The Novel as Software

LukePieStalker writes "Former English professor Eric Brown has published the first work in what he claims is a new literary category called the 'digital epistolary novel', or DEN. 'Intimacies', based on an 18th century novel, requires the DEN 1.2 software. The program's interface has windows for mock e-mail, instant messaging, Web browser and pager, through which the narrative unfolds. For those wishing to create their own works in this genre, Mr. Brown is marketing composition software called DEN WriterWare."

Yeah...

[Anonymous Coward]

I liked this better the first time around when it was called a video game

but, you know, some professors just need to stir up a little press to get raises and/or funding. especially professors without any actual skills

Bah

[daeley]

The key here is "Mr. Brown is marketing composition software called DEN WriterWare."

Sounds a bit like the game...

[rusty0101]

...where you were sent e-mail, pages, called at work and home, on your cell phone, faxes, etc. Each event was a clue to a mystery, or an indication you had to go look for something.

I seem to recall the game folding itself up and going away immediately after the Trade Center Tower Attack.

Other than the phone and fax events, this sounds quite similar, and I suspect it may end up with some of the same flaws.

The primary flaw that I see with this is that I personally have no problem reading bits and pieces out of dozens of books, often several different books by the same author. This is purely my decision, and I am in a mindset for that book when I go back to reading it, because I choose to be. Getting IM's, e-mail, etc as "Novel" content, seems to me to be eliminating the reader's election to get back into the frame of mind for properly processing the content, and I suspect will end up being ignored.

Then again, I could be wrong.

-Rusty

What Is Art?

[linuxdoctor]

Yet another contribution to that age old conundrum. Other posters have weighed in on whether they like it or not, and whether it is even a new genre citing similar approaches going back over a hundred years.

An Anonymous Coward dismissed it entirely saying it was not even literature. Isn't it, though?

The one point that caught my eye was the last sentence. "Mr. Brown is marketing ..." That said it all.

Is it art, or marketing ploy? Considering that even television commericals are considered by some to be art, one wonders.

I've always been in the "art for art's sake school." The fact that Mr. Brown is marketing his 'genre' diminishes the value of his 'literature', at least for me. But does that mean that it's not art?

Re:A first in a new genre?

[daniel_mcl]

The point of a good novel is NOT simply to tell a story but to express a theme in some manner or other. Can you imagine, say, "Great Expectations" without the unification provided by Dicken's social insight? "Boy meets fugitive in chance event, later becomes pivotal experience in life, wastes a bunch of money, and then we find out everyone is related to everyone else somehow." People would call it boring, unrealistic, out of touch. The novel format, however, takes this story and makes it into much more -- an indictment of the absurdities of the British class system the author lived in, a heartful endorsement of the rustic life over the dehumanization of industry, a survey of all the paths life can lead one down.

I'm not saying it's impossible to rework the Bildungsroman into a more "modern" style -- try watching a John Hughes movie and notice how much of a genius the man was when it came to social interactions. It's unfortunate that his work is ignored as "sentimental" or "cute;" he's probably one of the most brilliant analysts of human emotion alive. However, the idea of turning something into a computer game begins to destroy the author's sense of control over the story. There's a tradeoff between interactivity and control here, and I don't think a compromise can be reached. After all, if the interactive fiction work has a message, it's going to constrain the audience to pursuits which make this message clear; this makes for poor gameplay. On the other hand, if the audience is allowed to control everything they want to, the question of who's actually telling the story begins to come up.

In order to create the equivalent of a novel in the form of interactive fiction, an author would have to create digital analogs of real people, able to interact with the audience in a manner that live actors would be able to do. This has never, to my knowledge, been tested even with human agents (although the Bill Murray movie "The Man Who Knew Too Little" has such a premise), and the interactive fiction aspect would involve all such difficulties plus the whole issue of passing a Turing test. In short, I don't think this is going to happen any time soon.