Author likens site's founder Jeff Bezos to one of the four horsemen of the apocalypse for his impact on literary culture
Jonathan Franzen has previously branded Twitter the 'ultimate irresponsible medium'. Photograph: Ulf Andersen/Getty Images
The acclaimed US novelist Jonathan Franzen has likened Amazon's founder, Jeff Bezos, to one of the four horsemen of the apocalypse and claimed that the online retailer-publisher is decimating literary culture in favour of the "yakkers and tweeters and braggers".
Bezos, one of the world's richest men with a personal fortune of more than $20bn, has steered Amazon from its innocuous beginnings in 1994 as an online bookseller to a globally influential corporation with interests in media and publishing.
Franzen, hailed by Time magazine as one of the great American novelists of his generation, became the first living novelist in a decade to grace its cover in 2010, for his novel Freedom.
In an article for Guardian Review before the publication of his new book, The Kraus Project, he writes: "In my own little corner of the world, which is to say American fiction, Jeff Bezos of Amazon may not be the antichrist, but he surely looks like one of the four horsemen. Amazon wants a world in which books are either self-published or published by Amazon itself, with readers dependent on Amazon reviews in choosing books, and with authors responsible for their own promotion."
Franzen, whose stories about dysfunctional middle-class families hold up a mirror to contemporary America, has hit out at new media culture before, denigrating ebooks for their impermanence and branding Twitter the "ultimate irresponsible medium". This time he fingers Bezos specifically as the culprit, for steering his business in ways that Franzen believes undermine serious writers and do a disservice to readers.
More
And separate story:
Bezos, one of the world's richest men with a personal fortune of more than $20bn, has steered Amazon from its innocuous beginnings in 1994 as an online bookseller to a globally influential corporation with interests in media and publishing.
Franzen, hailed by Time magazine as one of the great American novelists of his generation, became the first living novelist in a decade to grace its cover in 2010, for his novel Freedom.
In an article for Guardian Review before the publication of his new book, The Kraus Project, he writes: "In my own little corner of the world, which is to say American fiction, Jeff Bezos of Amazon may not be the antichrist, but he surely looks like one of the four horsemen. Amazon wants a world in which books are either self-published or published by Amazon itself, with readers dependent on Amazon reviews in choosing books, and with authors responsible for their own promotion."
Franzen, whose stories about dysfunctional middle-class families hold up a mirror to contemporary America, has hit out at new media culture before, denigrating ebooks for their impermanence and branding Twitter the "ultimate irresponsible medium". This time he fingers Bezos specifically as the culprit, for steering his business in ways that Franzen believes undermine serious writers and do a disservice to readers.
More
And separate story:
Jonathan Franzen: what's wrong with the modern world
While we are busy tweeting, texting and spending, the world is drifting towards disaster, believes Jonathan Franzen, whose despair at our insatiable technoconsumerism echoes the apocalyptic essays of the satirist Karl Kraus – 'the Great Hater'
No comments:
Post a Comment