if i write the book (my idiosyncrasy/worldview made tangible) then, indeed, it's a one-man affair (i'm talking, here, of original work...not formulaic or genre crap)
everything that comes after may be collaborative, but only in bringing my work to the marketplace
and that can be sidestepped by way of self-publishing and selling
at the very least: the self-publisher takes a great many collaborative hands and minds out of the mix
regardless: the work itself (the cultural artifact i crafted) is the 'reason' for the collaborative effort
hell: even in the transaction between writer and reader (the transaction/telepathy mediated by my book) it is -- at best -- a two-man event
sure: i hope thousands of individuals read what i've written, but it will be 'individuals' -- not an aggregate or collective -- who read my work
like a 'free market', 'culture' is the median of all these aligned, individual, transactions between writer and reader, sculptor and viewer, filmographer and film-watcher and so forth and so on
i can see how some might take a collectivist view on culture, but -- really -- it starts with 'one'
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"henry, I like you!"
