The Immediately Shocking, The Immediately Charming

"Does anything less than the immediately shocking or charming get attention?" asks Lorin Stein, editor of The Paris Review in a recent New York Times "Critic's Take" column.

Not if one spends much time on Facebook or some other form of electronic social media. Topics hurtle past and those who post them have learned they had better not require much thought on the part of viewers. What's up front has to be sufficient to generate a "like" or perhaps a three-word comment. Few viewers will bother to read any further.



And whatever you do, don't post anything that isn't accompanied by a photo, a video or some sort of graphic image. Text alone cuts no ice.

"Over these last few years all of us, readers and writers alike, have developed a growing appreciation for what the Internet wants to take away: our time alone with the written word," Stein said.

But the written word has suffered as well, trying to ape what's popular in cyberspace. Shock and charm seems to be the aim there, too, with many writers viewing their books as products to be pushed, Stein said.

"Writing [good] fiction is pretty much the opposite of writing a good tweet or curating an Instagram feed. It's the opposite of personal/professional writing that is now part of our everyday lives. More than ever, we need writers who are unprofessional, whose private worlds come first," the Paris Review editor said, arguing that requires solitude, both private and a public form identified with method acting -- the ability to be alone onstage, inside of a scene, unworried about what it might look like.

The point of Stein's column is that there may be a modest resurgence of interest in the type of fiction he advocates as is evidenced at least in part by rising interest in The Paris Review, a literary quarterly that has had its ups and downs since it was first established in 1953 by, among others, George Plimpton.

In the past five years, The Review's circulation has nearly doubled with print readership the highest in the publication's history, Stein said.

"E-book sales have plateaued.  Bookstors have staged a modest resurgence. Turning off your phone has become a prized luxury," he maintaind.

Let's hope so.