Writing beautifully about Gunnar Ekelöf is all in vain if your presumed readers are busy chatting online with Linda Skugge instead.

Old literature

in new media

By Torbjörn Forslid

Just a few years ago, the publication of audiobooks was a limited and separate activity, which focused chiefly on the elderly and the visually impaired. Today, however, audiobooks are a fast-growing business and a force for renewal on the literary scene. Last year, 2 million Swedes listened to some form of audiobook -- that is one third of the population in the 16-74 age group. And whereas audiobooks in the past usually consisted of classics and quality literature, today it is the best sellers that are taking the lead. In Sweden, Piratförlaget has been one of the most forward-thinking publishers in this field.

The radical makeover of the audiobook from a sleeping pill for the elderly to a hip trend with lots of young readers is also proved by the fact that small alternative music publishers have joined the business. When Per Hagman, a writer published by Bonniers, read his book Att komma hem ska vara en schlager ('Coming Home Should Be a Hit') on tape, this was not done for Bonniers but for Malmö-based music publishers Junk Musik, incidentally the same company for which Linda Skugge (Piratförlaget) recorded her debut book. "These two writers are particularly suited for release by a record company since they have a pop image," Junk Musik commented. You need no specialist insight into corporate finance to see why the established book publishers are worried about being left out of this business. They are also justifiably afraid that audiobooks available for download on the Internet will be pirated, leading to the same problems that the music business is currently suffering from.

Hagman read his book in three days in a hotel room in Malmö. Skugge never even left her own living room. This personal reading by the author is an important selling point. While it is true that audiobooks have brought a new source of work for (well-known) actors and professionals in the business, there is still something special about the voice of the author. Authenticity is a selling point -- or, more specifically, intimacy is a selling point. Audiobooks are a link back to an earlier and more personal relationship between writer and reader. The Death of the Author, often proclaimed in the 20th century, is an exaggeration, as we all know. The audiobook reconnects us with the original oral tradition of storytelling, the birth of literature around the campfires.

The sudden success of audiobooks is only one example of the way in which literature -- taken here in the broadest sense -- is developing and changing in a media-saturated world. Another good example is the blog (weblog), which was initially so harshly criticized. The arts sections of Swedish papers were crammed with argument on the subject until everyone gave in and even the arts section of Dagens Nyheter reluctantly started their own blog from the Göteborg Book Fair.

As always when new media and forms of media activity are involved, the debate is highly polarized. For some people, this is the dream of free exchange of information come true: "Information wants to be free". For others, this is the twilight of the arts, leaving only the glow of blinking ones and zeros. The same utopias and dystopias were already there in texts on digital trends in the 1980s and '90s. Hypertext was expected to revolutionize and transform narratives, making them more postmodern. The writer would no longer be the authority who dictated the progress and ending of a narrative. Constant interaction and endless choices would make the reader the writer's equal or possibly even superior. However, the emergence of the audiobook is evidence of the opposite trend. Here, the classic, sweeping narrative reigns supreme. In fact, the reader/listener has less potential to interact than with a conventional book. You cannot simply skip a boring passage of nature description or take a quick peek at the ending. For better or worse you are tied to the writer's own voice.

On the whole, the influence of media technology over literature and storytelling is slower and more gradual than many people think. Various changes are taking place and will continue to do so, but there are also always changes that have already happened. Today's 'outdated' media -- books, radio, even TV -- were once new. And the principles for how one medium is succeeded by another remain curiously constant, from a historical perspective. Jay David Bolter and Richard Grusin demonstrate in their influential study Remediation that new media technologies tend to integrate and exploit, or 'remediate' as they term it, established media. In other words, they build on communication strategies that have proved (commercially) successful. The blog, for instance, derives from the well-established genre of journals/diaries, which in its turn has its roots in autobiographical writing, a 'high' culture genre. The reverse is also true: older media remediate new technologies. For example, TV today strives to imitate the user interface of a computer, with several simultaneous images and 'dialog boxes' of text on screen.

The audiobook and the blog. Two time-honoured manifestations of literature -- oral storytelling and the writing of journals/diaries -- that have gained renewed vigour in a new guise. This can hardly be considered a bad thing for the individual consumer of literature. On the contrary, there are new opportunities here for accessing literature or for self-expression.

Meanwhile, the situation is very different for the other actors on the literary scene, the 'powers that be'. The uniform (read monopolized) public scene of the Modern breakthrough is in the process of being broken up. One newspaper, one TV channel, one literary canon can no longer prevail. On the new public scene, every sub-group has its own forum, its own website. It is important that publishers and media corporations can keep up with this trend. Anyone who fails to do so -- or who bets on the wrong horse -- will be left behind. In Sweden, everyone is aware of the story of Facit AB, a company whose excellent mechanical calculator was made obsolete by the digital mini calculators of the 1970s. Arts journalism and academic literary scholarship need to watch out in order to avoid a similar fate. Close reading of Gunnar Ekelöf and beautifully written essays on the subject are all in vain if the presumed readers are busy chatting online to Linda Skugge instead -- and downloading her latest audiobook -- or if they are engaged in speculative discussion on who should be elected to the Swedish Academy on a young, literary website such as Malte Persson's Errata.

Media developments place demands on anyone who is active in the field of literature. This is a crisis for some, and success for others. However, literature itself is never under threat, and neither is discussion about literature. The human need for storytelling is as fundamental as it ever was, regardless of whether it focuses on stories and myths told around a campfire, the latest literary prize winner or the action-packed plot of a computer game. The shape and form may shift -- the story lives on.

Torbjörn Forslid is a literary researcher and lecturer at Malmö University, where he teaches literature and media.

Translated by English Centre/ Monica Sonck