In Walter J Ong's "The Writer's Audience is Always a Fiction", he explains the difference between an orator's audience and a writer's audience. One main distinction had to do with time. He writes, "the spoken word is part of present actuality and it has its meaning established by the total situation in which it comes into being" (Ong 10). While it is true that a writer does not have to consider the very present moment, I believe he must consider the moment in which he will have an audience. That moment, when the audience is reading his work, is their present moment. Since the present for the writer, while writing, is technically the future for the reader when he reads, the writer must think of the reader in their own present.
This led me to think of all the books I have read. With that idea of presence, writing must be timeless. I've read plenty of works regarding specific events (any news article, really), where time is imperative. The writer assumes that the reader will be reading the article in a very specific time frame, otherwise the piece loses relevance. However, other genres are timeless. Timeless in the sense that they not only omit any kind of immediate cultural relevancy topics but also in that they assume the presence of the reader. For example, works written in the second person perspective delve into the mind of the reader, referring to the reader directly. They are personal; they are present. Instructions that tell "you" to do something assume presence.
I am specifically thinking of the first chapter of the novel "If on a Winter's Night a Traveler" by Italo Calvino. The book is written in second person and this chapter specifically creates a certain in-your-face atmosphere.
"You are about to begin reading Italo Calvino's new novel, If on a winter's night a traveler. Relax. Concentrate. Dispel every other thought. Let the world around you fade. Best to close the door; the TV is always on in the next room. Tell the others right away, 'No, I don't want to watch TV!'... Find the most comfortable position: seated, stretched out, curled up, or lying flat. Flat on your back, on your side, on your stomach. In an easy chair, on the sofa, in the rocker, the deck chair, on the hassock. In the hammock, if you have a hammock. On top of your bed, of course, or in the bed" (Calvino 3).
In these first few pages, Calvino creates his own audience by also creating the environment around the audience in that moment. In this way, the words on the page are part of the present actuality. As a reader, this is all actually happening because it is directed at you. Now, when Ong talks about presence, he means literal physical presence - the writer and the audience in the same room. This obviously isn't the case for this novel but it almost feels that way since the author pretty much creates the environment for the reader and is speaking (on the page) directly to him.
Other mediums, such as forums on the internet like the September 11 Digital Archive that we studied for class, assume a different idea of "presence". In this archive, there are written pieces as well as videos (spoken pieces). Ong claims that the audiences for these pieces differ in their present situation with the author. I disagree. Essentially, the audiences are the same. The people viewing the archive may read or they may choose to listen to personal accounts. Many people, including everyone in this class, will do both. In this case, time and presence of the audience seems irrelevant because of the nature of the content: the attacks on 9-11. Everything in the archive is about what happened on that date and was created, naturally, after that date. It doesn't seem that the time in which the audience reads/listens to the media was taken into much consideration by the creators.
In the personal testimonial videos, the people presenting are just speaking to a camera. I wonder what Ong would say about audience in this case. Since it is recorded, much like the recording of words on paper, does that change the way in which we look at the audience? The speaker is speaking yet their audience is not present in the room. The speakers probably know that their audience will be people who view this digital archive. Would they have told their story in the same way if there was someone else in the room actually listening to it? Does the presence of the audience matter?
Juliana --
ReplyDeleteI think you've created a very interesting and evocative post, calling into questions the evolution of the reader's perspective, even deeming it more of a "presence," which at its surface seems discernible from traditional notions of "audience" as laid out by Barthes and Ong. This is a key distinction to be made when considering digital content is far less structured than older, long-form writing. If we are to consider small bits of posts or commentary just modern versions of traditional composition, do we still naively assume the nature of the reader to be so similar? I think the immediacy of the Net ushers in a new type of reader and thus a new analysis of that reader, which I think you've hinted at in identifying the "presence" -- a sort of more general, relative, and far-reaching appropriation of audience.
I thought your example of Calvino, an author whose same novel I'm working through now as well, was perfectly fitting for examining the approaches various authors make toward their audiences. His particularly agressively conscious approach lends itself to a unique reading -- which says something, I think, about the truly weighty role of audience and the narration that supposedly paves the way for a story's diction.
Referencing the 9/11 archive strengthened your argument for the diversity of reader perspective even further, and looking to different types of presentation, be it recorded college lectures, or perhaps entertainment composition, like stand-up comedy, I think the old lines of reader and audience are redefined and blurred.
-Chris