Readers/Viewers: Popular Culture and Visual Literacy in Shteyngart, McEwan, Chabon and Egan
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This chapter examines the thesis that, because of infrastructural changes related to the rise of new information technologies, literary and popular cultures have become increasingly intertwined in the last two decades, turning audiences into hybrid ‘readers/viewers.’ I will examine this thesis in three steps. The first part of my talk summarises Jim Collins’ analysis of recent ‘popular literary culture’ in Bring on the Books for Everybody (2010). With the help of novels by Shteyngart and McEwan, I will then show that Collins’ distinction between post lit and lit lit should be modified. The final section briefly discusses two visual strategies from novels by Chabon and Egan to illustrate the idea that we can no longer read literature without drawing on our ‘visual literacy.’