The Short Form Reshaped: Email, Blog, SMS, and MSN in Twenty-First Century E-pistolary Novels
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.13136/2281-4582/2019.i14.714Abstract
By borrowing from computer coding strategies or computer-based communication tools and rules, by re-thinking typo-graphic and layout strategies, the digital or electronic short forms of twenty-first century e-pistolary novels are made of are crossbreeds that expressively capture and mirror the fragmented, often simultaneous and multi(p)layer, nature of the contemporary conversation threads within a pervasive communicative environment. The result is that e-pistolary fiction revises correspondence typologies, thematic patterns, conventions, techniques and rules at various levels, namely narrative, symbolic, linguistic while disrupting the linearity of the book form through high discontinuity as well as refashioning and jeopardizing one of the strongest assumptions of epistolary novels, i.e. materiality. Not intended as an investigation of traditional letter novels, the aim of this paper is twofold. On the one hand, it intends to provide a preliminary mapping of some of the computer-mediated short forms and their re-shaping in literary works in book form: to this end, somenarratives are briefly introduced as specimens of twenty-first century e-pistolary novels and some of their salient features highlighted - a question that has as yet received little critical attention. Four are the examples that have been selected: Microserfs (1995) and J-Pod (2006) by Douglas Coupland; The PowerBook (2000), by Jeanette Winterson; and Black Box (2012) by Jennifer Egan. On the other hand, this paper discusses e2 A novel (2010), the second e-pistolary novel by British author Matt Beaumont, as a case study of a remediation in print of some born-digital short forms compiled through an almost filmic montage: an effective rethinking of the letter novel that cleverly combines a multitude of characters, several subplots, and a variety of text types that are a collection of electronic messages emerging from the contemporary digital environment rather than from literary history or tradition.References
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Communication 18 (1998): 133-170.
Bergs, Alexander. “The Linguistics of Text Messaging.” The XVI International Conference on Historical
Linguistic (ICHL 2003), 11-15 August 2003, Copenhagen. Conference Paper.
Blincoe, Nicholas. “A Modern Master.” New Statement 10 September 2001.
Bolter, J. David and Richard Grusin. Remediation: Understanding New Media. Cambridge: The MIT Press,
2000.
Bower, Rachel. Epistolarity and World Literature, 1980-2010. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017.
Coupland, Douglas. Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture. London: Abacus, 1992.
---. Microserfs. London: Flamingo, 1995.
Crystal, David. Language and the Internet. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001.
Dash, Anil. “If You Didn’t Blog It, It Didn’t Happen.” Anil Dash: A Blog about Making Culture 4 January 2001.
http://dashes.com/anil/2011/01/if-you-didnt-blog-it-it-didnt-happen.html. Last visited 09/12/2019.
Frehner, Carmen. Email-SMS-MMS: The Linguistic Creativity of Asynchronous Discourse in the New Media
Age. Bern: Peter Lang, 2008.
Friedman, Norman. “Recent Short Story Theories: Problems in Definition.” Short Story Theory at a Crossroads.
Eds. Susan Lohafer and Jo Ellyn Clarey. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1989. 13-31.
Egan, Jennifer. Black Box. London: Constable&Robinson, 2012.
Halliday, M.A.K. Spoken and Written Language. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985.
Jakobson, Roman. “On Linguistic Aspects of Translation.” The Translation Studies Reader. Ed. Lawrence
Venuti. London, New York: Routledge, 1959. 113-118.
Herman, David. “Textual ‘You’ and Double Deixis in Edna O'Brien's ‘A Pagan Place.’” Style 28. 3 (1994): 378–
410.
Lainsbury, G. P. “Generation X and the End of History.” Essays on Canadian Writing 58 (1996): 229-240.
Lee, Judith Yaross. “Charting the Codes of Cyberspace: A Rhetoric of Electronic Mail.” Communication and
Cyberspace. Eds. Lance Strate, Ron L. Jacobson and Stephanie B. Gibson. Cresskill: Hampton Press
Inc., 2003. 307-328.
Löschnigg, M. and Rebekka Schuh, eds. The Epistolary Renaissance: A Critical Approach to Contemporary
Letter Narratives in Anglophone Fiction. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2018.
McNely, Brian J. "Sociotechnical Notemaking: Short-Form to Long-Form Writing Practices." Present Tense: A
Journal of Rhetoric in Society 2.1 (2011). http://www.presenttensejournal.org/volume-2/sociotechnicalnotemaking-short-form-to-long-form-writing-practices/. Last visited 09/12/2019.
Shapiro, Norman Z. and Robert H. Anderson. Toward an Ethics and Etiquette for Electronic Mail. Santa Monica
(CA): Rand Corporation, 1985. http://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/reports/2007/R3283.pdf.
Last visited 09/12/2019.
Shaw, Valerie. The Short Story, a Critical Introduction. Burnt Mill: Longman House, 1983.
Tate, Andrew. Douglas Coupland. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2007.
Thompson, Clive. “On the New Literacy.” Wired Magazine 24 august 2009.
---. “Clive Thompson on How Tweets and Texts Nurture In-Depth Analysis.” Wired Magazine 27 December
2010.
Winterson, Janet. The PowerBook. London: Vintage, 2000.
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2019-12-01
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