I wrote this essay several years ago, so the many of the references in it are dated. But it deals with things that are still relevant in today’s pop culture, and since it’s mostly a book review, I thought I’d post it here. A few years ago I wrote an essay about TV serials and novels and how they were more unalike than alike. During the early aughts, the “Golden Age of Television,” critics and fans were drawing comparisons between the two with annoying persistence and accepting them unquestioningly with little thought as to what made them so similar other than they were both serialized (which isn’t entirely true since serialization isn’t a defining feature of the novel, at least not by today’s standards). My argument was simple, but only because the comparison itself was simplistic, owing more to the fact that cable dramas had changed how we think and watch TV faster than we’ve come up with the language to describe those changes. Their use of serialized storytelling had enlivened and enriched television viewing, so one was tempted to compare them to novels, especially when critics like Alan Sepinwall went so far as to call
James Baldwin and the Age of Fans
James Baldwin and the Age of Fans
James Baldwin and the Age of Fans
I wrote this essay several years ago, so the many of the references in it are dated. But it deals with things that are still relevant in today’s pop culture, and since it’s mostly a book review, I thought I’d post it here. A few years ago I wrote an essay about TV serials and novels and how they were more unalike than alike. During the early aughts, the “Golden Age of Television,” critics and fans were drawing comparisons between the two with annoying persistence and accepting them unquestioningly with little thought as to what made them so similar other than they were both serialized (which isn’t entirely true since serialization isn’t a defining feature of the novel, at least not by today’s standards). My argument was simple, but only because the comparison itself was simplistic, owing more to the fact that cable dramas had changed how we think and watch TV faster than we’ve come up with the language to describe those changes. Their use of serialized storytelling had enlivened and enriched television viewing, so one was tempted to compare them to novels, especially when critics like Alan Sepinwall went so far as to call