by I got a temp job for next week (yay!) so I have to accomplish in a weekend what I would have accomplished next week. Okay, it’s not possible, but I have to try.
Question: Do you think the average reader knows who Jacob Riis was without having to google him?
Looking into the window of a shoe store. I love windows that kinda don’t make sense, that are filled with objects the owner likes or have sentimental value. Or maybe the owner was just, “we have a window, we have to put stuff in it, what do we have lying around?” I should have walked up and focused on that bottom shelf. Maybe I’ll do a series of windows like this.
I am nothing if not average and although I have definitely HEARD the name Jacob Riis, I WOULD have to Google him. But knowing a little about you and the book you’re working on, my first guess might be that he is a musical figure. But I also hear this little voice that says he’s Dutch so maybe he had something to do with the founding of New York?
Just Googled him. I wasn’t even close.
It wasn’t a test or anything. I had a small thing about Jacob Riis in my book and a friend said most people aren’t going to know who he is unless they are NY history buffs like myself. And it would have bogged down the section if I had to explain who he was. So I took it out.
I’m probably one of the few people who has read all of “How the Other Half Lives” (about ten years ago), so I know exactly who Jacob Riis was. I did that prior to a NYC trip that had the Tenement Museum on my list of places to go to see.
I know things are better today by half, but I also wonder if we aren’t on a slippery slope.