are as numerous as the kinds of stories that exist.
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