The fiction contest of the well-known social networking medium poses new expressive challenges in literature
According to a literary legend, Ernest Hemingway once bet that he could write a story in less than 10 words. He earned it with a suspenseful story, dramatic tension and… only six words: «For sale: Baby shoes, never worn» (They are sold: Baby shoes, unbearable).
Total, in English, 27 characters, many less than a tweet, which comparatively gives to the lovers of the small, smallest form 140 characters to tell a story, such as the stories to be told by those participating in Twitter's five-day online literary fiction festival at the end of November.
“Twitter is a place where we tell stories. They often involve news reporting, the policy, sports or music, but, as it turns out, Twitter is also a place for telling fantastic stories. As argued by a professor from Michigan State University, "tweeting can be considered a new literary practice". We want to celebrate it!». With these words the Twitter team announces the launch of the Twitter Fiction Festival (#twitterfiction), a creative experiment in fictional storytelling involving writers from around the world.
“Twitter has already hosted great literary experiments, like the “Black Box” by Jennifer Egan, the “Small Fates” by Teju Cole or @mayoremanuel by Dan Sinker. Now we want to go further," says the Twitter team.
If the question is simply brevity, the comprehensive, laconic expression in 140 words, then the medium is not original. The 2007, when Twitter was still a baby (was founded on 2006) Britain's Guardian newspaper asked established writers to follow Hemingway's example by writing six-word stories. John Banville, David Lodge, Jeffrey Eugenides, the A. S. Bayat, Ian Rankin, recent bi-Booker laureate Hilary Mandel and other contemporary authors, overall 35 writers, they rose to the challenge. At best, like that of David Lodge ("Apple;"No." “Try it!""ADAM;» My God!) witty humor prevails. In the worst case, the venture ends up a flop, unintelligible verbal utterance.
A similar experiment with the tweet microform was recently attempted in Greece by the authors of the e-book Tweet_Stories – Literature in 140 characters (Openbook.gr, 2012), which is a digital version of the Openbook library. "Can literature work in the suffocating context of the very small form of social networks;" was the question that was posed to internet users, the Cretan author and IT professor Giannis Farsaris explained to "Vima", who edited the volume.
"Many renowned Greek writers responded to the challenge, like Evgenios Trivizas, Manos Kontoleon, Ersi Sotiropoulou, Nikos Dimos, Eleni Ghika, Sakis Serefas, Christoforos Kasdaglis and dozens of others, who succeeded and squeezed the inspiration, the plot and dialogue of their stories within the narrow confines of Twitter posts”, clarified for us.
Gathered more than 600 original micro-stories, of extent up to 140 characters. Reading them 371 selected to be published in a freely distributed e-book, one understands how difficult it is to write a story in a tweet. Most formulations end in aphorisms, some sarcastic and some witty, or they slip into high school scrapbook sentimentality, in the catchword complaint or in the elliptically distorted expression of the ad.
But there are signs that the project can be successful, such as, for example, the following: “Always carry live with you to eat. They don't rot. All that matters now is survival. The road. The trip. “Boy; My son; Come here”.» (# 006: Kyriakos Athanasiadis). "He's coming on time. He wears his everyday, I take out the good tableware. I remember the wrong person, it seems. But the name is the same. It never goes away.” (# 008: Dimitris Athinakis). «”Please ma'am, I have three days to eat”. She didn't turn to look at him. He couldn't look Mr. Head in the eye again." (034: Alexander Vlazakis). “Look at the Word. If the State Service came to check; Lexi and him, a new environment. Read it again, ready for anything!» (# 078: Mitsakos Zaf). “He liked men. The mother did not speak to him, but on holidays he sent ties. After the funeral he resigned. Now he sells books at bazaars.” (# 332: Annita Hadjikou).
The suggestive, staccato, terse way of tweets, the suggestive and witty style also inspired their 'Twitterature: The World’s Greatest Books in Twenty Tweets or Less» (Viking/Penguin 2009) by Alexander Eichmann and Emmett Rensin. The sophomores, then, students at the University of Chicago summarized 80 known texts, from Homer's "Iliad" and "Odyssey" to Shakespeare's "Hamlet", "Anna Karenina" by Tolstoy, "Great Expectations" by Dickens and "Harry Potter" by J. K. Rowling in 20 tweets each. Some called the result a desecration of literary masterpieces. Others found it hilarious. Albert Camus' "The Stranger" ended up like this: "The mother is dead. Unknown today or yesterday./ At the funeral. I'm bored. People look sad. This old man “arranged” the mom!/ The funeral was not about to end. I banished a woman on the way back. I will see her tomorrow, maybe it suits me. /… ».
The book of the two young men was published by the publishing house Penguin, which is not only the publishing house with the most famous series of modern classic literature but also shows great interest in literary experiments on the Internet. The 2007 had carried out the participatory literature program "Million Penguins", an experiment in writing a novel together, inspired by the logic of Wikipedia, in which they collaborated 1.500 people.
Participation, and not only the condensation in the limited space of 140 characters, seems to be the aim of the organizers of the Twitter Fiction Festival competition. They therefore ask those who wish to participate in the competition to specify in their application: “How will you use our real-time global platform and the content it offers - micro-stories in Tweets, Twitter chat, live-tweeting-, where anyone can contribute to your story at any time or, even better, how you plan to create new content on this platform;;».
We certainly expect that one of the most common practices in tweets, sending a URL (of the address of a resource on the World Wide Web), will also be used during the competition. The experiment will therefore also be extended in the direction of "hyperliterature", that is, interactive texts that incorporate and make extensive use of hyperlinks, interspersing the written word with other texts, picture, sound, maps etc. and catalyzing linear readout.
Brevity and fragmentation, sign language, polyphony and thematic variety, are the features of Twitter, which the American prose writer Jonathan Franzen, described in a recent interview as "unspeakably irritating". He commented that Twitter is an irresponsible medium, space not for serious readers and writers but for those who love to chatter about themselves unnecessarily and added: “Twitter represents everything I loathe. It is difficult to cite facts or structure an argument in 140 characters… It’s like writing a novel without the letter P…”.
Having studied philology, Franzen is of course aware that such expressive limitations, related to the length of a sentence or the number or type of letters to be used in a text are not an invention of Twitter. The pioneering French Workshop of Potential Literature OuLiPo by Raymond Kenaud, Francois Le Lione, Georges Perec et al. practices experimental literature from the 1960 placing various morphological constraints on literary composition and combining writing with painting and mathematics. Texts were written exclusively with words that start and end with the same letter or phrases that are completely missing a letter, like the novel "La disparition" (1969, The disappearance) by Georges Perec, where e is completely absent, the most common letter in the French language.
The point is that, despite their interest, these experiments usually fail to gain widespread acceptance, to transcend the narrow confines of the group that inspired them and to have duration. With Twitter we will see if in the age of the internet experimental literature can be more widely recognized or if traditional forms of storytelling prove stronger than the technological challenges.
The great new parameter introduced by the Internet and Twitter is time: We are watching a text in its genesis. The time interval of the tweets, their thickening or thinning over time is an element of style. Alongside, consumption of the text in real time greatly influences its meaning and interpretation. This is all completely new data, and exciting. Traditional media, such as the American magazine "New Yorker", strongly support the festival and the New York Public Library has planned a major open discussion.
Those interested in participating in the Twitter Fiction Festival can fill out the relevant application by 15 November. Selected authors will be announced on 19 November. The competition will be held online from 28 November until 2 December.
Source : tovima.gr
