The Power of Media

Last week I posted about a list on GQ of books you’ve never heard of, but should read. Like most curious folks, I looked up one or two on Amazon. It was then that the power of media struck me.

Amazon’s feature “Frequently Bought Together” listed another of GQ’s books next to the one I was searching (Mary McCarthy’s The Groves of Academe, from 1952). Just coincidence? I scrolled down.

There, in the “Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought” section, no less that four of the other books on the GQ list showed up. I’m no Sherlock Holmes, but it was clear that people were going through the GQ list and buying up the books. I searched for one on BookFinder. By the time I clicked the link, it was gone.

I’ve often felt that people who have an institution behind them (even be it GQ) have a built-in way of succeeding as writers.

My own mention of Sherlock Holmes compels me to mention The Hound of the Baskervilles. I recently read this Holmes adventure for the first time. And time may not have been on its side. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle largely invented the detective novel (following the lead of Edgar Allan Poe, of course). But it is difficult to fool people these days.

At points in the narrative it was clear that Doyle had left out crucial information that the reader would need to solve the crime. Holmes seemed petulant, and at times self-congratulatory. The reader was unable to get the benefit of the writer’s privileged knowledge. Even more egregious was when, at the end, Watson asks a question Holmes can’t answer since there is a gap in his story logic.

I was hoping the book would be moody, set in Dartmoor as it is. Still, knowing the impossibly erudite nature of Sherlock Holmes and his amazing abilities, it was not hard to see through it like so much Exmoor mist.

Still, it was fun. And I learned something from my own clues. If you can comb your hair and get GQ to notice you, you’ll definitely sell more books.

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K. Marvin Bruce

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