Fungible Convictions

From Book reviews continue inevitable migration to web, via Harvard University Press:

“Some bloggers have pointed out that book reviews inevitably will migrate to the Web,” Brauchli said. “Reviews online are no doubt easier to find. Putting them online also shortens the distance between reading a review and buying a book, which surely is a good thing for authors and the book trade.”

While continuing to publish book reviews in other sections of the print edition, he told the critics the Washington Post would also develop a well-indexed Book World site online.

The article ignores or doesn’t realize the most important part of reviews’ migration to the web: actual discussion. Washington Post Book World, like other voice-of-God printed book reviews, ends with its own final period. Meanwhile, reviews online—whether those by newspapers posted with comment forms below them or on Amazon—let people thrash on their ideas, collectively, about any book, whether it’s brand new or centuries old.

It’s frustrating as some people mourn the loss of Book World and other Sunday book review inserts (I do too, don’t worry). Books got reviewed and discussed and promoted before newspapers, and they’ll get reviewed and discussed and promoted without newspapers. And while it’s arguable that no single review will ever match the elegance of one of the better stand-alone New York Review of Books pieces, collectively being able to find multiple reviews and compare them to one another—the excellent ones and the piddling ones—will lead readers to the best books. That, not necessarily Book World.

The New York Review of Books (excellent site organization in support of its print version, though it contains some design errors such as forgetting to reset line-height after using a large initial cap) ran a piece about Jimmy Carter’s book Our Endangered Values: America’s Moral Crisis that highlights my very favorite rhetorical trope: convertible arguments!

Antistrophon, argumentum ex concessis, peristrophe—call it what you like but capitalizing on convertible arguments, aka rhetorical jujitsu, is one of the most effective ways to disarm your interlocutor! For example, Jimmy Carter and his reviewer in the NYRB neuter the Republican shibboleth “culture of life” by pointing out all the “culture of life” positions that result in death. From the article’s quotation of Carter’s book:

Canadian and European young people are about equally active sexually, but, deprived of proper sex education, American girls are five times as likely to have a baby as French girls, seven times as likely to have an abortion, and seventy times as likely to have gonorrhea as girls in the Netherlands. Also, the incidence of HIV/ AIDS among American teenagers is five times that of the same age group in Germany…. It has long been known that there are fewer abortions in nations where prospective mothers have access to contraceptives, the assurance that they and their babies will have good health care, and at least enough income to meet their basic needs. . . .

In some predominantly Roman Catholic countries where all abortions are illegal and few social services are available, such as Peru, Brazil, Chile, and Colombia, the abortion rate is fifty per thousand. According to the World Health Organization, this is the highest ratio of unsafe abortions [in the world].

Moreover!:

The homicide rate is at least five times greater in the United States than in any European country, none of which authorizes the death penalty. The Southern states carry out over 80 percent of the executions but have a higher murder rate than any other region. Texas has by far the most executions, but its homicide rate is twice that of Wisconsin, the first state to abolish the death penalty. It is not a matter of geography or ethnicity, as is indicated by similar and adjacent states: the number of capital crimes is higher, respectively, in South Dakota, Connecticut, and Virginia (all with the death sentence) than in the adjacent states of North Dakota, Massachusetts, and West Virginia (without the death penalty).

Why bring this up? Because when you’re writing on the Internet, authors tend to be a bit more, hm, assertive than they are face-to-face, rather like politicians’ rhetoric. Bold claims are made. Then they’re amplified. And then they’re easily eviscerated, at least given a proper chance (which isn’t guaranteed). The expiring honeymoon for Web 2.0 concepts serves as a good example: those touting the new web’s revolutionary functionality have been put in their place by others showing, usually with commendable patience, that it’s not all that functional yet. AJAX, social tagging, and the rest will have its time—just don’t misrepresent what it can do at present.

In other words, the surer you are about your own beliefs, the surer you’re about to be on your ass. I guess that’s what Fungible Convictions are all about.

by Andrew Whitacre

Imagine, say, the R&D folks at an automaker tell their boss, “Market research shows our potential customers hate orange. We are therefore launching a new line of orange cars, and only orange cars, until our customers come around.” Insanity, yes? But this is an insanity shared by literary magazines: each lit mag is published precisely because no one wants to read it.

Sure, there’s also the ego of the founding editor, a moral sincerity, communal desperation, or sustained glee. But a motive all lit mags have in common is a belief that certain stories—and not others—should be pushed in front of the eyes of otherwise indifferent readers. It’s an industry dedicated to breaking entrepreneurship’s first rule: you can’t create your market. The market’s there, lit mag folks insist, people just don’t know it yet!

Year after year, though, magazines fail because they couldn’t convince people to care. Continue reading