e-lit

Funny thing about e-books. I mean there is huge potential there, for a writer that is. But reading an e-book? Not me. I don’t want to read books on a screen. God, this is the last thing I don’t have to read on a screen. I’m in front of a screen all day. I don’t want to bring a screen to bed with me. Reading an e-book? No way. But writing one? Tempting.

E-novels? One struggles to see the point of it. People don’t want video links to tell them how the characters look like, sound like. They want to use their imagination – so they say. Still, they sense that once the technology, the ecological niche, the humus is there, things will grow out of it. From the bottom-up. Vaguely, people understand that it’s not about adapting existing literature. A new literature will emerge.

I know what kind of e-novels will be written. It will be these “experimental” books that writers have struggled, lost their sanity or their lives to bring out. It will be B.S. Johnson’s Albert Angelo. Loose chapters unbound in a box, to be read randomly. A publisher’s, a librarian’s nightmare. But imagine the ease of it in e-book format? Hit the scramble button again: read another book on your return plane journey. Imagine even, further, personalised, unique versions of Albert Angelo. Hit the scramble button once, and not only will chapters arrange themselves in a given order, but all alternative versions will be lost for you, reader lambda. Or, further. A book that will evolve differently, depending on choices you make, or random dice-throwing, at given crisis points.

A bit like life really. The choices you make, for whatever reasons. Good reasons, bad reasons. Because you were angry. Because you were hungry. Or even the minor choices you make, the non-choices, the randomness of life. Getting up five minutes later and meeting your future life mate, or being hit by that bus. And your life is changed forever, alternative versions inaccessible, like parallel universes.

Life: thoughts and action. Film is a better medium than literature for certain things. What’s the point in doing action-lit? So many words to describe what one image can do in a fraction of a second. On the other hand, internal monologue isn’t great on film. It can be transcribed with subtitles, voice-overs, but it doesn’t “sound” natural. Mixing film and book? Film for the action sequences, book for the introspection.

And further again. Writing like one thinks: James Joyce’s stream-of-consciousness. Not only do people think in words or in pictures or with all their senses, but thoughts don’t follow a storyline. It is not that thoughts are multidimensional, or web-like: they are still linear, because time is linear. But consciousness jumps from idea to idea, snippets of conversation to impressions, randomly, a bit like following the clicks of an internet surfer. Thoughts might take any route depending on the inclination, what catches one’s fancy or what one sees at any given moment. Imagine Molly Bloom’s soliloquy written in hyperlink blue, the whole 40 pages and eight gargantuan sentences of it, and follow your thoughts.

(Photo by Lonan)