Andrew Keen
The Cult of the Amateur
Doubleday
Review by Carrida de la Franchaize
I loved this book!
I love the main premise of the book, that by allowing any individual to write something and post it where others can see it, the Internet is undermining the dominant culture. Because, let’s face it, if we let just anybody write whatever they want, who will pay attention to members of the mainstream media when they defend the intellectual value of the Transformers movie or the Farrelly brothers’ remake of The Heartbreak Kid?
But, it’s not just culture Keen is worried about, it’s Truth. That’s right, not the simple human truth with a lower case “t” that you or I might experience; the vast, universal Truth that could only be done justice with a capital “T.” And, what is this truth? What Katie Couric says it is. Or, Bill O’Reilly.
You have to love a writer willing to take such a counter-intuitive position. I mean, all those post-modern arguments about the relative and ultimately unknowable nature of truth/Truth – that’s so 20th century!
Perhaps I should let the man make his own argument: “When an article runs under the banner of a respected newspaper, we know that it has been weighed by a team of seasoned editors with years of training, assigned to a qualified reporter, researched, fact-checked, edited, proofread, and backed by a trusted news organization vouching for its truthfulness and accuracy.”
Like Jason Blair’s reporting for ex – okay, bad example. How about…oh, I know, the New York Times reporting on Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction? The mechanics of a “respected newspaper” surely helped get at the truth/Truth in that instance, didn’t they?
To be fair, his critics never acknowledge that Keen tries to be fair. He’s not just against self-publishing in new media; he is against self-publishing in traditional media, as well. Clearly, the world would have been better off if Charles Dickens, Walt Whitman, Edgar Allen Poe, Mark Twain, Henry Thoreau, Herman Melville, James Joyce and other hack writers never sullied the realm of Truth by publishing their own works.
I love the way Keen blames the Internet for the decline in newspaper readership and revenues, as if years of corporate consolidation hadn’t led to the buggering of news staffs in order to increase profit margins. Or, the way he blames the Internet for drops in the revenues of the music industry, as if its outrageous payouts to older artists and restricted catalogue of musical genres hadn’t forced music-lovers to look elsewhere for reasonably priced music that was even slightly out of the mainstream. Or, the way he blames the Internet for the film industry’s sagging revenues, ignoring the outrageous cost of movies that are geared almost exclusively to 15 year-old boys.
I mean, how can you not love somebody who is so in love with his basic argument he won’t let silly facts get in the way? (A lesser man attacking Wikipedia’s amateurism, for instance, might have made reference to a study that indicates that its rate of errors is not much worse than a traditional encyclopedia. Fortunately, Keen is made of sterner stuff!) Most of us would at least allow that the industries in question bear some responsibility for the woes they currently face, but not Andrew Keen!
I love the way Keen occasionally adds references to rampant pedophile behaviour on the Internet, as if millions of people undermining truth/Truth and trivializing reality aren’t bad enough. I will admit, such references seem an attempt by the author to push people’s emotional buttons because he doesn’t trust his own argument, but, what the hell? I loved the book so much, I’m willing to forgive this minor problem.
What did I love most about the book? Well, the generous margins and low page count meant I could finish reading it in a short span of time. And, because the quality of the writing was consistent throughout, it left me completely satisfied, not really needing anything more.
But, no, what I think I love the most about this book is its self-negating quality. For a book that argues for the integrity of the editorial process, it is shrill, alarmist, poorly argued, takes quotes out of context, makes broad statements based on anecdotal evidence, ignores facts and arguments that would undermine its case, unfairly compares the best of what it supports with the worst of what it argues against and throws in inflammatory rhetoric that really has nothing to do with its case, and it was edited and published by one of the gatekeepers it is attempting to defend! This must be parody of the slyest kind!
But, then, what do I know? By Keen’s definition, I’m one of the million monkey amateurs who are destroying all that is good and right with the world.