Perma! Making (some of) the Internet forever

I heard a piece this morning on Marketplace Tech Report about Perma, which is a program started by a group of libraries in order to make online materials cited in scholarly journals permanent. The members of Perma are trying to solve a real problem: scholarly articles regularly cite links, and there's no guarantee that those links won't become obsolete. This problem, called link rot, is pervasive; according to Perma, 70% of the links in articles published in legal journals between 1999 and 2011 direct users to irrelevant content. Perma creates a permalink to an archived version of the original page.

Perma has some gatekeeping built in: once you register a link that you want to preserve, the scholarly journal that you are citing it in has to verify (or vest) the link to say that, yes, this is being cited in a scholarly source. The journals themselves have to be verified (or sponsored) by an institution. So, you can't just register every website that you think it would be great to have a copy of (NOT that I was tempted to do that. Certainly not).

Perma sounds like a great idea, but I have some questions...

1) If I'm understanding Perma's mission, a lot of the links that get perma'd are going to be to scholarly journal articles. If that's the case, how do we handle paywalls? I access journal articles through my library's subscription, and the link is generated through our proxy server. How do users from different institutions (or those who aren't affiliated with institutions) access subscription content archived through Perma?

2) Likewise, how does Perma overlap with other archiving programs like LOCKSS (Lots of Copies Keeps Stuff Safe)?

3) How will this impact open access journals that may not have institutional backing? Can they also be sponsoring journals so that the links in their articles are archived?

4) This only solves part of the problem for researchers using online sources. Wouldn't it be great if we could also solve the problem of archiving content that isn't necessarily cited in scholarly journal articles (or that future scholars might want to cite, but wouldn't have access to because it will have disappeared)? Too bad the NSA's new data farm in Utah can't be put to this use...

Linking the Man Booker and the BBC’s All-Female National Short Story List

There were two big stories out of the British publishing world this week that don’t at first glance seem to have much to do with each other: the Man Booker announced that they would accept entries from any English-speaking country and the BBC’s National Short Story award revealed--and then felt the need to explain--an all-female shortlist. The change in the Man Booker was the more obviously controversial event, but both announcements are linked because the anxious discussions around them say quite a bit about how we think about literary categories today.

First for the Man Booker Prize’s global expansion: this was a controversial announcement because it means that American authors will now be eligible to compete for a prize that had previously been open only to British, Irish, and Commonwealth writers. Many who were critical of the move, like Philip Hensher, say that the prize will lose its uniquely British identity by going global, whereas those who support it say that it’s time to open the prize up to all English-speaking writers. Critics like Hensher fear that opening up the prize means that it will be dominated by the economic clout of the U.S., and thus British authors will lose a major international stage on which to showcase their work. On the other hand, Gaby Wood at the Telegraph and others argue that U.S. authors aren’t likely to crowd out British ones. Further, as Wood puts it, if that’s the fear, maybe British authors “should perhaps think of upping their game.” Liz Bury at the Guardian offers a useful overview of both sides here.

In my mind, this is a tough one. I both accept the argument that placing international boundaries around the prize is artificial and wish the prize could stay as it is. The prize is, in some ways, more meaningful as a measure of literary merit if it takes into account the entire world of fiction in English. At the same time, I like the idea of the prize as it is because it highlights authors that don’t necessarily get the same attention here in the U.S. The question is, what is the prize *really* about? It seems that U.K. and Commonwealth authors would answer that question differently than the Prize organizers.

As for the BBC’s National Short Story shortlist, for the second time in its eight-year history, it is composed entirely of women. The Chair of Judges, Mariella Frostrup, explained that:  

“The 2013 shortlist is all female, which suggests the short story is a form much suited to the innovative brilliance of women writers. From Charlotte Perkins Gilman - author of the enormously influential The Yellow Wallpaper - onwards, many favoured short story writers are women. Now we have five new names to add to the list of skilled exponents.”

The novelist Peter Hobbs made no attempts to explain the list in terms of gender: "We've got to the stage where an all-female list is not even worth mentioning, [...] I don't really pay any attention to gender."

I agree with Hobbs. I think that the attempt to explain the list as reflecting women’s particular talent for the short story makes an awkward gendered argument that doesn’t quite articulate its assumptions: is it that the smaller canvas of the short story is more suited to a woman’s interest in smaller details? What do we say, then, about the expansive canvas of something like Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall? I’m not saying that there’s anything wrong with working on a smaller canvas or paying attention to small details, but it feels like any attempt to explain an all-female shortlist for short stories will necessarily get mired in weirdly essentialist statements about what women are really good at.

On the whole, both of these announcements, and the conversations circling around them, have just as much to say about the state of literary and cultural studies as anything else. The last 10-20 years have called into question our ideas about the importance of national boundaries when talking about artistic production. The map of the Man Booker (which I discussed in my last post) shows how global and fluid the prize already is--although it also shows some parts of the world that it has not touched. Likewise, how do we talk about women’s literature (and women’s interests) these days? Feminism, and feminist recovery work, continues to make the point that women (and men) are interested in everything. Can we say there is a certain brand of literature that women are particularly good at? What would that even mean?  

On the whole, these two announcements have raised some essential (or essentialist) questions about literature: is there some inherent quality to a national literature? Or women’s literature? Are these questions still relevant?

Digging into the Man Booker Map

Because I'm a big fan of using maps--and mapping software--as a data visualization tool, I was really excited to see Nick Sidwell's map of the Man Booker Prize in the Guardian's Books Blog. This map, showing the setting of every book that was either shortlisted or won the Booker prize since 1969, shows the global reach of those 267 books. The densest cluster is in the U.K., with South Asia, the U.S., Africa, and Western Europe following not too far behind.

While Sidwell offers some reflections on the importance of literary setting for readers, in particular how readers become attached to real or imagined locations (think platform 9 3/4), this map offers more possibilities for thinking about late twentieth and early twenty-first century fiction as an imaginative space.

And, as is often the case with large (or modest) data projects, the most suggestive possibilities come from using the map as a way to start asking questions rather than answering them. What I mean is that the map only tells us so much--the Booker Prize has spanned the globe, with some locations getting considerably more attention than others. This is interesting, but it's most interesting because it leads to other possible questions about imaginative locations and the Booker Prize. We'd have to look more closely at the novels, and the authors, to really dig into why these locations matter.

Such as:
1) How are those locations being used in the novels? Do they map onto particular political and social events?

2) What are the authors' relationships to these locations? Is the map telling us about the global reach of the prize (i.e., because it is recognizing authors from a broad range of backgrounds) or about the global imaginative reach of the authors?

3) If we were to layer the data so that we could look at the authors' national origins, travel, and places of habitation, what would that tell us?

4) What about the characters' relations to these locations? I'm reading Tash Aw's Five Star Billionaire, which was longlisted but didn't make it to the shortlist. The novel takes place in Shanghai, but part of the novel's power comes from the fact that all of the characters are from somewhere else, trying find their place.

5) What would this map look like if we showed how these locations have shifted over time?

6) How representative is the Booker of modern fiction? What other groups of novels might it be useful to compare the Booker map to?

What other questions would you ask?

Still working out what I think of Jenni Fagan's The Panopticon--and that's probably a good sign

I’ve held off on posting about this novel because I really couldn’t decide what I thought of it. I found it completely absorbing and read it in about two days. It’s not so much that the plot is absorbing--in fact, it’s hard to say exactly what the plot is aside from the suspense about whether the protagonist’s rough situation is going to improve. Instead, what’s really compelling about this novel is the voice of the protagonist. In the New York Times, Michiko Kakutani describes The Panopticon as a voice-driven novel, and that is exactly right--and that’s the real success of this novel. Fagan has created a central narrative consciousness that is absolutely charismatic. Anais doesn’t pretend to be anything other than completely messed up, and she doesn’t try to deny her bad behavior, although she can’t always remember what she’s done. In a less dark novel, I might be tempted to label her spunky because of her energy, but resilient is really closer, although that signifies a harder and much less likeable character than Anais. I don’t know exactly how to describe her, but Fagan’s characterization is brilliant.

On the other hand, I have my doubts about the narrative itself, and by that I mean that Fagan piles on the unpleasantness until it begins to feel absurd. Terrible things happen in this world, but at a certain point the narrative as a whole strains credibility. Of course, that’s also part of the point, I suspect, since neither Anais nor anyone else seems completely sure of the facts. Anais has one view of “reality,” and Fagan gives her enough charisma to make it possible, all the while undermining everything she says. In fact, as I write this, I’m beginning to doubt whether the realism or otherwise of the narrative isn’t actually a strength. Similarly, there is much talk about how oppressive the home Anais is living in is (the eponymous Panopticon), but the characters who are stuck inside it have a surprising amount of freedom of movement, and they seem to have internalized the disciplinary surveillance that the panopticon is designed to evoke. On the whole, the situation of Anais’s world feels like a distraction from the main interest, which is Anais herself.

On my shelf right now

Like most people, I’m reading several books at the same time right now, and I’m more likely to finish some than others. In honor of the beginning of a new semester, and the subsequent shrinking of free time for reading, it seems like a good time to take stock. The following is a list of what I’m currently reading, ranked from most to least likely finishers.

1) Five Star Billionaire by Tash Aw. Although it took a few chapters to get my bearings in this novel, I was immediately drawn into each character’s story. Unlike some multi-character narratives where you enjoy some of the narratives and feel like you're just waiting to get through others, so far each of Aw’s storylines is equally absorbing. I’m definitely going to finish this one--and soon.

2) Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro. This novel feels comfortable, if that makes any sense. It’s a rich, but understated narrative, and I enjoy the leisurely way in which the plot is unfolding. Ishiguro draws a perfect balance between inviting the reader to identify with the first-person point of view while giving you enough hints about the narrator's unreliability to feel superior.

I’m definitely finishing this one, even though it's an effort not to think *too* much about Jeeves and Wooster while I’m reading. Can any narratives about the perfect butler *not* feel like a parody in a post-Wodehousian world?

3) The Hotel by Elizabeth Bowen. This one has been slow going for me, even though it’s relatively short. This is what I get for having been attracted to a book by its cover when I saw it in the library’s new books shelf.

4) Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel. I keep feeling like I should like this one more than I do because I’m always seeing references to how brilliant it is.

5) Dear Life by Alice Munro. I usually really like Munro's work, but the first story in this collection felt meandering and slack, so I didn’t feel like continuing with the next one. I’ll probably give it another try before giving up, though.

6) Vampires in the Lemon Grove by Karen Russell. The title story in this collection is a pleasure. Russell plays with the vampire motif in a way that feels new and that also creates a rich sense of tragedy and loss. I thoroughly recommend it, so I really have no excuse for not having read any further yet…

7) Kim by Rudyard Kipling. I’ve been working on this novel *forever,* or so it seems. If I were still teaching, I’d be eager to add Kim to my syllabus because I'd look forward to unpacking the geopolitical elements with a group of students. I love the way that this 1901 novel feels like a cold war spy novel. On the whole, though, I think that I like the idea of this novel more than the actual reading of it.

8) The American Heiress by Daisy Goodwin. When I started this, I thought I would enjoy it. A few pages later, though, I wasn’t so sure. The writing doesn’t seem as strong as I expected, and the interactions between the characters don’t seem believable. I don’t see myself finishing this one.

9) Summer and the City by Candace Bushnell. I was pleasantly surprised by The Carrie Diaries, but this one doesn’t feel as fresh.  

What’s on your shelf?

Professional vs. Pleasure Reading

This summer I rediscovered pleasure reading. Or, maybe closer to the point, I rediscovered what it is that I love about reading. As a librarian who works 9-to-5 and tries to keep up my scholarship--and a mother of two relatively young kids--my reading time is squeezed into the rare spare moment. This is especially true since our children don’t seem to need sleep, but you don’t need to hear about that….

Anyway, my main point is that although my reading time has almost entirely vanished, I’ve been trying, grimly, to keep up the professional reading that is key to my scholarship. That means that I’ve spent a lot of nights trying to slog through some work of literary criticism just before bed and getting about a page and a half read. When I do give myself freedom to read a novel, I try to pick something useful--i.e., something from the 19th century that is relevant to my scholarship. I’m not quite sure when reading stopped being something that I enjoy, but I’ve been so caught up in obligatory reading that I almost forgot how much I enjoy reading for entirely different reasons.

This summer’s vacation was different, though. Unlike trips where I load my suitcase with books and articles that I really *should* read (and that I wind up avoiding), I gave myself license to download whatever I felt like reading that was available through my library for the Kindle app. Sure, there are some 19th-century novels in that category, but there are also a lot of totally irrelevant books (from a professional point of view), like the Shopaholic series and a completely nonserious romance/mystery by Janet Evanovich called *Foul Play* (there’s a love story and a missing dancing chicken. That’s probably all you need to know). Since I was on vacation--and I was really trying to leave work behind--I stopped feeling guilty about reading them.

Along the way, I re-discovered contemporary fiction, like Jenni Fagan’s *The Panopticon* and Kathryn Stockett’s *The Help.* I used to enjoy reading pretty broadly in contemporary fiction before I specialized in the nineteenth century and became overwhelmed by the sheer number of novels, poems, plays, and short stories produced in that period (this is a big part of Franco Moretti’s claims for the value of distant reading). I’ll never get through all the works that I *should* read from the nineteenth century, much less everything else that relates to my research.

I’m not saying that I’m giving up on reading nineteenth-century literature and literary scholarship: one reason that I chose to specialize in the nineteenth century was because I’m interested in that very explosion of literature. At the same time, I recognize that it enriches my scholarship to keep up with what is being produced today. After all, an article that I published recently on Coppola’s Dracula and early film owes as much to my consumption of period films and Sarah Waters novels as anything else. I also think that it’s important for my quality of life to remember that reading can be a pleasure, whether that means *Lady Audley’s Secret* or Maria Semple’s amazing *Where’d You Go, Bernadette?*