Mean
Some Reactions to “Some Contemporary Characters” by Rick Moody
All of you know that Electric Literature recently began tweeting what they are calling ‘an experiment in participatory ePublishing’: they are publishing Rick Moody’s story “Some Contemporary Characters” over three days/153 Tweets. They’ve invited anyone who’d like to RT ((re)publish?) the story along with them to participate. As far as I can tell, here’s who is participating: @WritersGarret, @vromans, @shyascanlon, @TheSchooner, @str1cken, @StephenBruckert, @skylightbooks, @skemptastic, @OpiumMagazine, @MWSchmutterer, @litdeathmatch, @FictionAdvocate, @coppernickel, @commongoodbooks, @breathebooks, @brazosbookstore, @blackclockmag, @a_m_kelly, @Andrew_Ervin, @lunaparkreview, @BOMBMagazine, and probably more.
After tweeting the story for today, Electric Literature posted this question on their Facebook page: “Is the Multiple Tweeting of Rick Moody’s Story Awesome, Annoying, or a Bit of Both?”
After the jump, I’ve tried to answer the question as best I could.
Those of you who happen to follow a handful of the listed twitterers, or what Electric Literature has called ‘copublishers,’ might have had a similiar feed as I did. Mine, at one point today, looked like this:
I admit that my initial reaction to all of the excitement was one of mild annoyance. I complained about it to a few friends, via Twitter and Gchat. I didn’t get out of bed except to tutor for a couple hours, I drank burnt coffee all day, and didn’t shower until 3pm. I maliciously unfollowed those on my feed who were RTing the story, but plan to refollow them after the three days are over.
I perhaps worried too much about all of it. This is to say that, really, it doesn’t matter, this little thing I’m writing. People will like it and hate it, most likely. Even Moody said, in an interview with Future Perfect Publishing, that he’s betting that micro-serialized Twitter stories are just “a flash in a pan.”
Still, I felt I should write up this post because I’d rather think through my criticism for others to see than be just another guy shitting on everything in 140 characters or less.
***
After a bit of fun, I realized that I hadn’t even read the story, what little of it had been tweeted anyhow, so caught up was I in the novelty of complaining about it. I figured I should read more before judging any further. I initially read the story in my feed, parts of it at least, but then got frustrated sorting through all the other tweets, most of which were distracting/more interesting than the story itself: compare, for example, Kathy Fish’s tiny, but funny tweet to the repeated, and oddly unTwitterlike tweet of Moody’s story.
I then clicked on @ElectricLit’s feed so I might read the story all at once. I read from the bottom up, a weird backwards assembly of tweets that told a story of online dating, variously narrated in that clipped way of all tweets: dropped words and punctuation, more observational/reportive phrases than usual, occasional reflections, use of abbreviations such as ‘b/c.’ Basically, it was, at its most effective (so far), what you’d expect from a Twitter feed. And it sounds like that was Moody’s goal; in that same interview, he says that the story “was absolutely written ground up on Twitter, for Twitter, about Twitter, with the character counter page open the whole time, to keep me from going OVER.”
But at times the language itself shifts into this intricately crafted thing (formal diction and syntax) which is at weird odds with the whole Twitter form: a “point-of-purchase glossy containing the word cellulite” doesn’t strike me as a phrase that is inherently Twitterable. It seems as though Moody did a great job meeting the constraint of 140 characters, but sometimes goofed the language of Twitter. The constraint might have led him to create some neat turns of phrase, but it feels ‘off.’ Levi Asher agrees, saying:
Maybe Moody is focusing on the artistic potential of the 140-character sentence, but that’s only half of what this work needs to do. It must also feel natural on Twitter, must reflect its setting in terms of identity and plot point as well as character-count. This [story] still feels like a text placed on Twitter rather than born there.
But perhaps, Asher and I’ve just missed something here. Maybe our expectations are inappropriate for this particular experiment. Maybe a story written specifically for Twitter deserves to be read like all the other Tweets out there: quickly, haphazardly, distractedly. Maybe we’re supposed to accept that these Tweets are unique, that here we have a series of Twittering narrators who don’t mind the fancy language, who actually speak and type this way. But even in this case, even if I can get past the concept of worrying about who is doing the Tweeting, I don’t understand the experiment, why such a story needs to be told? Is ‘to experiment’ a satisfactory enough reason? Or is this experiment simply a gimmick disguised as something to ‘save literature’? Something else? Moody says:
I think my contempt for Twitter is what inspired it, initially. In general, I think the way to describe the world is to get longer not shorter. Twitter, by virtue of brevity, abdicates any responsibility where real complexity is concerned, because it forbids length. This seemed to me like a challenge, then: how to get complex in a medium that is anathema to complexity and rigor. And a challenge is always thrilling.
***
I’ve given up reading the story for now, though I might return to it later. I stopped here, teetering on the brink of replying to everyone, publisher and copublishers alike, to say yes, it was in fact inadvisable to shove the tongue all the way in. Really, I’m actually less interested in the quality of the story itself; I’d rather talk about the mechanism by which Electric Literature published it and how this publishing didn’t completely take advantage of the medium. Take, for example, Richard Nash’s comment in response to the original question at the Electric Literature Facebook page:
this & previous experiments with Twitter narratives have all failed, largely because they failed to reflect how people tell stories on Twitter. They simply don’t serialize—they link and/or condense. So structurally it was a contrivance, like serializing a saxophone solo. Native twitter art seems to work more effectively with persona extended over a period of months, perhaps years. Like @otolythe‘s work @enoch_soames and @adelehugo, neither of which have quite reached critical mass as art projects but which are far closer to using the specific rhythms of Twitter than using it to serialize multi-thousand word narratives.
I admit that I don’t have great examples of Twitter being used perfectly in a literary sense. The examples I can think of are relatively simple, but effective: a character from a work of fiction or some other fictional entity opens a Twitter account, tweets, and interacts with those who tweet back. I think part of what makes Twitter fun is the possibility of immediate gratification and interaction. Laugh if you want, but I think DarcyToYou is currently a more interesting feed than that of the multiple tweets in “Some Contemporary Characters” because of how the character Mr. Darcy responds to others (skydiving?) whereas those in Moody’s story are static as far as I can tell. Other feeds that play or played with this extension of a persona that Nash talks about include the following: Storm Trooper TK 329, part of a media blitz for Death Troopers and now no longer active; the inconsistent, offensive, and hilarious Twitter666 journal, which gathers a bunch of fictional characters from whom we might not often hear; and the clever jokes of FakeAPStyleBook, which play on the real APStyleBook. All of these work, I think, to varying degrees because they use the Twitter formula to their advantage. If you know of others, please link to them in the comments section.
To Nash’s point let’s add that of Carolyn Kellogg’s: the simultaneous publishing of “Some Contemporary Characters” clotted the feed.
In the past, having bookstores, bloggers and other magazines simultaneously pass out a short story would widen the circulation. Today, many of those people are in overlapping social networking circles, and the result is repetition rather than reach. Anyone following more than one of the outlets sees exactly the same tweet show up at exactly the same time from multiple sources.
Kellogg pinpoints the reason why I was so annoyed today when the publishing first began. I think you’d find that a search of ‘electriclit’ on Twitter will result in more than a few suggestions that Electric Literature use hashtags to trend the story or better manage how it gets distributed. To Electric Literature‘s credit, they seem to be responding to this criticism in good ways, thinking things through, figuring out what works and what doesn’t for the future. This, I suppose, is the nature of collaboration on the internet.
***
And so I’d rather not leave off with a negative point, because I do like what Electric Literature is doing on a greater scale: I like their movies, I like that they pay their authors, I like that they reach a large audience, I like that they publish through many mediums, and so on. So let me acknowledge the good things that have come of this experiment, which is still in progress, before I conclude.
There was, as we’ve come to expect from Electric Literature, a good deal of hype about this Moody story. There was a fun countdown sequence, some coverage at Entertainment Weekly’s litblog, a really positive effort to spread the story as far as possible (see the above list of retweeters), and even an interview at The Wall Street Journal Speakeasy. One gets the sense that Electric Literature does care and believe in what they’re doing. For example, what is exciting about all of this particular Twitter story is that Electric Literature has nearly 21,000 followers: cut out the usual spambot activity, add the followers of the other ‘copublishers,’ subtract the overlap that Carolyn Kellogg mentioned, and you’ve still got a large number of readers, I think, far more than typically read even the better known print magazines, right? So while I and others dealt with a very annoying feed, the Twitter platform operated as a kind of literary vector for the story to reach those who didn’t have that overlap, spreading the story across a wide swath of little cliques of readers. Josh Maday probably put it best when he said:
seen from the big pic of twitter, the moody story will b one reverberating echo of RTs, like telling it into the grand canyon
So, ultimately, I like the idea. I like the trying and trying and trying; however, logistically, and I think others agree, it seemed awkwardly executed and annoying. I think this is a fault of both the manner in which it was spread around and the medium itself. But I don’t know how it could have been disseminated more effectively; this, obviously, is a problem with my own stubborn criticism. I’m the one who sat on my bed all day in my underwear, while the Electric Literature people and Moody actually did things with words, the result of which many many people read.
UPDATE
Electric Literature has responded to comments over at the Facebook page:
One problem with the copublishing is that the people getting multiple feeds are the people who avidly follow publishing and literature – bloggers, media, other publishers, etc. Not a good group to annoy! They shape the narrative. But the story is reaching 10,000 more readers. Plenty of whom are enjoying it – searching on @bombmagazine, for example shows far more retweets than complaints. Ultimately, a wide community is talking about fiction and ways that the literature can effectively engage with the greater world. Which is why we started EL.The problem we had with retweeting as a method is that the @electriclit tag would be added to every line, like a storyteller with a persistent hiccup. Worse, it would make every co-publisher look like a shill for Electric Literature, with every tweet branded with our name. Even a hashtag would disrupt the text (not to mention, Rick didn’t leave room to accommodate one).
Tags: electric literature, rick moody, twitter
I wanted to read the story but I found that handling the reverse tweetage was really difficult. I agree with a lot of what you say here about a good idea awkwardly executed.
I wanted to read the story but I found that handling the reverse tweetage was really difficult. I agree with a lot of what you say here about a good idea awkwardly executed.
Great post. Fair, correct.
Great post. Fair, correct.
can’t imagine why anyone would think micro-serialized novels on twitter would be just ‘a flash in the pan’
come on, rick moody, embrace the future! this must be why richard ford ‘deeply disrespects’ him, just can’t get with the times. even my dead dog deleted his myspace.
i meant stories, whtvr, same diff, am i right?
can’t imagine why anyone would think micro-serialized novels on twitter would be just ‘a flash in the pan’
come on, rick moody, embrace the future! this must be why richard ford ‘deeply disrespects’ him, just can’t get with the times. even my dead dog deleted his myspace.
i meant stories, whtvr, same diff, am i right?
I was not very impressed. It would have been more interesting if they actually challeged the form of the short story itself. A story that happens in small fragments rather than a regular story tweeted bit by bit.
I was not very impressed. It would have been more interesting if they actually challeged the form of the short story itself. A story that happens in small fragments rather than a regular story tweeted bit by bit.
I am so fucking bored by twitter / facebook / myspace / etc etc. It’s like the fucking moon hopper, y2k or tickle me elmo or something. Hopefully it will all fuck off pretty soon.
What happened to people doing social networking in bars?
I am so fucking bored by twitter / facebook / myspace / etc etc. It’s like the fucking moon hopper, y2k or tickle me elmo or something. Hopefully it will all fuck off pretty soon.
What happened to people doing social networking in bars?
Bars are loud, obnoxious, and awful.
Bars are loud, obnoxious, and awful.
… & awesome!
… & awesome!
I didn’t really quite get the impression that this was using the mode in any real way. It seemed like a normal story just broken up and tweeted one sentence at a time. What is the point of that? Rozalia Jovanovic had a twitter collaboration with a dance group a while ago, where the two characters would be sending out their thoughts and interacting with each other on twitter while the actual dances were being performed. That kind of thing, something that actual uses the advantages and disadvantages of the media, seems vastly more interesting to me.
I didn’t really quite get the impression that this was using the mode in any real way. It seemed like a normal story just broken up and tweeted one sentence at a time. What is the point of that? Rozalia Jovanovic had a twitter collaboration with a dance group a while ago, where the two characters would be sending out their thoughts and interacting with each other on twitter while the actual dances were being performed. That kind of thing, something that actual uses the advantages and disadvantages of the media, seems vastly more interesting to me.
You mean that they were twittering while performing their dance?
You mean that they were twittering while performing their dance?
Jovanovic would twitter in the persona of those characters while the dance was being performed. So people would be following along on their phones while also watching the dance (which took place in private houses, in bathrooms)
Jovanovic would twitter in the persona of those characters while the dance was being performed. So people would be following along on their phones while also watching the dance (which took place in private houses, in bathrooms)
This has been done several times. For one, Thaumatrope (@thaumatrope) has published several month-ish long serialized twitter stories, some of which have each tweet as a standalone episode.
Personally, I tend to agree. I find following a story told in small increments very different from a story told in small episodes. I do think there’s merit; this just feels more readable in one sitting rather than as its tweeted.
This has been done several times. For one, Thaumatrope (@thaumatrope) has published several month-ish long serialized twitter stories, some of which have each tweet as a standalone episode.
Personally, I tend to agree. I find following a story told in small increments very different from a story told in small episodes. I do think there’s merit; this just feels more readable in one sitting rather than as its tweeted.
I disagree with Ryan’s point that “authentic” twitter use involves abbreviations and missing punctuation. There are plenty of people on Twitter who use Twitter as is common and still write normally. People embrace twitter to distill experience into an easily digestible form, and this can be done in a variety of styles. A quick look at my feed and nearly everyone is even capitalizing correctly.
The criticism that this is a regular story simply being tweeted is the most important one, though I’m not sure I agree. There are certainly more “twitter-like” serializations out there than this, but there are also much more egregious cut-and-paste jobs. To me, this seems more like an attempt to show that the short length of a tweet doesn’t inherently make it meaningless or trivial. It’s admirable. It’s also been done before—but not by a name or magazine this big.
I disagree with Ryan’s point that “authentic” twitter use involves abbreviations and missing punctuation. There are plenty of people on Twitter who use Twitter as is common and still write normally. People embrace twitter to distill experience into an easily digestible form, and this can be done in a variety of styles. A quick look at my feed and nearly everyone is even capitalizing correctly.
The criticism that this is a regular story simply being tweeted is the most important one, though I’m not sure I agree. There are certainly more “twitter-like” serializations out there than this, but there are also much more egregious cut-and-paste jobs. To me, this seems more like an attempt to show that the short length of a tweet doesn’t inherently make it meaningless or trivial. It’s admirable. It’s also been done before—but not by a name or magazine this big.
ben, no, good point. i should have qualified and said: ‘in that clipped way of most tweets i see’ or something like that. i wasnt trying to establish an authentic definition of twitter use: various groups do it differntly. my students twitter probably much differently than i do.
anyhow thats where i had trouble working through my argument. i dont really have that part of it figured out yet, except to say that the project felt ‘weird’ on twitter. im having trouble explaining why still, i mean the language of it.
ben, no, good point. i should have qualified and said: ‘in that clipped way of most tweets i see’ or something like that. i wasnt trying to establish an authentic definition of twitter use: various groups do it differntly. my students twitter probably much differently than i do.
anyhow thats where i had trouble working through my argument. i dont really have that part of it figured out yet, except to say that the project felt ‘weird’ on twitter. im having trouble explaining why still, i mean the language of it.
Thank you, will look it up. Despite the general impatience with social media at large – see the comment below this thread – I find I’m quite engrossed in Twitter’s haiku-like format. Or with its potential, at least.
Thank you, will look it up. Despite the general impatience with social media at large – see the comment below this thread – I find I’m quite engrossed in Twitter’s haiku-like format. Or with its potential, at least.
Not to sound like this Rick Moody thing enrages me or something, because it doesn’t bother me at all, but I’m not sure what is “admirable” about cut and pasting a normal story into twitter.
“To me, this seems more like an attempt to show that the short length of a tweet doesn’t inherently make it meaningless or trivial.”
Does anyone who would read Rick Moody or Electric Literature really need to be shown that? Haven’t various haiku writers and lydia davis and ezra pound and earnest hemingway and tons of others already shown this?
To me the only thing new is the technology/platform, so if you are going to use it you might as well take advantage of its features.
Not to sound like this Rick Moody thing enrages me or something, because it doesn’t bother me at all, but I’m not sure what is “admirable” about cut and pasting a normal story into twitter.
“To me, this seems more like an attempt to show that the short length of a tweet doesn’t inherently make it meaningless or trivial.”
Does anyone who would read Rick Moody or Electric Literature really need to be shown that? Haven’t various haiku writers and lydia davis and ezra pound and earnest hemingway and tons of others already shown this?
To me the only thing new is the technology/platform, so if you are going to use it you might as well take advantage of its features.
I’m not sure something has to be groundbreaking to be interesting and fun. If it hadn’t annoyed people by cluttering up their feeds, I don’t think there’d be any real controversy here. “Rick Moody is twittering a story he composed using the constraint of 140 character sections? Kinda cool! Let me give it a read…”
Or, “Ugh, I don’t like Rick Moody.”
End of story.
It’s just that they didn’t count on the delivery being so problematic. If refined, I think it could be a viable way of getting smart fiction out there. Not to say other ways of using the medium aren’t also more interesting, but if you’re saying that you have to tweet as a character from a bathroom dance performance to validate the medium, I think that’s a little silly.
I’m not sure something has to be groundbreaking to be interesting and fun. If it hadn’t annoyed people by cluttering up their feeds, I don’t think there’d be any real controversy here. “Rick Moody is twittering a story he composed using the constraint of 140 character sections? Kinda cool! Let me give it a read…”
Or, “Ugh, I don’t like Rick Moody.”
End of story.
It’s just that they didn’t count on the delivery being so problematic. If refined, I think it could be a viable way of getting smart fiction out there. Not to say other ways of using the medium aren’t also more interesting, but if you’re saying that you have to tweet as a character from a bathroom dance performance to validate the medium, I think that’s a little silly.
i’m also confused by why a story has to be twitter-specific. to me this is a story written on pages that only allow 140 characters. to say it has to represent twitter is like me saying that any story written on a yellow legal pad must also address the bluish lines, its 8 x 14 size.
i will now start quoting kids from the book machine.
i’m also confused by why a story has to be twitter-specific. to me this is a story written on pages that only allow 140 characters. to say it has to represent twitter is like me saying that any story written on a yellow legal pad must also address the bluish lines, its 8 x 14 size.
i will now start quoting kids from the book machine.
Very nice post.
Very nice post.
Shya, I’m not talking about anything being groundbreaking at all, I’m only talking about it using the form. I guess to me more or less copy and pasting a normal story into twitter isn’t very interesting and reading a story in that way isn’t very fun.
But really, I’m sure Moody is just doing this to get attention to Electric Literature (he says he hates twitter) and I’m sure it is accomplishing that job. More people talking about lit mags is never a bad thing.
Shya, I’m not talking about anything being groundbreaking at all, I’m only talking about it using the form. I guess to me more or less copy and pasting a normal story into twitter isn’t very interesting and reading a story in that way isn’t very fun.
But really, I’m sure Moody is just doing this to get attention to Electric Literature (he says he hates twitter) and I’m sure it is accomplishing that job. More people talking about lit mags is never a bad thing.
Oh, cool. Thanks.
Is there a link? Was this choreographed by Kate Watson-Wallace?
Oh, cool. Thanks.
Is there a link? Was this choreographed by Kate Watson-Wallace?
Hi everyone,
Ryan, thanks for the balanced, well-considered post. We certainly didn’t invent Twitter fiction, and never claimed to, we are just publishing a story to it. As for the story, I think anyone familiar with Rick’s writing style can see that he radically altered it for the medium. Beyond that, it’s up to y’all to decide if it’s good or bad.
I posted something to our facebook page about the co-publishing that I thought might be relevant here:
One problem with the copublishing is that the people getting multiple feeds are the people who avidly follow publishing and literature – bloggers, media, other publishers, etc. Not a good group to annoy! They shape the narrative. But the story is reaching 10,000 more readers. Plenty of whom are enjoying it – searching on @bombmagazine, for example shows far more retweets than complaints. Ultimately, a wide community is talking about fiction and ways that the literature can effectively engage with the greater world. Which is why we started EL.
The problem we had with retweeting as an alternate method to widely distribute the story is that the @electriclit tag would be added to every line, like a storyteller with a persistent hiccup. Worse, it would make every co-publisher look like a shill for Electric Literature, with every tweet branded with our name. Even a hashtag would disrupt the text (not to mention, Rick didn’t leave room to accommodate one).
Hi everyone,
Ryan, thanks for the balanced, well-considered post. We certainly didn’t invent Twitter fiction, and never claimed to, we are just publishing a story to it. As for the story, I think anyone familiar with Rick’s writing style can see that he radically altered it for the medium. Beyond that, it’s up to y’all to decide if it’s good or bad.
I posted something to our facebook page about the co-publishing that I thought might be relevant here:
One problem with the copublishing is that the people getting multiple feeds are the people who avidly follow publishing and literature – bloggers, media, other publishers, etc. Not a good group to annoy! They shape the narrative. But the story is reaching 10,000 more readers. Plenty of whom are enjoying it – searching on @bombmagazine, for example shows far more retweets than complaints. Ultimately, a wide community is talking about fiction and ways that the literature can effectively engage with the greater world. Which is why we started EL.
The problem we had with retweeting as an alternate method to widely distribute the story is that the @electriclit tag would be added to every line, like a storyteller with a persistent hiccup. Worse, it would make every co-publisher look like a shill for Electric Literature, with every tweet branded with our name. Even a hashtag would disrupt the text (not to mention, Rick didn’t leave room to accommodate one).
Lincoln, I find it admirable precisely because I don’t feel that this is a cut and paste job. I’ve read those on Twitter. They’re transparent and they usually suck. This is clearly and purposefully written to embrace the length limitations.
On an unrelated note, I think plenty of people can enjoy being reminded at how “literary” and compelling a tweet can be. Certainly the greater world at large, quick to dismiss Twitter as promoting self-obsessed tripe, has the potential to take note.
Lincoln, I find it admirable precisely because I don’t feel that this is a cut and paste job. I’ve read those on Twitter. They’re transparent and they usually suck. This is clearly and purposefully written to embrace the length limitations.
On an unrelated note, I think plenty of people can enjoy being reminded at how “literary” and compelling a tweet can be. Certainly the greater world at large, quick to dismiss Twitter as promoting self-obsessed tripe, has the potential to take note.
Fair enough. I think the fact that I spend way too much time on Twitter makes me ridiculously comfortable with this form and this idea. I’m just filing it in context of other Twitter projects I’ve read.
The more I think about some of the logistical awkwardness, the more I am convinced that this sim-publishing isn’t so bad. Sure I have four of the accounts in my feed, but most people probably don’t. The other viable alternative would be to have people RT necessarily the story itself but rather the promo/attribution tweets and just rely on the #electriclit account itself. In the end, if the goal is reach, I think they probably got more this way than not, even if there was some overcrowding for the lit nerds.
Fair enough. I think the fact that I spend way too much time on Twitter makes me ridiculously comfortable with this form and this idea. I’m just filing it in context of other Twitter projects I’ve read.
The more I think about some of the logistical awkwardness, the more I am convinced that this sim-publishing isn’t so bad. Sure I have four of the accounts in my feed, but most people probably don’t. The other viable alternative would be to have people RT necessarily the story itself but rather the promo/attribution tweets and just rely on the #electriclit account itself. In the end, if the goal is reach, I think they probably got more this way than not, even if there was some overcrowding for the lit nerds.
hey josh, i dont agree completely with the comparison here. with twitter comes a lot of rhetorical context that i dont think you get with a legal pad. audience, i think, is sort of built into twitter moreso than it is w/r/t the legal pad.
hey josh, i dont agree completely with the comparison here. with twitter comes a lot of rhetorical context that i dont think you get with a legal pad. audience, i think, is sort of built into twitter moreso than it is w/r/t the legal pad.
“Ultimately, a wide community is talking about fiction and ways that the literature can effectively engage with the greater world. Which is why we started EL.”
Good stuff.
“Ultimately, a wide community is talking about fiction and ways that the literature can effectively engage with the greater world. Which is why we started EL.”
Good stuff.
Hmm, I agree its’ good stuff but why is Carla T using my website?
I’ve been reverse Rickrolled.
Hmm, I agree its’ good stuff but why is Carla T using my website?
I’ve been reverse Rickrolled.
okay, fool, keep playing and i will sue you, your mother, your sicky dad, and anyone else you know. leave my little blog alone.
okay, fool, keep playing and i will sue you, your mother, your sicky dad, and anyone else you know. leave my little blog alone.
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