The document discusses the relationship between authors, texts, and readers. It notes that authorship is typically a solitary act of writing, while reading is also solitary. The text acts as a medium between the author and reader, and can take various physical forms like books. Readers individually interpret and respond to texts.

1. Author Text Reader

3. Rob Thomas (creator of Veronica Mars) Kristen Bell (star of Veronica Mars)

4. “Cult” followings

17. Author Text Reader

18. Author Text Reader
• Solitary act of • A physical object • Solitary act of
writing reading
• A “commodity”
• Inspired Presence (looks good on • Individual
– author Interpretation
shelves, etc.)
“invents” story
from scratch
• Binding • Individual Response
• Writes with a • Font
sense of • Pagination
“purpose” and
has a specific • Chapters?
meaning in mind
(Traditional)

19. Author Text Reader

20. Wikipedia – Literature
Literature is usually differentiated from popular and
ephemeral classes of writing, and terms such as "literary
fiction" and "literary merit" are used to denote art-
literature rather than vernacular writing. Texts based on
factual rather than original or imaginative content, such as
informative and polemical works and autobiography, are
often denied literary status, but reflective essays . . . are
accepted. In imaginative literature criticism traditionally
excluded genres such as romance, crime and mystery and
the various branches of fantastic fiction like science fiction
and horror, along with mainstream fiction with
insufficiently elevated style, but the idea of genre has
broadened and is now harder to apply as a border-line.

21. Pronunciation: Brit. /ˈlɪt(ə)rˈt , U.S. /ˈl
ʃə/ ɪdər(ə)tʃər/ , /ˈl
ɪdərəˈt
ʃʊ(ə)r/ , /ˈl
ɪtrəˈt
ʃʊ(ə)r/ ,
ɪdərəˈt
/ˈl (j)ʊ(ə)r/
1. Familiarity with letters or books; knowledge acquired from reading or studying books, esp. the
principal classical texts associated with humane learning (see humane adj. 2); literary culture;
learning, scholarship. Also: this as a branch of study. Now hist.The only sense in Johnson (1755)
and Todd (1818), although cf. quot. 1779 at sense 2.
2. The action or process of writing a book or literary work; literary ability or output; the activity or
profession of an author or scholar; the realm of letters or books.
1663—2002
3. a. The result or product of literary activity; written works considered collectively; a body of literary
works produced in a particular country or period, or of a particular genre. Also: such a body of
works as a subject of study or examination (freq. with modifying word specifying the language,
period, etc., of literature studied).American, black, English, folk-, light, profane, Romantic,
Victorian, world literature, etc.: see the first element.
1711—1995
b. Without defining word: written work valued for superior or lasting artistic merit.
1852—2001
4. (A body of) non-fictional books and writings published on a particular subject.
1797—2004(
5. Printed matter of any kind; esp. leaflets, brochures, etc., used to advertise products or provide
information and advice.

23. Author Text Reader

24. Questions
• What can and can’t be counted as
“literature?”
• Who decides what “literature” is?
• What makes something “literary?”
• What happens to “literature” when it goes
into the wired world?
• Does literature have to exist in a book?
• Can literature be visual?

25. Reading at Risk Report
Reading a book requires a degree of active
attention and engagement. Indeed, reading itself
is a progressive skill that depends on years of
education and practice. By contrast, most
electronic media such as television, recordings,
and radio make fewer demands on their
audiences, and indeed often require no more
than passive participation. Even interactive
electronic media, such as video games and the
Internet, foster shorter attention spans and
accelerated gratification.

26. Reading at Risk Report
While oral culture has a rich immediacy that is
not to be dismissed, and electronic media
offer the considerable advantages of diversity
and access, print culture affords irreplaceable
forms of focused attention and
contemplation that make complex
communications and insights possible. To lose
such intellectual capability – and the many
sorts of human continuity it allows – would
constitute a vast cultural impoverishment.

27. Nicholas Carr
. . . what the Net seems to be doing is chipping
away my capacity for concentration and
contemplation. My mind now expects to take
in information the way the Net distributes it:
in a swiftly moving stream of particles. Once I
was a scuba diver in the sea of words. Now I
zip along the surface like a guy on a Jet Ski.

28. Kirshenbaum – Reading at Risk: A
Response
Electronic media need not put literary reading at
risk; in fact once we begin taking screens as
well as pages seriously as venues for literature
and written expression, organizations such as
the NEA may well find that rates of literacy are
again on the rise.

31. Author Text Reader
Creator or Mediation Consumer(s)
Creators