What piques me most about the Twitter phenomenon (not this blog’s new subject, I swear) is precisely what I think is considered most harmless and cool about it: it’s got all the advantages of regular communication, plus all the fun of communicating using only 140 characters! Or, as MoDo tells the inventors of Twitter, against whom I have nothing, this morning, “You say the brevity of Twitter enhances creativity.” The kind of creativity involved, however, strikes me as tautological: one’s creativity is enhanced more or less only to the extent that one is limited by the form. By the same measure, playing piano with one’s hands tied behind one’s back ‘enhances creativity’ to the extent that you can’t use your hands to play. Twitter is no more or less creativity-enhancing than the (very) brief aphorism. I do like aphorisms; obviously I, as an Early Adopter, much prefer browsing Twitter to hearing someone tickling the keys with their nose and ears. The point is not that Twitter is a degenerate way of communicating, but that the Twitter phenomenon seems to be driven so strongly by the sheer novelty imposed by its form, which is actually not so tremendously novel after all. What’s novel is the party thrown around the form.
This is to be contrasted against other creativity-enhancing impositions of form (paging Miss Rittelmeyer), like the sonnet. How do we assess the replacement of the sonnet (for example) with the 140 character limit as a celebrated formal communicative constraint? Twitter-sized answer: sonnets not very democratic, 140 character limits yes. This is a plausible answer — not everyone is invited to the sonnet party. Tweeting is a game everyone can play, while sonnetting is not. But it needn’t be this way. Twitter-sized warning about admired formal constraints: did the sonnet really die out because it wasn’t democratic enough? Or because it became — too democratic?
April 22nd, 2009 | 3:07 pm
I was sent your post by a friend, and I agree with much of what you’re saying. But you do seem to be evoking a distinction I can’t quite detect. Are you suggesting that the restrictions imposed by sonnets are fundamentally different from the ‘hands-tied-behind-your-back’ variety, or just different in scale and scope?
If the former, I think I would disagree. I think there’s still room – and reason – to claim that a sonnet is a better form than a tweet. But I think restriction plays the same basic role in each. It is an arbitrary limiter that at once forces us to make choices about what’s good and bad, and gives us new, culturally-mediated vectors for meaning. (Compare and contrast: the couplet and the hashtag!)
And, to self-indulgently quote one of my own tweets: “@DLind @EvanJaiyenEl I should add: different structures serve different ends. Twitter incentivizes concision, pith, content. Not gestalt.”
I think the problem with a tweet is a matter of degree. It’s a cousin to the problem of the sestina: too much constraint forces us to start chucking the good along with the bad. It’s an intolerant form.
A proposal: allot ten 30-word extensions to Twitter users every week?
April 22nd, 2009 | 3:08 pm
And by “30-word,” I mean “30-character”.
April 22nd, 2009 | 3:47 pm
Paul, yes, that’s the question. What I’m trying to do is ask what it would mean for the difference between the imposed constraint of the sonnet and the imposed constraint of the bound hands at the piano to be judged by us a fundamental one — or, more specifically, what is at stake in trying to decide whether the difference between sonnet strictures/structures and 140 character tweet limits is not just one of scope or style but one in kind. Rather then asking, then, whether the ‘role’ that’s ‘played’ by ‘restriction’ is the same in both cases — like I hinted, phrasing things at that level of abstraction seems to me a guarantee to get the affirmative answer — I’d prefer to ask whether the *kind* of restriction involved, as a matter of form but also of logic or appeal, differs. And here I think the answer is yes. But the question, as I suggested at the outset, is whether this difference of kind, however real, is one meriting the label ‘fundamental.’ Since I couldn’t figure that out over the course of a blog post, my aim — which you’re indeed helping pursue — was to focus some thinking on what our hunches and intuitions have to tell us about whether or not the real difference in kind is really fundamental too. Because there the critical stakes get quite a bit higher, no?
April 22nd, 2009 | 6:26 pm
the sonnet is dead??
April 22nd, 2009 | 6:29 pm
cf. Berryman Sonnet 43 — or is 50 (60?) years enough time elapsed to declare it dead?
April 22nd, 2009 | 7:28 pm
So, if we put aside the abstracted question of role giving rise to “fundamental” difference, while acknowledging that a sonnet is probably a better form as a matter of degree, what are the relevant questions to ask? Can’t say I know what sort of distinctions constitute fundamental-ness here. I’m also not sure we get to make those choices! (:
A sonnet is attuned to the natural rhythms of human speech in ways that a tweet is not. Does this matter? Not enough, is my thought…
Perhaps: could a tweet ever equal a truly great sonnet? Is that a fatuous question?
Ultimately – and perhaps I this is because I am not a “postmodern conservative” – I think I’m unwilling to declare a fundamental difference here. And to try to explain why, I’ll introduce as evidence a primordial tweet that is better than many sonnets I’ve read:
“Also it is written / Tempt not the Lord thy God. He said, and stood”.
April 22nd, 2009 | 9:52 pm
Reminds me of writing haikus in middleschool–seventeen syllables. Am I right? “the world atwitter/disciplined by form/a nanosecond timesuck” Or something like that.
April 23rd, 2009 | 12:41 am
The 140-character limit of Twitter is perfect for haiku. Here is an example from a Japanese master:
First autumn morning:
the mirror I stare into
shows my father’s face.
Kijo Murakami (1865-1938)
When I started running a search on haiku, I wasn’t too surprised to find that some web sites were starting to run contests on haiku sent via Twitter.
April 23rd, 2009 | 7:13 am
Methinks you’re guilty of what you originally accuse Twitter zealots of: reading too deeply into yet another medium. Think of Twitter less as a form, and as a note taking device. It’s like Stickies you can share with anyone.
A sonnet is an inapt comparison: you wouldn’t compare a sonnet and a page of college-ruled paper or a steno pad. You define the limits of writing on a Post It in inches. On Twitter, it’s measured in characters. If you want to shrink more info on the former, you abbreviate, elide, writer smaller. On Twitter you do the same, emphasizing a digital shorthand.
You write haikus on Twitter. You could write a novel on Twitter. You could write a sonnet on Twitter. It’s a small piece of digital paper that is easily shared, and just as some works are better off left to book format or on the steno pad, so too Twitter will not be the best tool for all kinds of writing.
April 23rd, 2009 | 11:54 pm
[...] Over at Postmodern Conservative, James Poulos had some provocative thoughts on Ms. Dowd’s interview. I suppose this is the proper moment to express the Gadfly’s [...]
April 25th, 2009 | 10:24 am
Wow! Lot’s of words of wisdom about ‘Twitter’. On a lighter note, restrictions certainly can bring out creativity, although I’m quite happy to be playing piano with both hands!
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