Hook. When you hear this word what is the first term that comes to mind? Do you see some guy sitting in a boat with a fishing pole who is trying to put some kind of bait on his pole’s hook? Or do you think about the 1991 Steven Spielberg movie “Hook” in which the grown up Peter Pan must fight his nemesis (Captain Hook) to save his children and the civilization of Neverland. Either way, you are on the right track since both cases aim to hook something, whether it is a big bass or Peter Pan. When I hear the word hook, I think of burning the midnight oils because I am so engrossed with a book that I am unable to stop reading. Sometimes, I even think about school and being instructed how to write a sentence or statement that will hook my readers. After all, we have a New York Times Best Sellers list, book reviews, and book groups for a reason, they dictate to us, the readers, who is great, knowledgeable and worthy of our time. After reading this week’s chapter, I felt that the major point of ethical proof (ethos) is getting your readers or listeners hooked. Otherwise, if the audience is not captured and captivated, your character (reputation) as an author or orator is at risk of being tarnished.
While reading this chapter and formulating this blog, my mind kept going back to two key quotes in this text. The first quote that inspired my thought process was “If readers are intrigued or charmed by Cloud’s ethos in this opening paragraph, they will surely continue reading” (196). Crowley and Hawhee are stating is that if the reader gets hooked, he or she will maintain his or her trust of the writer and will allow the author to lead him or her along a path. In other words, first impressions still matter. This quote also states that if I like and can somehow relate to your point (hook line), I will continue to favorably read your book, tell my friends about it (promote it) and positively aid (influence) the selling rates of your book (and income). Thus, this positive intimacy with an author is why some authors are able to write sequels and have long literary careers, while others never even get past the first book. I realized early on in the chapter that the author-reader relationship is solely based on emotional connection between the writer (speaker, actor, etc.) and the reader (audience members).
This realization that the author-reader (even the orator-listener, actor-audience, etc.) relationship is heavily based on an emotional (intimacy) level really was best summarized in the Securing Goodwill portion of the chapter. It is from this part of the chapter that another quote struck my fancy. Crowley and Hawhee write that “Modern rhetors can demonstrate their goodwill toward an audience by carefully considering what readers need to know about the issue at hand in order to follow the argument” (210). Basically, the author is writing enough to get and keep us hooked into the book (the review, the movie, the speech, the debate, the play, etc.). Crowley and Hawhee agree and state that “They (in this case, movie reviewers) demonstrate this goodwill by telling audiences just enough about the plot or characters or direction to allow them to decide whether to see a film, but they don’t give away the ending” (210). Thus, the reviewers give us the general picture so that we can either agree with it or not. Some reviewers tend to use more of a logical proof (proving to us their superiority through examples) when describing a movie, while others tend to use ethical (emotional) proofs. For example, Crowley and Hawhee discuss at length Peter Travers’ review. They write that “But he does not seem to care about establishing goodwill toward all of his readers, because some will warm to his ethos here only if they agree with his negative assessment… anyone who liked the movie will no doubt be out off by his snarky remarks” (211). What they fail to realize is that Peter Travers is securing goodwill with his readers, those that do agree with him and are “intrigued or charmed” by his ill review of the movie (196). Yet, sometimes, the hook is not in relating to the author but in not relating to the author. After all, his hook may be to get people to disagree with his article so that they will continue to read it and try and prove him wrong (or is this idea more related to logical proof). Otherwise, he would not be employed if he did not have a fan base.
What intrigued me about this idea of the emotional connection between a reader and writer is how much power the audience (reader) has in determining an author’s reputation. At the end of the chapter, I thought about the Book Club sandal that occurred four years. Oprah is a great promoter of various authors and many writers have attributed their booming careers to her positive promotion of their works. She is able to promote so many books because she has a large fan base and a good reputation among them. Four years ago, she aided in the promotion of James Frey’s text, A Million Little Pieces and not only was Frey’s reputation as an author affected but so were (for a short time) the reputation of the publishing house and Oprah. Indeed, after it was revealed that Frey had lied in his memoir, Oprah stated on her show that “I made a mistake and I left the impression that the truth does not matter, and I am deeply sorry about that. That is not what I believe. To everyone who challenged me on this issue of truth, you are absolutely right” (USA TODAY 1/25/2006). This modern day example shows how a good hook line, good emotional connection and a believed (trusted) goodwill can occasionally cause a problem.
Here are a couple of articles that I quickly glanced over that discussed at large (and from different perspectives) the Million Pieces scandal
http://www.thesmokinggun.com/documents/celebrity/million-little-lies
http://www.cnn.com/2006/SHOWBIZ/books/01/11/frey.lkl/index.html
http://www.usatoday.com/life/books/news/2006-01-25-frey-oprah_x.htm
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/30/business/media/30carr.html?ex=1296277200&en=1c0e8843da5b43d6&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss
http://tunedin.blogs.time.com/2006/01/26/oprah_clarifies_her_position_t/
Looking forward to Thursday night’s discussion!
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