McSweeney’s and the act of framing: The digital excerpt between work and marketing

Abstract

McSweeney's and the act of framing: The digital excerpt between work and marketing abSTracTThe rise of digital media and technology has game-changing effects on literature and publishing. Among other things, our contemporary period is seeing a remarkable increase in the marketing activities surrounding literature, authors and publishers in which digital media platforms play a significant role. As a result we have witnessed a proliferation of digital as well as print texts in general -and of new digital text formats and labels in particular. A distinct aspect of the new digital formats is that the texts are often ascribed to other texts while at the same time being presented to the world as separate entities. But what status should we assign to these texts that are at the same time detached from and attached to other texts? Should they be regarded as texts in their own right, as paratext or merely as products of marketing? Based on an analysis of the McSweeney's iOS app, this article will suggest that Jacques Derrida's idea of the frame (e.g. the frame of a painting) as a parergon can be applied to the digital excerpt of a novel and other varieties of so-called 'extra material' in order to identify the function of these particular proliferating texts as something in between artworks in their own right and products of marketing.

Staggered transmissions

“…9 The comical specificity of the readers' helpful suggestions (such as a link to a Lambswool Tartan Serape Cape from The Scottish Trading Company) reinforces the illusion that Bombadil is not just a disembodied narrator but a real person with quotidian bodily needs. 10 For more elaborate discussions of the complex financial logic of both digital publishing and transmedia storytelling see Jenkins, 2006;Squires, 2009;Hjarvard and Helles, 2015;Mygind, 2015;Tanderup, 2016.…”

“…10. For more elaborate discussions of the complex financial logic of both digital publishing and transmedia storytelling, see Hjarvard and Helles (2015), Jenkins (2006), Mygind (2015), Squires (2009), Tanderup (2017) and Thompson (2012).…”

The First (and Second) Coming of David Foster Wallace’sInfinite Jest

“…For elaborate analyses of such innovative digital excerpts, see for instance SarahMygind's (2015) discussion of McSweeney's iOS app, or my own analysis (2017) of David Mitchell's creative use of Twitter fiction to advertise an upcoming novel. 8 Here and henceforth, IJ refers to Infinite Jest(Wallace 1996c).The First (and Second) Coming of Infinite Jest…”