May312005
Do-it-yourself promotion cleans some of its stain
Filed under Authors,Marketing by Michael Klusek at 1:05 am on May 31 2005
Do-it-yourself promotion cleans some of its stain.
By Justin Davidson Newsday NEW YORK
On Sept. 29, 1855, the Brooklyn Daily Times ran an unsigned and startlingly exuberant review of a thoroughly obscure book of poetry. The anonymous critic quivered with admiration for the poet, as well as the verse. “Of pure American breed, of reckless health, his body perfect, free from taint top to toe,” he wrote. The article did not mention that this lyric superman had printed the book himself and delivered the clothbound volumes to the only two bookstores that would take it, where they spent months moldering in stacks. He also omitted that he was using the newspaper to review his own book. The name of this shameless self-promoter was Walt Whitman. The book was “Leaves of Grass.” A seismic tremor in American literature began as a dreary little vanity project.
Today the phrase “vanity project” is an accusation redolent of bloated ego, absence of talent, ill-used money or clout and contempt for the ethics of merit. Most of all, the phrase implies scorn for the normal artistic filters: all the editors, directors, producers, investors, curators and institutional functionaries who make things happen and bestow prestige. Lurking behind the term is the assumption that the only reason to produce, distribute and market your own creation is that nobody else will do it for you.
But in this world of blogs, pocket video cameras, on-demand publishing and instant Internet distribution, dismissing an artistic undertaking for its vanity quotient has become so 20th century.
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