Will cellphone novels kill ‘the author’? If you believe blogs will kill ‘the journalist,’ then yes
What: Five of the 10 best-selling novels last year in Japan were originally cellphone novels.
Freaking out:
“Fans praised the novels as a new literary genre created and consumed by a generation whose reading habits had consisted mostly of manga, or comic books. Critics said the dominance of cellphone novels, with their poor literary quality, would hasten the decline of Japanese literature.”
“Author” versus “Cellphone Author” reminds me of: “Bloggers” versus “journalists.”
Why I find it interesting: The tools of information production hugely influence the aesthetics and form of information:
“[The five cellphone novels are] mostly love stories written in the short sentences characteristic of text messaging but containing little of the plotting or character development found in traditional novels.”
It’s fascinating to watch storytelling techniques develop for different technologies. Could it be that plot and character development are tied to a printing press?
Via IHT (my employer).
