I read an article about The Golden Notebook project back when it kicked off in November and have been keeping an eye on the site ever since. As I understand it the idea is to recreate something online that’s akin to the offline reading group experience.
So the whole text of Doris Lessing’s The Golden Notebook is available to read on the site page by page and seven chosen women – authors, academics and journalists in the main – read (or in some cases re-read) the book simultaneously over a six-week period, writing comments alongside the text as they go. Other visitors to the site can read along too, though their comments have to be made in the forums rather than next to the text.
As the web has evolved more and more into a space for social interaction rather than a ‘give and take’ source of information, I suppose it was inevitable that someone would try a project of this sort. For me, there are a few immediate problems, though, which I think mean the project doesn’t seem to be ‘working’. Here are just a few of my quibbles:
Most obviously, instead of being a place for open dialogue, the fact that only the seven ‘approved’ writers are allowed to comment next to the text establishes a ‘them and us’ feel to the site – the very opposite of the principle of social networking (and really this is a social networking experiment, in broad terms).
In terms of the comment themselves, what about themes and ideas that can’t be applied to a specific section of text? Surely all novels contain big, often abstract ideas that aren't expressend in just a single phrase or page or chapter. Trying to raise and discuss these within the 2d framework of this project feels counter-intuitive to me.
Then we come to the idea of the site as a collaborative reading space. Well, the layout itself is hardly conducive to a pleasant reading experience – with all those comments down at the bottom and various bits linking here, there and everywhere, I hardly know how to navigate around the place. (Though if I’m honest that’s probably due to having been brought up in the pre-internet age; I’m too used to moving through the world in a linear fashion). But back to the point – I do wonder if anyone is actually reading the book this way, or whether the people on the site are secretly reading it offline and then going online to post comments.
Don’t get me wrong, I think The Golden Notebook project is a fascinating experiment and deserves a lot more profile than it seems to be getting. Certainly it’s encouraging to see the stuffy old book world trying to embrace technology for once, whether or not we judge this particular endeavour a success.
What I’m interested in is how this idea can be developed into something more workable, more user-friendly, more inclusive. Do you think that there is a way to recreate the book group experience online? Or (dare I suggest it) should we consider the idea that perhaps the internet doesn’t have an answer for everything?
