Ned Beauman, author of Boxer, Beetle has kicked up a right stink (here and here) by claiming that using Twitter is ‘beneath the dignity of the published novelist. Is he right? The only people arguing are obviously massive Twitter fans (Jury’s still out for me). So VOTE.
“My main objection is that it’s simply beneath the dignity of a published novelist. There needs to be some sort of exclusion zone around an author’s mental processes otherwise it undermines the autonomy of their work.”
Tags: Boxer Beetle, Fiction, Hackney, Literature, Ned Beauman
I hate Twitter. It’s for marketing right? But hasn’t this guy come and said that he used Wikipedia to research his novel? Where do we draw the line with that?
I don’t really get Twitter. But this guy sounds like a class A snob! “Beneath the dignity…” Seriously!
And this is a seriously disturbing picture on this post, by the way…
Twitter would have been a fine place for Oscar Wilde’s epitaph’s, no? For Groucho Marx’s one liners too.
Having said that, the book is supposed to be rather good – meaning – he’ll probably get away with it. (So long as people buy it that is).
The whole thing is akin to that ‘Man Bites Dog’ cliche. We don’t expect young, debutant authors to be criticising the latest ‘thing’, in this case Twitter. But the whole thing does pang of old-money…