Geographies of Reception

Abstract

In this chapter the discussion turns finally to the reception side of the interactive text event, with a discussion of ways in which The Great World has been grasped by readers, reviewers, book groups, and the media. This chapter also continues the focus of the previous chapter on promotion by looking at the ways in which various forms of reader response to the text have been (and are being) incorporated into the processes of marketing. These reader responses include, for example, the “blurbs” by professional reviewers and well-known authors that conventionally form an integral part of cover designs. Another genre of reader response in which the distinction between reception and promotion becomes blurred relates to the use of websites (such as TLC Book Tours) that host “virtual book tours,” posting a review of a text and encouraging comments from other readers. The complex networks of mutual obligation, entrepreneurship, and criticism that enable and are made visible by these reception/promotion activities provide the literary geographer with a valuable resource for the analysis of the mechanisms through which certain novels become widely read.