As a former English major and avid reader, I – like others—have noted that classics of English literature appear with increasing frequency on the front sales tables of my neighbourhood bookstores. I put it down to movie adaptations stirring up interest in authors like Jane Austen (yawn). I’m sure that Kenneth Branagh’s adaptation of Henry V turned my son (and most everyone else) into a Shakespeare fan, something school never did.
But who would have guessed that many of the dead greats live on? No, not in endless re-editions of their works, but in social media. They have been reincarnated on the Web.
Last January 11, author Julianna Baggott wrote in The New York Times that she “started obsessing over the Facebook “likes” of authors — living and dead.” In her search, she found that living authors like Stephen King, “is doing extremely well in the virtual world with, when I last checked, over four million likes […]. The Stephen King – Writer page also thrives, at 573,081 likes. Even “Steven king” had over 98,000 likes.”
More interesting, she found that Jane Austen had 628,548 fans, while the “Texas-twanged Jane Austin” had 37,499.
But, she says, “few can beat Shakespeare’s hefty 3.9 million likes.” He is beat, though by Maya Angelou at 4,046,225 Facebook likes (Have you ever read her? I haven’t). But not to outdone, Shakespeare has a second-tier page — “Infamous Poet and Playwright” — with 1.7 million fans.
And these authors, and many other departed, also live on Twitter. Some have many alter-egos. Some are also podcasting!
I find this quite creepy. I’m all for keeping literature alive, but, really? I can only imagine literary groupies holed up in their parents’ basements drafting tweets for “their” author.
I do like a great many of these authors, but am limiting my following to the printed word—in hard copy, at that.
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