A column of ideas we should not adopt, for our national sanity.
It's a noble quest to manufacture literary journals in our near-Dickensian hard times. Though I'm a fan of reading novels for pleasure from actual pages--perfect bound, in signatures of 32--I fully endorse literature in other media. So when I read about Electric Literature in the New York Times, I rejoiced. Love letters to niche literary fantasias in the national news!
But I do wonder how graduate students will form master's theses in ten years on tweeted work: "Starting next month, Rick Moody will tweet a story over three days." It's a brave new world. Writing necessitates brave new marketing. But when you read Moody's tweets, do you start from the bottom or from the top? When you join in halfway through on your iPhone, can you read the first half you missed? Imagine writing the MLA citation.
I hope his novel is as provocative-cum-hilarious as Elizabeth Taylor's review of This Is It: "I truly believe this film should be nominated in every category conceivable." Yes, Elizabeth Taylor, the hot-tin-roof cat who's afraid of Virginia Woolf. Her tweets on Michael Jackson practically constitute a biography.
John Irving just spoke in Brookline about nineteenth-century novels. "That was it," he said. For him, Dickens and Hardy epitomize the greatness of literature, overflowing with characters and semicolons. Short form deserves praise, just like sprinters, but I hope we remember that marathon writers can be astonishing. And literary journals. At least people are still reading, Sort Of, even if the world fails to warm to TwitLit.
1 comment:
What are the advantages of writing a novel like that (choppy, fragmented, accompanied by @ and RT)?
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