Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close Audience Analysis

Audience Analysis
Kelly Wolfinger
Powell’s Books, www.polwells.com, is a site that buys and sells used books, identifies and discuses bestsellers, and hosts many author interviews, essays, and blogs. To better understand various author’s motives, world views, and aims, Dave, a Powell’s Books employee, invites them into conversation and encourages the authors to divulge to answers to many lingering questions their readers across the world may have. In this two-way, often informal interview setting, Dave is able to approach authors on multiple levels to engage them in conversations about the writing, home lives, both past and present, and inquire about their thoughts on current global and local issues that affect society and their writing. Dave proves his credibility to readers and authors alike as he is able to discuss and correlate different works that have overlapping themes and present alternate view points to the discussion his is participating in. His understanding of what he is relaying to his audience aid them in accepting his message and later further ponder the ideas he and the authors discuss.

The tone of the interviews and level of formality are geared toward a multi educational and socioeconomic standing group of individuals. Although the interviewer and author assumes that the readers understand common literary terms and current events that can be related to the topics discussed. They also include multiple comparisons in their discussions, in doing so readers with limited experience or subject knowledge may not get what is being alluded to or inferred by these comparisons. The causal air present within the interviews gives readers the distinct impression that the overall messages will be easy to digest and promote differing thought and attitudes from people of vastly different backgrounds. In an interview with Jonathan Safran Foer, Dave uses common language to describe his ideas and information and pose his questions in an understandable way.

While Dave does enlist Foer’s opinion on a few topics, he does not seem to be excepting a lengthy rebuttal or controversial answer, but rather would like to see Foer further explain the puzzling questions for his readers and provide example and feedback from his perspective. For example, Dave, asks Foer of his opinion of the practice of adding multiple visual elements into writing, one in which Foer is known for. He is then able to express his reasoning for doing so and the importance in his mind for including them, especially in his appeals toward a younger generation who is accustomed to receiving multiple stimuli and messages concurrently.

The majority of the interview centers around the topics of reading and writing, Foer’s stories in particular, it does open itself up for various related topics such as the introduction and influence of other media, namely music, on writing and the changing ways individuals, especially those for a younger generation, seek out and intake the information around them.

There are minimal advertisement on Powell’s site, especially few scattered about though the available interviews. Although there are few, the advertisements that are present aid the readers in discovering a target audience as the vast majority of these ads are for subscriptions to other literary review and information sites or are sites that sell books for discounted prices.

Considering the overall organization of the site, present advertisements, and written dialogue, it seems that the target audience for this site it literate, educational seeking, individuals with at least a high school level of education or above. This type of site and it’s target audience differs greatly from those who seek their information on sites such as ESPN or Facebook. Although Dave writes an in informal manner, he expects his readers to have a background in what is being discussed, however, his writing is worth perusing if you would like to gain another opinion about various topics or gain information by reading about various authors in a more casual setting.

Paper 1

Brandon Dooley
ENGL-305-60
Paper 1: Extremely Loud
& Incredibly Close
09/08/2010


Review of Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

There have been many reviews shown to us as students of this particular course for this particular book and author. Some of the reviews through these blog/newspaper sites have found favor and like of the book and author, while others have scorned the very core and concepts to which this book brings to life, thus posing both sides of the argument of whether this book was worth writing and publishing or not. In my own personal opinion, I believe the book was worth writing; the various complexities within the insanity of the lives depicted within the story, though abstractially presented, speak volumes of real-life truths not spoken directly most of the time throughout the book. It was challenging for me, then, to look at the other side of this spectrum, to which some have chosen to believe, and find who, as an audience, would support the dislike of the book, what the reasons behind that decision were, and what indications existed on the site(s) as to whom the article(s) was/were targeting. Because of this challenge, I chose to review an article wrote by a man named Harry Siegel, cleverly titled “Extremely Cloying & Incredibly False: Why the author of Everything Is Illuminated is a fraud and a hack,” for which supports the opposite of my views on the book.
Now, the difficulty was: who would support this view? For this answer, I had to examine what other content besides the writing itself indicated who would be interested in hearing this side of the story. This particular article is wrote on the NewYork Press website, so that limited my guess down to that particular region in the United States. At the top of the page, next to the NewYork Press logo, is an advertisement reading: “eldersex: over 25% of people ages 57 to 85 still have sex- and are still at risk for HIV.’ It then references a support site for HIV by the name of GMHC. This further narrowed my guess down to people in New York who are between the ages of 57 and 85, and who are potentially sexually active. As I scroll through the page, I also see a Karaoke add on the right side, which indicates that the people who view this site might also be actively participating in activities within the community and be interested in doing that particular activity. Other activity ads listed include kayaking tour of the Hudson, taking a random survey for the NewYork Press to win random prizes, ability to submit events of the persons’ choosing, signing up for the NewYork Press weekly event information, actively following the NY Press on Facebook and Twitter, and the CityArt cultural review of NewYork. What this all indicates to me is that the target audience are people from New York or people planning to go to New York who are of the older generation that don’t mind ‘getting out there’ and taking risks while also enjoying themselves, but who are also rigid in culture and activities such as going to the bar to karaoke or have a few drinks, or exploring the city for cultural familiarity to look at differences from their own practices (this last part, though, seems to be directed towards intellectual critics of this particular article, not towards the main intended audience). Expressionism and the changes indicated by the actions of expressionistic persons (such as the case with Foer and his difficult writing style he utilizes to express abstractly truths and ideas) would seemingly be rejected by these type of people, thus making these type of people easily susceptible to agree with Siegel about the negative aspects of the writer and his book. This determination is simply through the ads on the page, but was something that helped narrow my view down a bit so that when I began to read what this article was about, the rest of the pieces simply fell into place. One other aspect I noticed about the piece is that the writer is rather sarcastic in his writing, which makes me assume that he thinks the audience will like that sarcasm.
One of the main themes I found in this article pertained to the ad hominem reasoning, meaning that Siegel was simply bashing on Foer based on his conduction and methodology for expressing his art of writing. I also find that many of the paragraphs tend to go on tangents that really don’t pertain to anything specifically designated towards his works of art. For example, in the fifth paragraph, he states that, “Foer, I should note, is a Jewish atheist, wrote letters to Susan Sontag when he was nine, and otherwise sounds like he'd make unbearable company, though perhaps not as much as the obnoxiously precocious, overeducated brat Schell. If Foer is beginning to sound like a minor Saul Bellow character (think the masturbating uncle in Mr. Sammler's Planet), he has only himself to blame.” (1), which, in my eyes, shows nothing towards anything pertaining to actual artistic capability or lack there off; when I think of artistic criticism, I would imagine sentence structure, ability to articulate thoughts and ideas, amount of messages hinted from the text, plot structure, and other writing-related concerns being discussed. Hence, the audience personality type directed towards equivocates to extremely pissed off people who are ignorant to or blinded from the artistic value within the piece or works of art in general, who’s ignorance causes hate towards the person who created the object rather than the specifics of the object itself, with presumably sound reasoning coercing their decisions.
The paradoxical perspective also indicates that people of decent to high quality education reviewing the particular article would also be interested to shut down the content in the article immediately, particularly indicated by the ad relaying the culture center (which, in my assumption, interests people of questioning and analytical minds like the decent to high quality educated persons). The fact that these type of people are inclusive is rather hinted in the article, but existent nonetheless. I mean, for someone who is writing for a major paper within the region, you almost have to go all out on one side of the argument so that both sides argue inclusively or disclusively, but argue just the same, read just the same, so in fair recognition of the fact that critics on both side exist and that some will read arguments against their belief shows that the writer isn’t completely unaware of his potential audience. But, the audience that he’s mainly targeting are the type that will follow fallacies very closely simply for differences from the regular, or rather expected, tendencies for a particular matter (such as how to write a novel).
There is one final hint I wish to point out in this article. Through about three quarters of the way into the article, he actual starts to make sound arguments against the actual content of the piece. Here’s what I mean:
“Foer is indeed a sampler, throwing in Sebald (the illustrations and Dresden), Borges (the grandparents divide their apartment into something and nothing), Calvino (a tale about the sixth borough that floated off, ripped off wholesale from Cosmicomics), Auster (in the whole city-of- symbols shtick), Night of the Hunter (the grandfather has Yes and No tattooed on his hands) and damn near every other author, technique, reference and symbol he can lay his hands on, as though referencing were the same as meaning.” (1)

Within this description, he is actually utilizes some previous styles and story contents as a comparison or similarity between Foer’s book and those pieces. This actually shows some intellectual argument rather than ranting and raving like the beginning and end of the piece. What this tells me as a reader is that he does care about the intellectual individual paying attention to his piece as the secondary target audience, cause he doesn’t care to give these types of arguments in the beginning, but he hints is then exemplifies further throughout the piece. So I know that he wants them as an audience as well, but doesn’t want to appear that way in the beginning; he knows that the main target audience won’t give him the time of day unless the article explains from the beginning what his position is, why it is, and what exactly he’s positioning against, so quick arguments, whether intellectual or not, are his aim in the beginning. Then, for those that stick around and continue to read through the article, he does pose some decent arguments. Not something I necessarily agree with, but is something evident in the piece.
Now, all this information tells me that there are two particular types of audiences this writer is wishing to target. The first one is the older generation who like to get out and do things, doesn’t have time to sit and read, who wants the facts quick and easy, not caring about the full argument being pose, just caring enough to get a fair determination through small bits of information whether or not it’s worth their while to care. They really don’t even necessarily care who’s writing it; they know its from a major paper and that what they’re told must be true and accurate, even if perspectual. Also, these people would be from the New York area because the personality type requires them to be from the area that the piece was written in (cause who, of these type of people, would sit down, go look at a different city’s major paper just for an article about a book they never heard of or even care to hear of?). The second type of audience is us, the students, the minds at work craving to learn more about the world. We like the valid arguments and hate the stupidity within, but the nice part is we’re smart enough to recognize the difference, so it peaks our interests to write about our opinions on the matter from our intellectually sound perspectives. Also, people who are just generally interested in knowing the world, they would be likely to drop by on occasion and would be a potential audience. These types can pertain to anyone, really, who has a computer and searches around the internet looking up random information. These two types of audiences are what I understand as being the target of this piece.

Bibliography:
1. Siegel, Harry. “Extremely Cloying & Incredibly False: Why the author of Everything Is Illuminated is a fraud and a hack.” NewYork Press. New York. Posted: Wednesday, April 20, 2005. http://www.nypress.com/article-11418-extremely-cloying-incredibly-false.html