Word-of-mouth storytelling preserves novelty force while mechanical forms exhaust it

Evidence

The function of the newspapers is to absorb the shocks of novelty, and by numbing the organism to them to dull their intensity. Yet the tale, always constructed around some novelty, was designed, on the contrary, to preserve its force; whereas the mechanical form “exhausts” ever-increasing quantities of new material, the older word-of-mouth communication is essentially characterized as that which recommends itself to memory. Its reproducibility is not mechanical, but natural to consciousness; indeed, that which allows the story to be remembered, to seem “memorable,” is at the same time the means of its assimilation to the personal experience of the listeners. — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 166

Categorization

• XREF: This is Benjamin’s contrast between mechanical reproducibility and auratic or memory-preserving communication — connects directly to Benjamin’s ‘Work of Art’ essay and to the reader’s existing line on reproducibility across the chapter. — connects to: The demand for novelty paradoxically strengthens the conventions it appears to escape — Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 100; Brands profit by monetizing user-generated word-of-mouth influence. — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update: Celebrity, Publicity,…, 253; Ephemeral stories let influencers sustain audience attention cheaply — Crystal Abidin and Megan Lindsay Brown (eds.), Microcelebrity Around the Globe:…, 674
• DEFINE: Characterizes the tale’s natural reproducibility as the very mechanism of its assimilation to personal experience.

Broader Connections

• The demand for novelty paradoxically strengthens the conventions it appears to escape #expands (0.80) — Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 100
• Brands profit by monetizing user-generated word-of-mouth influence. #complicates (0.72) — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update, 253