The Wonderful World of Online Literary Journals

As Told in Two Parts:
I. Workings, and
II. Unworkings

Prologue

This brief analysis of online literary journals will unfold in two stages: first I’ll explain what they are and what they do, then I’ll provide a more critical take on some of their less-than-categorical consequences.

Part I: Workings

A literary journal — also called a literary magazine, litmag, or little magazine — is any publication which seeks to publish literary material. What constitutes “literary” varies from one journal to the next, and many capitalize on particular artistic niches so as to take on the role as quintessential expert of, say, the Star Trek/X-Men crossover story. Most, however, publish stories and poetry, sometimes essays and artwork, and occasionally serial works.

A reductionist’s history: Literary Journal was born in the early 1800s and had a very formal upbringing, raised as it was by the most literary white men with (also frequently white) beards. LJ, something of a poseur in its youth, exuded what was wanted, and so naturally changed what it published as the popular literature changed, from romanticism to modernism to incorporating elements of the postmodern. The North American Review was the first American literary journal, born in 1815 and it remains in publication. At 181 years of age, then, Literary Journal gave birth to its offspring, Online Literary Journal.

An online literary journal — also called an online literary magazine, ezine, or litblog — is any publication that is regarded to bring the literary journal experience into the online domain. Many online journals, such as Hobart, have print and online publications. Hobart, like many others, does not publish the same material in its print issues that it publishes online, but some journals do.

Since 1996, online literary journals have boomed. Wikipedia is so precise as to say there are “literally thousands,” but Duotrope Digest, a listing of any print or online journals that have websites currently lists “over 2175.”

How do online journals work, you ask? Rather simply and quickly compared to traditional methods, I answer.

In print journals there is a lot of twiddling of thumbs as a manuscript travels from writer’s mailbox to the journal’s, then from the journal’s mailbox to the office desks of certain readers or screeners, then, after it is read and put in a “maybe” or “yes” pile a co-editor or editor eventually picks it up and decides to publish it next year but to wait four months or so before notifying the writer, at which point the SASE (self-addressed, stamped envelope) the writer enclosed with the manuscript is sent back with the word “sure” written on it.

Online the sending time is, of course, miniscule enough to count as negligible. The editors and readers can all receive the manuscript at once, and when a decision is made other staff members know immediately, through the wonders of email. And because copy-and-paste technology affords readers and editors more time to read instead of typing up rejection and acceptance letters, response times are cut down significantly.

And there’s no postage. That’s nice, too.

Part II: Unworkings

I’ve titled this more in-depth personal analysis of the online literary journal “Unworkings” because of the changes that online literature is working on literature in general. If we’ve learned anything in this class its that the information age has made things more complicated.

I’m going to pull my canon calling card here and say that the ease with which one might create an online literary journal, coupled with the ease with one might submit to these journals, impacts in some serious ways what constitutes popular literature.

What I cannot argue, however, is that quality diminishes. Quality has undoubtedly changed, focusing meaning more toward the generally younger internet-savvy generation that constitutes the readership of online journals.

The most apparent change literature has seen due to moving digital is in its length. Online literary journals gradually brought about the idea of “micro-” or “flash-fiction” — stories under, usually, 500 words. Since then the online story has only become smaller and smaller.

If we look at Hobart once again, we’ll never see a story over 2,000 words, and usually they’re under 1,000. And Hobart is a highly esteemed online journal. For a monthly publication, they produce consistently good work.

Rumble may be, according to their own website, “the only web magazine devoted to micro fiction.” Clearly, they capitalize on a niche market; I think other journals feel they need to allow longer pieces in order to keep getting quality work. But there are journals that accept work even shorter than Rumble’s 500-word limit.

Six Sentences is a good example of the modern online literary journal because it is a one-person operation built easily through the free site-hosting Blogspot. And they only publish stories of 6 sentences. No more, no less. This is a kind of literature that can be read on a lunch break at work.

There’s shorter. 55 Words publishes stories of, oddly enough, 55 words. It’s something that can be crafted in little time compared to longer works, and can easily be read even with the modern 15-second attention span.

If this is the trend in online literature, then it seems the prevalence of literature online contributes to a concise tightening of writing, a focus on the vignette rather than the epic. Again, I think quality is not necessarily under debate; what these stories lack in lengthy immersion they make up in vividness of detail.

What do you think?

Annotated Biblio(philia)graphy

Adaptation. Dir. Spike Jonze. Perf. Nicolas Cage, Meryl Streep, Chris Cooper. DVD. Columbia Pictures, 2003.

Adaptation is a perfect example of a work leaning toward self-referentiality to validate its artistic worth. Notable because this film was adapted and fictionalized from a non-fiction book, Adaptation shows, I believe, a certain anxiety in modern stories toward being perceived as “just a narrative.” To deconstruct these perceived biases modern fictions call into question their own construction within the narrative itself, and Adaptation managed this with great success.

Birkerts, Sven. “The Fate of the Book” The Antioch Review Vol. 54.3 (Summer 1996): 259-270.

Birkerts asks the question that much of my paper will seek to resolve — in what form and to what purpose will the book exist in the future? Not only does Birkerts himself speculate as to the future of the book, he also compiles numerous scholarly insights and some statistical research into this article.

Doody, Margaret Anne. “Is Literature Dead?” PMLA Vol. 115 (Oct. 2000): 1209-1221.

Doody provides a good general review of the possible decline in literature in the wake of the information age, but her thesis is that despite this fact, more and more literature is becoming available (both online, in printed periodicals, and when new books are added to those already published). She notes that reading, whether in print form or not, is on the rise, and then she questions what this means for the future of literature.

Egan, Jennifer. The Keep. Anchor Books: New York, 2006.

The Keep is an example of a recent nationally bestselling novel that relies on some metafictional techniques. The structure, which is composed of narratives that are framed by connected narratives, serves as a threshold through which readers can come to terms with fiction that acknowledges itself as literature.

Fitzpatrick, Kathleen. The Anxiety of Obsolescence: The American Novel in the Age of Television. Vanderbilt University Press: Nashville, 2006.

Like the Birkerts piece, this article discusses the fate of the book. Fitzpatrick, however, seems to deal more exclusively with the relationship between the modern novel and emerging technologies, especially the internet.

Heckard, Margaret. “Robert Coover, Metafiction, and Freedom” Twentieth Century Literature, Vol. 22 (May 1976): 210-227.

While I will not deal explicitly with Robert Coover, Heckard’s article makes clear a number of methods through which metafiction may be expressed in fiction. Because part of my argument is that fiction is becoming more metafictive in order to compete with alternate media, it becomes important to recognize the sometimes subtle ways in which writing a narrative can be a tool through which one explains the value of writing stories.

Livingston, Paisley. “Nested Art” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Vol. 61 (Summer 2003): 233-245.

Livingston argues that “nested art,” or art-within-art (which I will call framed art), must for the sake of study be distinguished from terms such as metafiction and self-reflexivity. She provides a number of examples of framed works of art, all of which quite clearly elicit metafictional tendencies. In arguing against her, I will argue that “nested art” is not distinct from metafiction, but rather a subset of it. Regardless, though, many of her insights apply to Jennifer Egan’s The Keep, since that work has multiple frames within frames, or nests within nests.

Lowenkron, David Henry. “The Metanovel” College English, Vol. 38 (Dec. 1976): 343-355.

Lowenkron focuses on metafiction specifically within the contemporary novel. Written in 1976, this study was before much of David Markson’s metafictive work and certainly before Jennifer Egan’s The Keep, but his insights and questions concerning the purpose remain valid. He seems to view metafiction as part of the natural evolution of novels, as readers and writers alike become more conscious of the literary context in which they read and write.

Markson, David. Reader’s Block. Dalkey Archive Press: Chicago, 1996.

Metafictive in a truly unique way, Reader’s Block shows that metafiction can be pushed to the extreme to create a narrative far removed from current examples but which still elicits emotional and intellectual stimulation as it tells its story. It is an example, however unlikely, of one route metafiction might take as it develops in fiction.

Zhao, Y. H. “The Rise of Metafiction in China” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, Vol. 55 (1992): 90-99.

Zhao’s article deals, as its title notes, mostly with literature as it pertains to modern China. But the first few pages of this nine page article offer a good description of what metafiction is and, more important, its context and prevalence in the modern world. Zhao also notes the near omnipresence of metafiction wherever there is fiction.

The Stress of Blogging

This gave me a chuckle. I thought it would be apt to throw up this link to a recent article in Slashdot about blogging. For the more informative New York Times article, including the heartwarming quote “This is the digital-era sweatshop. You may know it by a different name: home,” then click here.

Enjoy.

Patchwork Girl and Filmtext

Filmtext remains, to me, a piece of art that is too incoherent to warrant much attention. It’s structure is such that it may comment on the nature of viewing, listening, partaking, and experiencing literary work, as well as how one interacts with a work of art, but what points it seeks to make or questions it seeks to ask are indecipherable.

The content is just as ambiguous. Images flash, sounds sigh and echo, words scroll by sometimes too quickly to read. Maybe Filmtext is expressing something important or meaningful or profound, but if that is the case why obfuscate the message behind a film of insoluble mystery?

And on that note, if it does have something serious to say, it should treat itself seriously. But here is a quote from the work: “It can’t be real because I’ve never seen it before and unless I’ve seen it before I don’t know it and if I don’t know it how it can it be real” [sic]. “Know it how it can it,” eh? I get the feeling the whole experience has just been hashed together out of the neatest bits of code Mr. Amerika could find, and blatant typographical errors do not help lend the piece a sense of importance. I’m usually forgiving in this regard, but if your intent is to create something new, especially a new form of art, then one should probably take special care to perform at least a once-over proofread. Filmtext shows no indication that this took place.

Patchwork Girl, though, has some potential. For its time I can see it making quite the fuss, as it apparently did in some circles. Why hasn’t it been re-done and revamped?

In high school, I took a seniors-only Creative Writing course in which the final exam was to create a “choose your own adventure” story online, through websites. That was in 2002-2003, and I managed, as a 17-18 year old, to create a (horrid) story that was more easily navigable than Patchwork Girl. I don’t think it would be too difficult to create “interactive” stories online far more cheaply than Patchwork Girl was to publish. So why aren’t they being made?

I don’t know. But I’m partially at fault if I claim to be a writer who tries to publish material online and I’m not writing it. It’s just “not what I write” (unless, of course, I’m forced by an overzealous high school English teacher).

But I’m not opposed to it, either. So, as an editor, were I to receive a submission crafted as an interactive narrative, I’d toss it some bonus points on account of being unique before attempting to evaluate its quality and appropriateness. I think a lot of editors would do the same. So if the technology is available and might benefit those who take use of it, why aren’t writers taking use?

It doesn’t seem like a complete answer to the question, but I think we should consider that interactive narratives are more difficult to relate to. Maybe they are historically less successful because their structure does not reflect the structure we find in life; it is not the case that if we make a decision to do not like we can backtrack to the decisive moment and choose again. And in a sense the ability to do so, even within a read narrative, works against the validity of the artwork by making it contradictory. If I can make the lead character perform different decisions than those already performed, why am I only given this option around certain decisions? What if I would like to do something other than what the author has thought of?

Well, then either I write my own deterministic story, or I become a role-playing gamer and experience an interactive narrative inhabited by others. Those genres, after all, continue to thrive where the choose-your-own-adventure story has failed.

Janet H. Murray’s “Hamlet on the Holodeck”

I think chapter four of this book is great. I think Murray knows what she is talking about and that she expresses her points clearly.

One of the most beneficial insights here is, I think, Murray’s refutation of the idea that active participation in immersion entertainment is based in a “willing suspension of disbelief.” What she describes is the case is closer to my experience: “we do not merely ’suspend’ a critical faculty,” she writes, “we also exercise a creative faculty. We do not suspend disbelief so much as we actively create belief” (Murray 110).

I have felt this way in the past. Growing up on Dungeons and Dragons, I easily learned that when it comes to intellectual, artistic, or entertaining stimulation you receive as much reward as you are willing to put in. Video games through adolescence worked the same way; my favorite videogames — mostly strategy- or simulation-based games — were fascinating to me because I imagined them either as taking place in a world of their own or being applicable to our own. Microsoft’s “Flight Simulator” is an immensely popular game, for example, despite the fact that there is no plot or storyline beyond learning to take off, operate, fly, and land a number of different aircraft. Some might argue that this is fairly boring (and at this point in my life, I would agree with them), but that clearly is not the case to the gamers who vest value in these games. If you’re willing to help yourself believe, to “authentically pretend” that this is a real commercial airliner, you’re more likely to draw entertainment from the game.

College, for me, came with the monumental resolution to put videogames behind me. I managed that, but to think of immersion entertainment as the exercise of creating belief, I simply refocused my lens. I do the same now with books that I did with videogames. I posit an importance in the story I am reading; even with fiction, I assume — I believe, while I am reading — that the story, characters, conflict, and action are all real in the world being described. I don’t “suspend disbelief” because it isn’t a passive thing. I create belief, I make the characters come alive, I make the story meaningful.

Lately, I’m refocusing once again. Or, since I’m keeping up with reading, I’m considering another scope altogether: Writing. I’ve been writing as long as I’ve been conscious of being conscious, but only lately (progressing from somewhere in my sophomore year as an undergraduate) have I been treating the act of writing as an act of creation. Expression is no longer enough, expression must come through a holistic and self-sustaining medium whose parts are all equally real. Flannery O’Connor and a developing sense of what “art” is has done this to me. It makes writing anything much more difficult, since I am and must hold myself accountable for the world I create.

Murray talks about a lot, but I think this is key enough to her chapter (and possibly book) to consider it strongly. Immersion is not the suspension of disbelief, it is the manifestation of belief. And because that is the case, because that creation must come from within the individual, the medium through which entertainment is provided is not responsible for providing a fuller sense of immersion. I’ll grant that some narrative forms lend themselves more generously to the possibility of being believed (and, needless to say, there are some stories we just don’t want to believe), but it remains the case that belief must come from the individual and cannot be forced through either form or content.

The End of The Diamond Age

The ending of The Diamond Age shifts direction in a way I hadn’t expected. I feel like Stephenson is advocating a return to “the old order.” Nell, the hero of the story, confronts the new, progressive (and so-called dangerous) Seed technology and extinguishes it from the realm of possibility, at least for the time being. With knowledge from the Primer, Nell concocts her little nanobug and begins its dispersal with Miranda, the archetypal mother.

The violence of the last quarter of the book startled me. The action suddenly picked up, and I get the impression Stephenson wanted to show the pragmatic, real-world effects of Nell’s training. But the appearance of the “Mouse Army” might have worked against any message Stephenson was shooting for, though I’m still a bit torn over them.

At the end of Part the First I felt that the dispersal of Primers to the hordes of little girls would lead inevitably to a bad thing. What the Primer was to Nell it could not possibly be to them; to Nell the book was a unique and personalized education, something alternative to the dribble imposed on the masses. Of necessity it maintains a form — it educates according to programmed rules — but these rules are different from everyone else’s method of learning.

When the book is tweaked and given to the girls who will become the Mouse Army, its effect is neutralized. Once again a student population is taught according to the same rules. Nell’s book, we’re told, retains its own unique qualities, but the versions distributed to the Mouse Army are all identical. Consequently the students become a single-minded mass, an army of “members” or “girls” whose names, if they have any, we never hear, and who actions are described in terms of waves and gusts. They are not drones, because they rage against the notion of being content with their circumstances, but it is the case that they are all educated in such a way as to have the same notions about the world.

If the point of education, as Finkle-McGraw might have us believe, is to lead an “interesting life,” then the Primer has failed to give the mass of girls a good education. That all of them act in unison evidences that they behave the same ways, and there is nothing to suggest they will break away from each other. On the contrary, their similar educations have unified them.

But it is the final rejection of Seed technology that makes this story more about the fate of the novel than about the nature of education. What, exactly, Seed technology fully entails is never entirely explained (outside of something like “it lets you grow things from the earth”), but the consequence of its use is made fairly clear in the final pages: “It was Hackworth’s doing; this was the culmination of his effort to design the Seed, and in so doing to dissolve the foundations of New Atlantis and Nippon and all of the societies that had grown up around the concept of a centralized, hierarchical Feed” (Stephenson 498).

Something that destroys hierarchy through the use of the “wet Net” sounds a whole lot like what we’ve been talking about in this class all semester — the decline of canon and the novel, and the rise of literature in The Network. I’m not sure Stephenson makes a convincing argument regarding why Nell does what she does, but something in her education has led her to believe that such a reformation would be detrimental. She maintains the hierarchy, she fights against moral and intellectual relativism, and rises back into society to the sound of cathedral bells ringing.

Which makes me agree with you, Kim Middleton, when you say this novel skirts a lot of sensitive topics in a rather uncomfortable way. Because the hierarchy prevails, we’re led to believe that moral relativism is, quite simply, wrong. I’m fine with this — I find the need to argue this point more and more, and even in my five years of higher education I’ve seen the societal rise of relativism — but the novel pushes the issue. Some cultures, it notes, must therefore be better than others. Religion, I think, is implied. I’d commend Stephenson on the skilled way in which he advocates hierarchy without filling in what he thinks belongs on it, except that he seems to do exactly that in his final line. The ringing of cathedral bells coincides with monumental success. That disturbs me. It’s possible the bells only symbolize “the old order” and its success, but that it is ambiguous is exactly what makes much of the book uncomfortable. Stephenson touches on a number of issues — race, gender, religion, the nature of education, the function of narrative — and says that some positions on this issues are better than others. But which are better and which worse he will not say.

The Diamond Age, Part II

I’m still waiting for the revolutionary ending, but where I am in the novel now (Duke Turing’s castle) is just as entertaining and substantial as the first part. Which is to say, this book reads like a commercial success. Which is to say, it’s entertainment value trumps its literary worth.

That’s a tricky claim to make, I know. I don’t doubt that The Diamond Age requires some high-level mental computation in order to really follow what is happening. And I don’t doubt that the writing tries to inspire readers to ask questions about what it means to interact with a book. But I do think that Stephenson’s efforts are made more for the purpose of making money and selling the book (and the next book) rather than establishing a valid point in the realm of literature, about the realm of literature.

And maybe that’s okay. The vast majority of books written today, it seems to me, fall under this category. But I’d rather not read them.

Still, though, reading works like these, which I am less inclined to called “literature,” make me question the distinction at all. The difference between Jennifer Egan’s The Keep, which I consider highly literary, and Special Topics in Calamity Physics or The Diamond Age, which I do not, boils down (perhaps) to a value judgement. For some reason I am willing to vest more value in a work which I believe displays itself not for profit or to impress, but “merely” to manifest a literary thing. Stories that stand alone, that validate themselves, seem more literary to me than those written so that the author can pay the bills.

Maybe — if an author is skilled enough to make their money-making venture inspire serious thought and perhaps make valid (applicable) meaning in its audience — this is an unfair stance I hold. Maybe.

What Mr. Beck says on page 303 provides one position on this question that I am somewhat sympathetic toward. Mr. Beck, the “technical boy,” says that he is “interested in one thing. . . and that is use of tech to convey meaning” (303). Miranda notes that what he’s talking about covers a lot of areas. Mr. Beck then says, “Yes, but it shouldn’t. That is to say that the distinctions between those areas are bogus” (303).

Sometimes I feel this way. Would it make much difference if Moby-Dick was first written and published online? Mr. Beck supports any media, from stories told around the bonfire to Miranda’s ractives. All of the forms in between are arenas in which meaning might be conveyed, and though each has its own attributes, to grasp too tightly on a single set of attributes — such as those of the novel — might be too conservative a mentality.

If the novel were to die anytime soon (I think this unlikely), and its offspring take the form of electronic stories networked together online, does humanity lose something essential? We told meaningful, paradigm-shifting, life-changing stories well enough before the birth of novel. Will we after the novel?

If The Diamond Age is causing me to question anything amidst its profiteering, that is probably it.

Brainstorm Toward Final Paper

Key terms and ideas: Metafiction, role of literature (as opposed to other forms of entertainment and art), death of the novel, interactivity of “literature.”

Metafiction is a writing technique in which the author departs from traditional notions of what constitutes “literary” styles in such a way that the artificiality of the work is acknowledged. We have encountered this a number of times throughout this course.

1. The Crying of Lot 49. Of the novels we’ve read, this one probably concerns itself least with metafiction. But on a metaphoric level, I’d argue that much of the content matches the form in which the story is told. The muted horn, for instance, perfectly exemplifies the way in which the novel tells its story; there is something to be heard, a lesson to be learned, but that message is obstructed. There is something in the way — we cannot hear truth directly, but instead only encounter its effects. Maybe this is a stretch.
2. The Keep. Metafiction plays a huge role in this one. The author of the primary tale (Ray Dobbs) also happens to be a main character. We are led to believe that most of the story was originally received as a manuscript by Holly, Ray’s writing teacher. The book advertises for the fictional Keep on its back cover (www.stayatthekeep.com). At a symbolic level, I could go on and on, as I have elsewhere.
3. Special Topics in Calamity Physics. Blue Van Meer frames the story and sometimes interjects a comment from the reader’s present, which is the future of the characters in the story told. The main character is the author. The chapter titles and multifarious citations all contribute to the effect that this is not an artificial world, but very much in our own modern America.
4. Galatea 2.2. Again we have a case in which the story is written by a writer who happens to be a character in the story, but in this case the main character has the name printed on the cover of the book. In other words, the author of the novel is also the character within it. This one, like The Keep, utilizes metafiction to get at metaphorical and symbolic meanings in ways too complex to get into here.
5. The Diamond Age. This book contains a book by the same name, and that book happens to play a very significant role in the story. The novel asks about, among other things, how we read and what we draw from reading, the answers to which questions impact our experience as we are reading.

I doubt I will go into great detail on each of these novels in a paper that deals with metafiction. The Keep and Galatea 2.2 seem necessary, though I may add the works This Is Not a Novel and The Last Novel, both by David Markson. One is narrated by “The Writer” and other by “The Author,” so they certainly follow the theme. But Markson might also help me draw out the ways in which The Keep, Galatea 2.2, and even (perhaps especially) The Diamond Age deal with “the death of the novel.” But because I do not believe the novel is “dying,” this concern becomes, “How is the novel changing?” All of these works deal with that.

My argument, at this point, seems to be along the lines of this: The interactivity not only of the internet, but of various forms of media, call on audience participation in ways literature traditionally has not. The numerous applications of metafiction allow novels to maintain their traditionally linear narratives while sufficiently disturbing the fiction/reality boundary enough to maintain readership and compete with other interactive media.

The Diamond Age, Or: A Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer

When I read a novel with a critical eye I keep a colored pen in one hand. Major plot elements I put in brackets, important lines I underline, and when I encounter a particularly important passage I sketch a star beside it. These stars are relatively rare and important things — the average novel will have one only every five pages or so.

What’s it mean, then, when I’ve read 251 pages of Neal Stephenson’s The Diamond Age with about 20 stars, rather than the expected 50? It seems I’m reading as though the most important bits only come up every 12 pages or so, not every five.

The Diamond Age is, I’ve described to friends, “hardcore sci-fi.” It subscribes more to the conventions of a particular genre than any of the other novels we have read for this class, certainly. I’m not exactly sure what that means, except that most standard “genre books” seem written more for the sake of entertainment (and to sell the next book) than to make a point or allow the reader an intellectual exercise. In other words, most genre books seem written for a profit, and The Diamond Age strikes me as a science-fiction genre book.

Which is not to say that the novel does not have value. It is quite clever, and it requires some thought before it can be understood, as any good sci-fi story should. But if there is an overarching theme or exercise to be explored through The Diamond Age, I’m not sure I can fully identify it (at least not in the first part/half, which we were assigned to read for this response).

There is so much happening in this book that I feel I need some direction. I am most interested in the relationship between the “original” Primer and Nell, although as we neared the end of the first part and the book began being distributed to a huge amount of young girls, I became interested in how those Primers react with those girls, too.

I wish I knew more about how Hackworth programmed the thing; how does it decide the story it will tell to Nell? It analyzes it’s (and Nell’s) surroundings, patches the pieces together into a loosely allegorical narrative, and thereby teaches Nell. Presumably these other Primers will do the same for these other girls. But how is it deciding what to teach? In providing Nell self-defense exercises, for example, why did it teach her to stand up for herself and fight, rather than accept punishment (which is a traditional Chinese approach to suffering, probably part of the lesson meant by the proverb “The nail that sticks up gets hammered down”)? On the beach after running away from home, why did it warn Nell not to go with strangers rather than attempting to lead her to destruction?

Obviously, the Primer is following some programming rules we have not been told. To describe these rules fully might make this book more like Galatea 2.2, and I don’t think that’s what Stephenson is aiming for. We know that Hackworth believes himself to be virtuous (don’t we all?) in a world where hardly anyone believes certain people and activities are in any way better than others. (Even the judicial system is motivated by the desire to maintain a functioning society, not to punish what is wrong.) But should we trust the good intentions of one man enough to allow his program to educate the masses all according to the same rules? I’m sensing this is the direction the second part of the novel will explore.

The ingenuity around the ractives and ractors/resses is fun, too. Entertainment, it seems, has moved even further from being an internal experience to being something that must literally be enacted, live. The ways Miranda comes to influence and care for Nell make this a fun idea to think about. But it seems that despite the advances of entertainment (rather than because of them) Miranda feels the need to physically encounter Nell and take care of her. She has learned of Nell’s situation through the ractive nature of the Primer, but interactivity is not synonymous with life. Even for someone like Miranda, who is devoted to the concept of racting and has been since her youth, a personal and physical connection with those she cares for is essential and cannot be dissuaded by interactive technology.

Hey-hey!

I discovered this morning that it is nice to wake up to an e-mailbox with only one message, which reads, in its entirety, the following:

Dear Joseph,

Thank you for submitting to Pindeldyboz. There is something about
“What the Mutuals Don’t Know” that grabbed me and stayed with
me—perhaps the very specific details about the onion soup, the toenail
clippings, the snow—and that set up a solid portrait of a relationship
in just a few paragraphs. I’d like to publish it in Pindeldyboz, if
it’s still available.

Is the bio you submitted with the piece the one you would like to use?

Thanks again for submitting, and warm regards,
Nora Fussner, Web Editor
Pindeldyboz

That’s right — Pindeldyboz.

For those of you who do not know, Pindeldyboz is a hugely popular online literary journal and has been for years. Stories published there have gone on to win the Best American Fantasy award and have been included in those Best American Non-Required Reading anthologies. They’ve also won something called the Million Writer’s Award. Their website is hardly the most beautiful around, but it is more than functional and contains plenty of quality. Visit the homepage for the current issue; visit the archives for a seriously large list of good (short-)short stories.

According to follow-up emails, we can expect “What the Mutuals Don’t Know” to be up by the end of March.