I am reading Grace Paley’s collection of stories, Later the Same Day and was struck by how she moves the narratives without the types of digital anchors we often see in writing today. There are fewer invoked cultural objects and more narrative force in the progression of her stories. Shouldn’t we always be interested in the writing itself as primary?

In part, the reason Paley stands out is her talent for creating a self-contained narrative ecosystem in a short story. That she wrote in the 1980s, before the popularity of the World Wide Web, is part of it. Shared culture between an author and reader is essential to the success of writing. What I didn’t expect was the center of gravity of prose to shift from internally generated, self-contained narrative force like Paley’s to externally shared cultural context. A digital shared culture was part of the expansion of the World Wide Web and our relationship to it. Increasingly, I find digital references doing narrative work the author should be doing.

I want to read works in which the author earns my attention sentence by sentence, without relying on external cultural signals. The more a sentence depends on shared cultural associations rather than its own descriptive power, the less control the writer retains over the reader’s experience, and the less engaging writing becomes.

Before the web, books competed with television, newspapers, radio, and magazines. Today they compete with a device that offers nearly unlimited alternatives every few seconds. Writers know this, whether consciously or not. An author has a choice.

For example, if I were to invoke a brand name — “We met at Starbucks for coffee,” rather than “We met for coffee,” — it has an entirely different vibe and focus. When a reader encounters the word “Starbucks” they bring some baggage with them. Maybe they just read an article about baristas organizing a union. Maybe they find their prices too high. For my writing, it is better to leave brands as cultural objects out of it because they distract readers from the narrative path down which I am leading them.

Digital references help orient readers quickly because they carry ready-made associations. Instead of describing a personality in detail, a writer might invoke a familiar television show, social-media behavior, or consumer product, such as, “They are a Gilmore Girls fan.” This seems like a shift from self-sufficient prose to referential prose.

Why would I introduce things like a mobile phone, Taylor Swift, or FOX News into my writing. I wouldn’t. I want readers to be immersed in the culture I create in that piece of writing. That means, I don’t want my writing to resemble the actual world they live in where digital artifacts serve as a complex hive of things representing signposts where readers quickly seek catharsis, resolution, or an exit?

I had Paley’s book in my to be read pile for a long time. I’m glad I picked it up to remind me there is another way to write. Such reminders are a reason to read.