Audience Analysis

Lisa Nagrone

09/12/2010

Assignment #1 Audience Analysis- http://wetasphalt.com

After reading the review on the novel Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, by Tom Bissel, I thought long and hard about the target audience and what emotions the author was trying to create with his audience. I found the review to be quite interesting and found that it inspired me to want to read the novel by Jonathon Foer even more than I had before.

I found advertisements on the site that I went to from both Google and Amazon. There were two Google advertisements, one on how to make money writing and one on how to get published. There were also two Amazon advertisements, one to purchase the novel Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, by Jonathon Foer and one to purchase The Father of All things, by Tom Bissel. I think that it is funny that the author of the review was advertising his book on the same website. However, I have to say that the advertizing was kept at a minimum not like other websites that have pop ups popping out from all over the place.

I believe that the author’s level of diction is moderate. It was easy to understand the review however; there were a few phrases and words that seemed out of place compared to the rest of the writing. In the writing the author stated, “Everything Is Illuminated was one of the most mature and fully realized books ever published by someone comparably young, which places Foer among the ranks of Carson McCullers, Truman Capote, Martin Amis, and John Updike.” The author of the review did not talk about the other authors that he compared Foer to and just expected the audience to know all of them; I personally had never heard of any of them before.

In my opinion, the author wrote as though he expected the audience to have a low level of familiarity with the novel. The writer lightly explained what the novel was about to the audience and what style of writing Foer used in the novel. The author did not give the ending of the novel, which I was thankful for since I haven’t finished reading yet. The author was very informative in his review and gave both credit and criticism to Foer for his writing style. For Example, the author stated in his review “This is a good novel. It is not nearly good enough.”

I don’t believe that the author expected a hostile audience or that he tried to create a hostile audience. I feel that the author was trying to be nothing but informative in his review and that he did not try to convince the audience to think one way or the other. To me, the goal of the author was to put the information out there allowing the audience to interpret the information anyway they chose. The background that I believe the writer expected the audience to share is a strong sadness for those that lost loved ones or were affected in some way by the 9/11 attacks. The author of the review understood that many people would have mixed emotions about the novel and that many people would be interested in it enough to read it.

Looking at the review, I believe the target audience to be open-minded, college level people or just simply open-minded adults. The audience would have to have an understanding of literature and maybe even knowledge of the different authors that Bissel expected the audience to know about; such as the ones I listed earlier. This audience would not be the typical audience that you see at www.seventeen.com or www.nationalenquire.com but maybe the same audience that you would see at www.nytimes.com. The web site does allow for comments that show up on the bottom right column. I read through a few of them and found that the topics off comments were way of course from the review topic. All in all, I was pleased with the site.

I would recommend this review to anyone that is going to read “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close,” by Jonathon Foer to get a better understanding about what the novel is about and then actually read the novel to determine what they agree and disagree with Bissel about. From my own experience, you should never let a review turn you away from a novel that you are interested in, just go for it!