As I moved out of the special edition section and into the regular features of the magazine, I found an article about the current state of the "NOVEL," that great and glorious epitome of civilization that proves the right of literacy to call itself the culmination of human evolution. Well, like all evolving things, the jury's out the revolving door on the format of the novel. Seems like the Japanese craze for miniature things electronic, including handheld wireless walkie-talkies (i.e., cell phones), has sparked a new craze for equally-small novels. Thus, literature, instant gratification and attention deficit syndrome have finally mated (in an era where a ménage à trois can, with the aid of genetic manipulation, result in an entirely new species) and created the mini-masterpiece. In the meantime, self-publishing continues to grow in self-respect, joining fan fiction in the need for knowledge to be free.
Thus, as a kid, while reading cartoon stories (oops, I mean classic tales like Ivanhoe that we would now call graphic novels), I saw the advent of the online novel. Hell, that's why I'm here, isn't it, cranking out my own stories in this little mishmash mashup virtual shop of horribly written novels.
I have always kept a copy of Thomas Payne's Common Sense beside my writing desk. He was the pamphleteer who inspired me to care about my writing, infusing it with meaning while using concise language. In him, I saw that the desire to write is truly a manifest destiny wherein that which we call a self is not fully reflected in a mirror but sometimes also reflected in the use of words, the toolset given to us by our forebears to show to ourselves and others that we exist outside time and place. A hall of funhouse mirrors, if you will, with embedded webcams to capture our fleeting facial expressions.
Isn't that what a novel really is, anyway? An exaggeration of our vanity? An image we can laugh at or with, depending on our point of view? Emmett Kelly incarnate, a sad-faced clown looking back at us, with Pathos and Irony leaning against his shoulders?
The answer, of course, is yes.
Therefore, my novels reflect me, a user of mainly Western European languages, who writes outside the mainstream. I do not write specifically for others, although Muses do catch my attention and give me the strength to write when I feel too depressed to move. I write for me. I write to me. I fall in love with the idea of reading my writing everytime I open this blog. I crave the next woid I put down on paper ("woid" = ode to Dorothy Parker). Well, actually, I use paper so little now that paper has become my pocket shorthand, little guideposts I write to myself to remind me what I did on a certain day, in hopes that the zeitgeist will be remembered later on.
I write long tales that will not sell in Books-A-Billion or Barns of Novels. I write to the reader in me. I'm just as likely to write nonsense as common sense. One of my favorite poems has no purposefully-written English words but tells the story of a desert prince whose object of his affection he can never marry so they meet one last night at an oasis, where, unbeknownst to them, an alien spaceship is dumping some toxic waste from its sewer receptacle and accidentally blinds and disfigures the two Persians, giving a whole new meaning to "star-crossed lovers":
Sounds In The Night
Onaki som
Vrimurnika
Ola, mifrind, ola
Cizurpi, Ta
Omal jamal
Amarki ti nipur
Solonga long
Ananika
Aloki fanipa
Apar tipar
Avert aumur
Nipusi ti amour
- 7 October 1985
As we completely pave over this planet with homogeneous neighborhoods and shopping districts, let's recognize that life is Chaos ruled by Entropy. Anything is possible and anything can happen. Shouldn't a novel be the same way?
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