Twitter had its big moment last week, but unlike so many other technology start-ups in the seeming parade of millionaire-makers over the last two decades (with the obvious exception of Amazon.com), Twitter has developed a special following in the literary community, from high-brow to low. Perhaps that’s not surprising. Writers revel in words, and Twitter, nearly alone among hot technology start-ups, is mostly about words, crafting them to meet the medium’s peculiar restraints and sending them out into the world to be engaged with or ignored. Twitter is like some atomized version of the writer’s process. With Twitter, ideas go out piecemeal, the whole process taking a millionth the amount of time it would if you were to glom all those ideas together into one big whole and turn it into something as unlikely-seeming by comparison as a book. This speed, then, may be deeply satisfying — even addictive — as writers bypass so much of the toil of getting a book out of their brains and off to readers (New York’s Kathryn Schulz elaborated smartly on this idea last week.)
There is no uniform stance on Twitter in the literary community, of course. Some, like Teju Cole and Colson Whitehead, find it vital; many others — led by a certain one-time Time coverboy from the Midwest, do not. Some writers have more prosaic feelings about Twitter. Novelist Peter Orner wrote, “Some are talented at it; others, less so.”
Zadie Smith is not on Twitter. Nor are Jeffrey Eugenides (though his vest once was), Michael Chabon (not really, though his writer wife Ayelet Waldman is), George Saunders, or David Mitchell. Jennifer Egan is, but just a little bit.
Nonetheless, Twitter appears to be here to stay, for a while anyway. And it will remain a pastime for writers looking for book news, inspiration, distraction, literary puns, and every other thing they might want. But it wasn’t always that way. In the not too distant past, the literary lights of Twitter pecked out their first 140 characters and waited to see what Twitter would bring.
Curious, I dug back into the Twitter archive to see how these writers took their first steps into Twitter. What follows are the very first tweets of some of Twitter’s well-known practitioners from the literary world.
Finishing the website entries for my fall novel The Year of the Flood.
— Margaret E. Atwood (@MargaretAtwood) July 8, 2009
How does a petty trader come by N30 million worth of cars? Police hope Israel Ubatuegwu, of Ajah, has a good explanation.
— Teju Cole (@tejucole) June 7, 2011
@R_Nash proud to be a part of ennui 2.0
— colson whitehead (@colsonwhitehead) March 15, 2009
Preparing for Book Expo America in the office in Dumbo. The last time we’ve to schlap boxes ourselves. Next year we pay the Teamsters…
— Richard Nash (@R_Nash) May 30, 2007
Last night at the Norman Mailer Award Ceremony in NYC, Oliver Stone said beautifully: “A serious writer is a rebel.”
— Joyce Carol Oates (@JoyceCarolOates) October 5, 2012
trying to figure out if someone does a decent MP3 workout, which will magically transform my iphone and my body at the same time.
— Ayelet Waldman (@ayeletw) January 27, 2009
@JaneGreen I talked to Rufus just this morning…ok, I interviewed him for T+L
— Dani Shapiro (@danijshapiro) April 24, 2009
Slaughtered by Sam A. and Jefffery Y. at post-diner breakfast ping-pong. Licking wounds.
— Dwight Garner (@DwightGarner) February 13, 2009
Here’s a video of my speech at the NBCC in NYC last week: http://tinyurl.com/dfe8rt
— Ron Charles (@RonCharles) March 17, 2009
Testing…
— Sarah Weinman (@sarahw) April 24, 2007
reading
— Susan Orlean (@susanorlean) December 23, 2007
doesn’t want to be an editor. oops, too late.
— Emma Straub (@emmastraub) December 3, 2008
I just opened my present from Dave McKean, The Big Fat Duck Cookbook. Heavy as a stone and beautiful. “See?” he said. “I do read your blog.”
— Neil Gaiman (@neilhimself) December 26, 2008
@ShitHomemaker – this is my first tweet and it’s your fault.
— Salman Rushdie (@SalmanRushdie) September 15, 2011
Fine, then. I’ll twitter.
— John Green (@realjohngreen) December 11, 2008
No matter what I do there are always 5 emails in my inbox that I am avoiding.
— Doug Coupland (@DougCoupland) April 1, 2009
I’ve reached the limit on how many Facebook friends I can add. So here is a new page.
— Amy Tan (@AmyTan) August 12, 2010
http://www.thewriterscoffeeshop.com/publishinghouse/books/detail/23
— E L James (@E_L_James) April 12, 2011
First Tweet ever, prompted by Jeff Howe’s essay in Sunday’s NYTBR. Velly interesting. Helloooooo?
— Erik Larson (@exlarson) May 22, 2012
Does anyone know who @BretEastonEllis is?
— Bret Easton Ellis (@BretEastonEllis) April 10, 2009
@erlson You just got me to join Twitter.
— William Gibson (@GreatDismal) April 1, 2009
coveting Susan Lewis’ hair.
— Jennifer Weiner (@jenniferweiner) April 3, 2009
@chuckpalahniuk This is Dennis, webmaster at ChuckPalahniuk.net. Please contact me via my site email address. Thanks!
— Chuck Palahniuk (@chuckpalahniuk) January 28, 2009
Becoming far more wired than I probably really need to be.
— Joe Hill (@joe_hill) January 4, 2009
hi, i’m gary shteyngart, a furry 39-year-old immigrant man trapped in a young dachshund’s body. LOVE ME!!!!!!!!!!! pic.twitter.com/RgLBxjYO
— Gary Shteyngart (@Shteyngart) December 1, 2011
I’m going to do it right this time.
— Emily Gould (@EmilyGould) May 21, 2009
today felt like the unabomber but i wasn’t plotting anything or planning anything or trying to bomb anything and i was wearing 4-inch heels
— Kate Zambreno (@daughteroffury) June 29, 2012
Wessex Man http://tinyurl.com/yw93xb
— New York Times Books (@nytimesbooks) March 18, 2007
News: Netherland wins PEN/Faulkner award: It was overlooked for the Booker prize and the prestigious US Nat.. http://bit.ly/AufPL
— Guardian Books (@GuardianBooks) February 26, 2009
Podcasting: http://tinyurl.com/6hc9z4
— NY Review of Books (@nybooks) July 2, 2008
Check out our feature on the best audiobooks coming this spring.
— Publishers Weekly (@PublishersWkly) January 31, 2009
Mario Bros. meets Macbeth: What do a pixelated plumber and a murderous king have in common? Nintendo DS — in En.. http://tinyurl.com/5gr5m4
— L.A. Times Books (@latimesbooks) December 10, 2008
Hello, world! Official Library of Congress Twitter feed here. So nice to see 215 followers before so much as a single tweet!
— Library of Congress (@librarycongress) January 27, 2009
Welcome to the new GalleyCat Twitter feed, regularly collecting tweets from Senior Editor Ron Hogan, Editor Jason Boog, and Jeff Rivera.
— GalleyCat (@GalleyCat) August 26, 2009
Welcome to @nprbooks! We’ll use to to share our book coverage and hopefully talk about some good books, too. / @acarvin
— NPR Books (@nprbooks) January 8, 2010
We noticed lots of sites use Twitter for feedback. We created this account as a placeholder, but please visit our Feedback Group anytime!
— goodreads (@goodreads) August 19, 2008
56 years after William Styron warned us about chasing the zeitgeist, The Paris Review is now on twitter. From issue 1: http://bit.ly/BCnnE
— The Paris Review (@parisreview) September 4, 2009
Culling together work for Electric Literature no.2, planning events for October, spinning splendidly through another day at the office.
— Electric Literature (@ElectricLit) August 31, 2009
Rick Moody on running out of luck: http://tinyurl.com/ckno8d
— The Rumpus (@The_Rumpus) January 29, 2009
What will be named top book of the decade? http://bit.ly/AMgq8 What’s your pick?
— The Millions (@The_Millions) September 21, 2009
What’s the best part of B.G.’s “Bling Bling” video? Pre-tattoo’d Wayne, zooming red VW Beetles, or the crew’s outdoor fine china picnic?
— Nick Moran (@nemoran3) February 2, 2011
That’s the best they could do? Didn’t try very hard, now did they. Same people that work in pub. marketing must be the same people that work in film marketing. No imagination, no sense of composition, no sense of communication. Nothing. That’s what this cover signifies. Nada.
Horribly poor choice. Infinite Jest isn’t 1984. It’s nothing like it. The problem with the cloud cover was that it gave no indication of what the book was actually about. Here we have the same issue. With the wide variety of covers released to the internet beforehand that were clearly better than this, I’m struggling to comprehend the choice.
Here’s someone’s tumblr featuring at least four covers that each would have been a far, far better choice:
http://pooryorickentertainment.tumblr.com/fanart
Keith, until your post I didn’t realize that I’d seen the ‘winning cover’. I skimmed over it, missed or ignored it.
I scrolled back and you’re right. It’s unrelated.
i love it.
“…certain oblique visual gestures…paid the sort-of deep insider’s elegiac tribute no audience could be expected to notice.”
worthy of Viney & Veals.
Fully-Functional.
actually
the image
reminds me of vonnegut’s bits
and dave was a pen doodler himself
as for whether
or not the lad
would have liked the choice
who gnows?
but he
probably
would have loved the audience participation
having heard him admire
the free sense of community the Grateful Dead
permitted to arise around their tours in the 80s
he readily praised the creativity of those around him
his students
his friends
whatever the sources of its inspiration
so this old pal of his believes the process would have pleased him
as well as the fact that he’d achieved his aim
by leaving you this lush labyrinth of literature
a hyper articulated artifact
w/ actual insights
well worth its
acclaim
winter well
y’all
though KV’s asterisks had
panache, the je
ne sais quoi of
squiggly sphinxes, this
cover art’s far
more bar stamp ink
than badass
doodle i think: dinky signet’s
capstone hot
pink crayon mason’s
lidless wink or
blink; rinky
dink! “well why not
instead a KV-crude
enigma-grin with
infinity’s glyph for its
Vonnegutish
lip-wig on a tennis ball
head?” (imagine
chip kidd)
(sed)
Fanboy alert: This is too comical/illustrative. I wish they’d stop trying to highlight ‘funny’ and ‘comedic’ and ‘screwball’. Sure, it has parts that are humorous and parts that make you laugh but If you watch/read any of the interviews with Wallace from around the time of publication he explicitly states that he set out to write a sad book/found the book sad/didn’t understand why people thought it was funny to the degree that they did.
People can interpret a work however they please but it just seems like in the beginning they didn’t even know how to market it so they just stuck some clouds and bright, big font everywhere. Now they’ve seemingly taken a step toward selling it as a ‘zany’ romp through a television sitcom with a logo cut and pasted from a Keith Haring doodle.
@Mark: in utter agreement am I.
“People can interpret a work however they please but it just seems like in the beginning they didn’t even know how to market it so they just stuck some clouds and bright, big font everywhere.”
Yes. This. Pynchon was lucky his “Gravity’s Rainbow” first came out when it did…
WANT TO KNOW THE REAL STORY?
I WON THIS CONTEST.
(When I came up with a very clever design of using the earth as a tennis ball I knew I had to win, if it was based on merit. So i entered using a pen name.)
I can show you the emails (etc) that I WON.
The next day, after they found out my REAL identity, they disqualified me (b/c i’m an infamous Snowden-type in NYC, blacklisted for exposing corporate corruption and more).
!!!
I was shocked to see my replacement was extremely wan.
[email protected]