NEW YORK -- One of the newest forces in publishing is helping to revive an old tradition: Serialized fiction. When the first Twitter Fiction Festival kicks off in New York City this week, the micro-blogging platform will highlight 29 authors as they post new works of fiction in 140-character bursts.

"Twitter is a place to tell stories," wrote Twitter's Andrew Fitzgerald in a blog post announcing the event. "Often those stories are about news, or politics, or perhaps sports or music, but it turns out Twitter is a great place for telling fictional stories, too. As one professor from Michigan State University says, 'Tweeting can be thought of as a new literary practice.' We want to celebrate that."

A panel of festival organizers hand-picked a wide range of genres and concepts to feature. One participant will re-tell 100 Greek myths in 100 tweets. Another plans to invite Twitter users to help her write epigraphs for gravestones. Twitter also will showcase the serialized story of five strangers trapped on a bus, an exploration of censorship in China, and an interactive writing game that will involve the wider Twitter community.

"With this kind of medium, serialized writing can be taken in a totally new direction," said Johannes Neuer, associate director of marketing at the New York Public Library, which is hosting in-person facets of the festival. "All of the sudden you have readers in real time, and an opportunity to really incorporate the reader much more than previous generations of authors could have done."

Twitter has been a playground for storytelling experimentation before. The New Yorker magazine carried out a high-profile experiment on the platform with author Jennifer Egan, who tweeted installments of her story "Black Box," before the magazine published it in its entirety last May.
Comedians routinely have used the platform to tell stories or share vignettes in installments. Last fall, writer and actress Mindy Kaling posted a string of fictional observations about New York Fashion Week.

"Took off heels and pretended to be Malia Obama to sit in front row at Prabal Gurung," she wrote at the time. The series of tweets also included mock details of a dramatic faux romance with actor Adrien Brody. More recently, a parody account pretending to be New York Times polling analyst Nate Silver tweeted a psychedelic election-night journey. One of those tweets: "I am islanded in a stream of stars. Motes of datum gleam overhead. Am I their projection, or are they mine?"

Some may cringe at the idea of subjecting literature to the sometimes haphazard and rapid-fire unpredictability of a Twitter stream, but even now-sprawling classics have fractured roots. Celebrated works like "Anna Karenina," "The Brothers Karamazov," "Madame Bovary," and much of Charles Dickens' work first reached readers in snippets published in newspapers. But one of the goals of this festival is not simply to replicate serializations of the print era.

"Just taking paper books and putting them online, there's something not-so-beautiful about that," said Yael Goldstein Love, a novelist and co-founder of Plympton, a new publishing house that specializes in serialized fiction. "Part of what is really exciting about the Twitter Fiction Festival is it gets writers all over the world to think of other ideas, ways the online-ness of it enhances the story."

Goldstein Love was one of the judges who picked participants in the festival and says she was struck by the kinds of narrative experimentation Twitter encouraged. She says one entrant described the way his story's tempo -- and in turn the frequency with which he published tweets -- would vary based on what was happening at any given moment in the story.

"This guy saying he would change the rhythm depending on how much action there was, that kind of blew my mind," Goldstein Love said. "That can have emotional resonance. These are the kinds of things we just don't even think about."

Since it launched in 2006, Twitter has become a space where people play with narrative conventions. While the platform's web origins make it part of the disruption that has turned the publishing world on its head, Goldstein Love sees the creativity generated on Twitter as a harbinger of good things to come for the industry.

"Especially seeing all these submissions -- some from established writers, some from people who have never published a word -- it really puts to death a lot of doom-and-gloom rumors," she said. "People are imaginative and people are excited about publishing. Publishing is going to have to change a great deal, but so long as people are brimming over with creativity, I'm not at all worried."

Ryan Chapman of Penguin Press echoed that sentiment, calling Twitter one of the "green shoots for narrative storytelling" that keeps him optimistic.

"Maybe it's something to do with the fact that Twitter's maturing into this new space where people are so used to seeing it as a news source or conversation source," Chapman said. "As a reader, Twitter's obviously a place where everybody's already gathering for exchanging news and conversation. If people can use it as another part of their toolkit to create stories, that's really exciting."

— Adrienne LaFrance, Digital First Media

1. An incomplete and previously unknown Dr. Seuss manuscript is up for auction.

All Sorts of Sports would have followed the exploits of fickle athlete, Pete, had it not lost Seuss’s interest.

“What, in my opinion, is wrong with this story is that ... despite the greatness of Pete as a stellar athlete hero ... the negative image of him flubbing and unable to catch any ball at all will make him a schnook,” Geisel wrote in a note to his former employee who has put the unfinished manuscript up for bid. “This is not entirely apparent in the text, but when you picture these negative scenes in illustrations, you will find that negatives are always more memorable than positives. And I think the reader’s reaction will be, ‘What’s the matter with this dope?’”

The pages also include rudimentary Seussian scribbles, which are valuable in themselves.

What I find interesting about All Sorts of Sports is what it reveals about Seuss’s creative process. He seems to establish meter before writing his poetry, forcing his words to fit the rhythm. In Sports, he uses “blumf” as a placeholder for as-yet unwritten words.

2. The New Yorker had some Twitter fun with #literarysandwiches.

Some suggestions — The Dave Eggers: a broken, runny egg on staggeringly thick bread; served with a guide to its enjoyment.

The Animal Farm: supposed to include a variety of meats in equal parts; in practice, though, mostly ham.

The Nora Roberts: all cheese.

The Beckett: The sandwich you order and then wait for. And wait for. And wait for.
The Leopold Bloom: the inner organs of beasts and fowls, with relish.

The Catcher in the Rye: meatloaf and ketchup on rye bread.

The Mary Shelley: leftover bits from other sandwiches stitched together.

3. Finally, a judge has refused to dismiss a plagiarism suit against J.K. Rowling. (You remember this chestnut, right? The suit accuses Rowling of stealing from Willy the Wizard.)

However, this doesn’t mean the plaintiffs have a strong case. The judge said their chances of success were “improbable.” But it does mean there will be a proper hearing.

1. As you probably know, Oprah Winfrey picked Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom for her book club.

I guess this is a big deal if you’re Franzen or Oprah or a follower of Oprah. Personally, I like The Onion’s take.

And, yes, Jennifer Weiner has noted this on her Twitter page.

“Obvs it would be great if Oprah introduced a great debut lady writer who’s gotten no press. But if that won’t happen...”

Then, in response to another comment, she added, “Oprah hasn’t picked a female author for her book club since Toni Morrison in 2002. Why? No clue.”

Weiner has since proposed her own book club that she will run through Twitter.

Whether I agree with Weiner’s opinions or not, I think an author-run book club is a cool idea. This way, she can help raise the profiles of deserving authors instead of debating media outlets that are unlikely to change.

2. Kanye West asks, “What if Mark Twain had a Twitter? His quotes trump Warhol’s.”

This from the same mind that brought us, “You basically can say anything to someone on an email or text as long as you put LOL at the end” and “Man... whatever happened to my antique fish tank?”

But Kanye’s right. Twain’s quotes were Twitter-ready decades before mini-blogging.

Want proof? Here's a feed filled with Twain, and it's awesome. (Somebody needs to start an Oscar Wilde feed.)

3. Speaking of Twitter, Alison Hallett assesses the value of art criticism in a single tweet. (Hallett, by the way, is the Portland Mercury Arts Editor.)

4. And now for something that has nothing to do with Twitter...

Nitsuh Abebe explains why you don’t want to date a writer.

(Example #8: Writers are really passionate. About writing. Not necessarily about you. Are you writing?)

-Jason Lea, JLea@News-Herald.com

1. James Franco has invested heavily into the Jason Lea Bank of Goodwill. He has ties to Freaks and Geeks and the Spider-Man trilogy, both of which count for something ‘round here. But that doesn’t make him a good author.

I had concerns after reading Franco’s short story in Esquire. Palo Alto, a series of short stories based in a fictional facsimile of Franco’s hometown, is similarly unremarkable, according to PW.

The reviewer said it “reads like Patrick Bateman from American Psycho fell into a Catcher in the Rye remix.”

I’m not sure what that line is supposed to mean, but it elicits an “oh, snap!”

Let me be clear. I haven’t read Palo Alto. But bad review paired with the underwhelming first impression of “Just Before the Black” have quelled any anticipation I might have had for Franco’s fiction.

2. Online Masters compiled the top 40 comic stories to integrate into college curriculums. I love that Ohio natives Brian K. Vaughan (who is misspelled as “Vaughn”), Jeff Smith and Harvey Pekar wrote six of the 40 suggestions.

All the usual suspects — Watchmen, Maus, Sandman — show up, but it’s a pretty good primer for those who don’t care about superheroes but are intrigued by the potential of the medium. Not that the list completely ignores capes, All-Star Superman makes a deserved appearance.

3. Some clever soul has started an @emperorfranzen Twitter feed in the wake of Jonathan Franzen’s Times cover.

Samples: “I see too many self-pub novelists “pushing” their books too hard. Me? I never do publicity. It does me.”

“I love me some marshmallow Peeps. I imagine each one is a chick lit author as I devour them.”

“Writing Tips From the Franz: “Write what you know. You know nothing. So write nothing, and read my books instead.”

4. Dave Eggers and Valentino Achak Deng update us on their school in Sudan.

Speaking of Sudan...

Still speaking of Sudan...

-Jason Lea, JLea@News-Herald.com

1. According to Forbes, one in every 17 novels purchased in the United States lists James Patterson as its author.

(Note, I did not say he wrote them.)

That’s an incredible statistic. I won’t bother saying if I think Patterson saturation is a good or a bad thing. However, I do want to know if this is unprecedented.

When Michael Crichton, Nora Roberts or Stephen King were at the zenith of their popularity, did they ever dominate the market as Patterson has?

J.K. Rowling and Dan Brown may write more popular books, but I don’t think they are prolific enough to keep up with Patterson’s numbers. Rowling wrote seven books. Patterson (with his posse) writes about eight a year. One can only buy so many copies of The Deathly Hallows. Patterson has grabbed an astonishing market share by constantly feeding his fans new fodder.

There aren’t many surprises in Forbes’ highest-paid authors’ list. All the expected faces appear. Stephenie Meyer, King, Danielle Steel and Ken Follett finish the top five.

2. One of Langston Hughes’s Cleveland homes has been condemned, but that does not mean it will be demolished.

Hughes stayed in five different homes while he lived in Cleveland. Three have been destroyed. Two have been condemned.

3. “It is overwhelmingly nauseating, even to an enlightened Freudian. To the public, it will be revolting. It will not sell, and will do immeasurable harm to a growing reputation ... I recommend that it be buried under a stone for a thousand years.”

The Library of America looks back on the history or Lolita. Vladimir Nabokov’s best known work has a success story fit for this century. It didn’t become popular until critics complained it was smut.



4. @GrammarHulk and @EditorHulk have clarified. They are different Hulks. As are @FeministHulk, @LonelyHulk, @DrunkHulk and the legion of other gamma-powered superheroes who invaded Twitter.

5. Jimmy Carter is scheduled to appear at Joseph-Beth Booksellers in Legacy Village on Sept. 28 to sign his new book, White House Diary. Line tickets are required, limited and available by purchasing a copy of White House Diary at Joseph-Beth.
Carter, in addition to being a Nobel Peace Prize winner and former president, is a prolific author. He has written more than 20 books.

-Jason Lea, JLea@News-Herald.com

P.S. Tricia, if you're looking for a detective story, I'd recommend The Man Who Was Thursday. I think that would qualify. The main character is a detective who's pursuing what he thinks is a dangerous anarchist. Yes, the novel has fantastic and metaphysical trappings, but it still counts, right?

om•pha•lo•skep•sis (äm´fә lō skep´sis) n. [omphalo- + Gr. Skepsis, a viewing: for base see SKEPTIC] 1. the act of contemplating one’s navel, as an exercise for mystics 2. Tweeting

Twitter has several uses, despite tweeters’ inclination toward navel-gazing.

For example, what’s better than Kanye West’s banal tweets? Kanye’s banal tweets paired with New Yorker cartoons.




















Yes, these are authentic Kanye tweets paired with real New Yorker cartoons. Here’s a convenient Flickr gallery with them all.

Paul Sabourin, the mastermind behind #kanyenewyorkertweets, offered two explanations why the juxtaposition works during an interview with Urlesque.

“The pretentious explanation: Kanye's tweets are more or less raw id (unfiltered, portraying base emotions and simple thoughts) and New Yorker cartoons are almost entirely superego (carefully considered, 'quiet' presentation).

"The simple explanation: it just struck me as funny at 3 a.m. Luckily, unlike most 3 a.m. inspirations, this one actually seems to hold up.”

Some of my favorite Sabourin compositions play on slang, like this:


















Or this:






















Another Twitter use: Susan Orlean was tired of reading Magic Treehouse to her 5-and-a-half-year-old son, so she turned to her Twitter page for suggestions.

Orlean is one of the more successful authors on Twitter (in terms of both follower numbers and quality of Tweets.) She’s in that Colson-Whitehead, Neil-Gaiman, Stephen-Fry range.

She has more than 67,000 followers on Twitter and asked them what books they would recommend for her son, using the hashtag #booksthatchangekidsworlds. Her followers offered more than 250 suggestions, including my favorite book as a child, The Phantom Tollbooth.

Orlean later said on her blog, “What I have loved about reading through them is not just the great suggestions for my son but the shiver of pleasure I get each time I see a title that meant everything to me when I was a kid but that I haven’t thought about in years. I actually gasped when someone recommended Hailstones and Halibut Bones, by Mary O’Neil, a book I wore out twice when I was little but haven’t thought about in decades; I can’t wait to read it to my son, to see if it will change his world the way it changed mine.”

Carolyn Kellogg commented on the LA Times Book Blog, “Having someone like Susan Orlean on the Internet, blogging and tweeting about everything from her chickens (an unlaid egg led to lamaze-style ablutions) to books is a treat. It's like getting seated next to her on a plane on a day when she happens to be feeling chatty, or finding that she's in the office right next to you and wants to know what you think about donkeys.”

People post a lot of helpful links for writers on Twitter, but they also post a lot of other crap, too. I mean A LOT of worthless stuff you will never use.

Fortunately, Jane Friedman of The Writer’s Digest sifts through the stupid and provides the best tweets for writers each week.

Jason Lea, JLea@News-Herald.com

Thomas Sowell said there were only two ways to tell the truth, anonymously or posthumously.

Never one for anonymity, Mark Twain chose the latter.

When Twain died he left behind a 5,000-page, unedited autobiography and a note saying it was not to be published for at least a century after his death.

Twain died in 1910. That means the seventh seal will be cracking soon. The first volume of an eventual trilogy will be released by the University of California, Berkeley, where the grail is vaulted.

I will be reading this autobiography, all of it. My self-inflicted limit on book length be damned.

Twain was known for his candor in life. Can you imagine what thoughts he needed to let stew for a century before they could be served?

While the salacious details of his relationship with former secretary Isabel Van Kleek Lyon may interest others, I just want to read about Twain being Twain. I want to know what quips, tidbits and quotable blog fodder he ensconced in this autobiography.

On an unrelated note, Stephen Fry will judge the Guardian Hay festival’s Twitter competition.

While I still have some misgivings toward Twitter (how it’s used, not the platform itself), I think a Twitter competition is positively democratic.

In the words of festival director Peter Florence, “It’s a little jolly and a leveller. We can all write tweets but not all of us can write poems or novels.”

Nominations for the most beautiful tweet must be posted @hayfestival. The winner will be announced June 6.

I will be nominating something from @FEMINISTHULK.

Finally, Christopher Hitchens answers the Proust Questionnaire.

-Jason Lea, JLea@News-Herald.com

My apologies to both of my loyal readers. I have been covering a murder trial this week and that leaves little time for book blogging.

Allow me to catch up. The One Book, One Twitter experiment kicked off today. It’s a worldwide book club that uses Twitter. Readers voted on the inaugural novel and selected Neil Gaiman’s American Gods.

Gaiman had mixed feelings about the honor. He wrote on his blog:

As an author, I'm half-pleased and half-not, mostly because American Gods is such a divisive sort of book. Some people love it, some sort of like it, and some people hate it. (As contrasted with, say, The Graveyard Book, which some people love, some like, and a statistically insignificant number of people hate.) It's not a book I'd hand out to everyone, because the people who don't know anything about what I've written and who hate it -- who might have loved Stardust, or Neverwhere, or The Graveyard Book or Sandman -- probably won't go and look any further.

The #1b1t people have already run into an early problem with spoilers. I also suspect it will be difficult to have any meaningful conversation when all comments are limited to 140 characters and thousands of people are participating.

Still, though, it’s a noble idea.

The Animal Review guys got a book deal; and I suspect it will be my favorite blog-turned-book since Stuff White People Like. If you don’t know the Animal Review’s shtick, Jacob Lentz and Steve Nash — no, not that Steve Nash — grade animals on ridiculous, arbitrary criteria.

Here’s an excerpt from their entry on moose (which Lentz/Nash gave a “B”):

The main thing to know about moose is that they are enormous. More pointedly, owning one as a pet is a decision almost bound to bring a lifetime of regret. It will most certainly cause family conflict, and in all likelihood your friends will stop coming over. Plus your neighbors will gossip. You may end up on the news. And there are at least even odds that your chandelier will need frequent repairing.

Finally, Daniel Nester gives you 13 mistakes to avoid while writing, editing and promoting your book. (Suggestion #8: Don’t take reviews too seriously, good or bad. This especially applies to all the depressed or neurotic people out there; which, if you’re a writer, you most likely are.)

-Jason Lea, JLea@News-Herald.com

The News-Herald Book Club is multiplatform. (If I weren’t so repressed, I would have ended that sentence with an exclamation point.)

We have a YouTube page and a Twitter feed and everything.

In fear of sounding like an old man, I’m relatively new to this Twitter thing and taking suggestions.

Who should I be following? What writers? What critics? What magazines and newspapers?

Thus far, I am the disciple of eight feeds.

I follow the Book Examiner Michelle Kerns (you may remember me raving about her Literary Review Cliché Bingo); Carolyn Kellogg of the LA Times book blog; Michael Schaub of Bookslut; Elizabeth Baines (also known as the Fiction Bitch); Electric Lit (who tweeted Rick Moody’s short story last year); Colson Whitehead (Fantastic quipper. “You don’t have to put on the red light, but it would help with the mood and general ambience. No pressure. Just putting it out there.”); Neil Gaiman (Yes, I am a fanboy); and Margaret Atwood.

There are probably legions of fantastic Tweeters I need to follow, but I will never know them without your help. So hit me with some suggestions — via the blog or Twitter.

Also, Nathan Bransford has finished his experiment. The most popular query also had the most popular manuscript.

Bransford doesn’t claim the query process is flawless. Instead, he argues it is the best system we have.

“And all things considered, given the time constraints I still don’t know if there’s a better replacement out there for a query + short sample, even with its imperfections. Queries really do give an agent insight into the overall work, with the sample pages providing another glimpse.”

-Jason Lea, JLea@News-Herald.com

Apple sold 300,000 iPads in 15 hours.

If the Pope were selling absolutions at half the cost of the e-reader (between $500 and $700, depending on how much memory you want), it might cause less of a sensation.

Those numbers are huge, bigger than expected. To give a bit of context, experts estimate that Amazon sold about 700,000 Kindles in the last two years. (We can only estimate because Amazon will not release how many it sold.) The iPad will probably match that by the end of the year.

The Kindle isn’t doomed, per se. The iPad still has some kinks (no Flash.) But it’s safe to Amazon’s hegemony has ended.

I am not one of the 300,000 people who bought an iPad Saturday, so a linked review will have to suffice.

In related news, Anna Quindlen is optimistic about reading’s backlit future. She also makes a call for the snobbing to cease amongst techies and literati.

There is and has always been more than a whiff of snobbery about lamentations that reading is doomed to extinction. That’s because they’re really judgments on human nature. If you’ve convinced yourself that America is a deeply anti-intellectual country, it must follow that we don’t read, or we read the wrong things, or we read them in the wrong fashion. And now we have gleeful e-elitism as well, the notion that the conventional product, printed and bound, is a hopeless dinosaur. Tech snobbery is every bit as silly as the literary variety. Both ignore the tremendous power of book love.

If I could, I would rename this blog The Tremendous Power of Book Love.

Moving on — Channel 4 will be tweeting Romeo and Juliet. It’s been done. Tweeting a classic is no longer the revolution it was 10 months ago.

Finally, I offer a pair of disappointing examples of censorship. Both books — The Shepherd’s Granddaughter by Anne Laurel Carter and Number the Stars by Lois Lowry — talk about the persecution of a minority. In Carter’s book, it is Palestinians; in Lowry’s, it is Jews.

The antagonistic history of the Palestinians and Jews aside, both populations have suffered. They both have been the victims of stereotypes and prejudice.

Censoring does not stop prejudice. You know what does? The Tremendous Power of Book Love.

The best way to combat bigotry is to learn about the other people. The best way to learn about them is to hear their stories. Denying children access to these stories solves nothing.

-Jason Lea, JLea@News-Herald.com

P.S. Mentor’s Reader has returned from her hiatus. What could bring her back? One hint: Zombies...

My family didn’t celebrate Easter because my mom said it had its origins in a pagan fertility ritual. (Why do you think people dye eggs?)

Ishtar may have flopped in the Lea household, but it’s still going to be a Good Friday. Inhale the melange.

Craig Teicher addresses the relevancy of poetry from the perspective of critic.

But in almost any conversation on the topic of poetry reviews, one question comes up: what’s the point? This question isn’t always asked with the flippant air that actually means “who cares?” Often, people really want to know: what is accomplished by poetry reviews? Do they help sell books? Do they keep the art form in line? Do they spur writers into creating better poetry or kick bad writers out of the halls of Parnassus? Do poetry reviews help readers?

There is talk of keeping poetry “vital” and “alive,” but the article does not eulogize the art form or devolve into cliché.

In what can only be considered the greatest news of all time, Margaret Atwood is on Twitter. Even better, she’s blogging about being on Twitter.

She says having a Twitter feed is like having “33,000 precocious grandchildren.”

They really shone when, during the Olympics, I said that “Own the podium” was too brash to be Canadian, and suggested “A podium might be nice.” Their own variations poured onto a feed tagged #cpodium: “A podium! For me?” “Rent the podium, see if we like it.” “Mind if I squeeze by you to get onto that podium?”

My first thought reading her blog was, “Margaret Atwood would be the coolest grandma ever.” But I didn’t want to say that in fear it would be perceived as sexist or ageist. Then, Atwood called us precocious grandchildren and removed any possible awkwardness... just like a cool grandma.

(Atwood tweets. Alice Walker blogs. It is a wonderful time to love the typed word.)

Jan Freeman talks about banned words in newswriting and the repetition inherent in the business.

The call for “fresh language” is another cliché that demands a closer look. Sometimes repetition and formulaic language serve a speaker’s purpose better than novelty; sometimes the story really is the same — only the names have changed — and too much striving for originality may annoy and distract.

Finally, because it can’t be all good news, I offer two more reasons one might hate Amazon.

-Jason Lea, JLea@News-Herald.com

Picoult, eh?

I like Jodi Picoult but...

High schoolers should read modern authors but...

You know what? Never mind. No “buts.” If students don’t read Picoult specifically, they should read someone like Picoult.

There are plenty of current authors who deserve study and discussion, and they would interest the students more than Crime and Punishment.

So while I might not include Picoult in my trio of books high schoolers should read before they graduate, I like the logic that lead you to include her.

My list offers no surprises:

1. Catcher in the Rye — I was not in the legion of students who considered Catcher their favorite book. (I think most of them like it because it’s the first book they’ll read with a specific curse in it.) I found Holden’s ranting tiresome instead of insightful, but I’d be foolish to deny the connection this book has with teenagers. I never related to Holden, but Catcher is still a rite of passage.

2. Macbeth — High school students should read Shakespeare before they graduate. The only problem is time has rendered Shakespearean prose ponderous. Fortunately, Macbeth has enough sex and violence to keep the groundlings engaged. It also helps that Macbeth is Shakespeare’s shortest play. It’s not Shakespeare’s best work (that’d probably be Hamlet) or even my favorite (either As You Like It or Taming of the Shrew;) but it is the play high schoolers are most likely to enjoy.

3. Pride and Prejudice — I wanted to include a translated title like One Hundred Years of Solitude or African staple Things Fall Apart. Y’know, something to let the kids know that non-English-speaking countries can write, also. I considered including a Thomas Hardy book just because he’s my favorite writer, but neither of those ideas work. I would have been bored by One Hundred Years of Solitude if I read it in high school, and Hardy’s themes are not universal enough to resonate with everyone. But Pride and Prejudice — it’s essentially the best book about dating ever. I don’t know if all the guys in the classroom would relate, but they should still have to read it.

On an unrelated note, Electric Literature is having a writing contest on its Twitter page. The best tweet with the #stuffmymusesays hashtag will win a Sony eReader. The contest lasts until Friday and will be judged by Colson Whitehead.

Some early entries —

@AndreaSeigel: Take off your pants. The ideas can’t get in.

@Vanessa_LW: It could be strep. It could also be leprosy. The internet makes self-diagnosis easy.

-Jason Lea, JLea@News-Herald.com

I like curling. It makes me feel like I could be an Olympian.

It’s Friday. Welcome to the melange.

The Guardian has given a name for a syndrome from which many suffer — obsessive conclusive syndrome. OCS is the need to complete a book or series regardless of its quality. You may have OCS if you read The Silmarillion or continued watching X-Files after Mulder left the show.

I suffered from OCS for years; but after I finished four Dune books (and enjoyed one,) I made my peace with abandoning a book. In fact, I’ve quit some books more than once. (Yes, I’m talking about Moby Dick.)

The Twitter novel is gaining momentum in Japan. I didn’t mind following Rick Moody’s experiment on Twitter, but I can’t imagine reading 70 pages worth of material via Twitter. Then again, if it works for these authors, more power to them.

Next, six global publishers have sued Rapidshare for disseminating their copyrighted material. Even if they win this lawsuit, they don’t win the war. There will always be a Rapidshare or Napster available. The name may change, but the bootlegging won’t. These publishers have every right to sue, but the most effective way to combat piracy is to make sure there are legal options available.

Finally, I have a big announcement. I alluded to my inability to finish Moby Dick before. Starting Sunday, I will be liveblogging my battle with the white whale. It may take two or three days, but I will finish Moby Dick!

Me! Moby! Captain Ahab! That one guy with the tattoos!

This is happening!

And it starts Sunday!

-Jason Lea, JLea@News-Herald.com

P.S. More exclamation points!!!!!!

I received an e-mail yesterday that said Kirkus Reviews and Editor & Publisher would cease production.

The subject line read, “Can’t imagine anything more symbolic.”

It is Friday. More importantly, it is the Friday after the Browns beat the Steelers. Welcome to the melange.

The LA Times book blog weighed in on Kirkus’s closing.

The most interesting quote comes from Nick Kaufmann’s Live Journal:
One, it was purportedly read by every Hollywood exec--or more likely their underlings--looking for literary properties to option for film (at its height, I’m told Kirkus was used for this purpose even more than PW was). And two, their reviewers were impossible to please. I mean, impossible. If your book got a good review from Kirkus, that really meant something because they pretty much hated everything.

(I’d link directly to Kaufmann’s Live Journal instead of the LA Times; but, then, you’d have to watch an annoying Best Buy commercial before reading.)

Meanwhile, New York Times notes the obvious. Publishers have pushed back their e-book release dates to stick it to Amazon. MobyLives reminds us that they’ve been talking about publishing and Amazon’s cold war for weeks.

Finally, there has been a lot of criticism for Rick Moody’s tweeted tale, “Some Contemporary Characters.”

Most of the detractors hit on the same themes I did. The plot is too familiar and Moody misuses his medium. However, I would stop short of calling it a failure, though other critics did not. (In Moody’s defense, his story included all the right themes for the digital age — romance, voyeurism and masturbatory self-promotion.)

Peter Ginna says if Moody failed, we need more failure.

-Jason Lea, JLea@News-Herald.com

Rick Moody, author of The Ice Storm, is telling a story on Twitter right now.

He’s releasing his short story, “Some Contemporary Characters,” as a series of posts on ElectricLit’s feed. The story is being updated every 10 minutes and is supposed to be completed Wednesday.

Thus far, the story seems to be a romance between an older, erudite man and young, attractive bartender. (If I complained about Twilight being wish fulfillment, I can’t let this plot slide. I am so sick of older-writer-gets-worldly-younger-woman stories. I don’t blame Moody. I blame Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s Memories of my Melancholy Whores and Philip Roth’s The Humbling.)

Moody’s tweets alternate between the man and woman’s perspective as they talk about their relationship from the anonymity of cyberspace. (Does anybody still call it cyberspace? I wish they would.)

Moody incorporates themes of technology and online confession in his tale. After their first kiss, the woman notes, “That was it, nothing else, and people kiss every day, and the only difference nowadays is that people try to text while kissing.”

Moody’s writing is clever and the story is cute. My only knock is the subject has been overdone and Moody doesn’t use Twitter to its full potential.

His story is co-narrated by the man and woman, yet the tweets all come from a single feed. It seems like a missed opportunity that is unique to his chosen medium.

In other news, Catherine and Heathcliff audition for Twilight.

-Jason Lea, JLea@News-Herald.com

Authors do not control the covers of their books.

That might be common knowledge. I’m not sure. If you already knew that, I apologize for wasting your time. If you didn’t know, you do now.

Authors are asked for input regarding their covers, but publishers make the final call. My inner artist screams that writers should make that decision, but my outer pragmatist realizes that is unlikely (and, perhaps, unfair). Authors may produce the manuscript, but it’s publishers who risk their money to sell the book.

Sometimes writers and publishers disagree about what should be on the dust jacket. These disagreements rarely go public. Authors do not want to nip the hand that feeds them, so they swallow their misgivings and hope the publisher will want to work with them again in the future.

Then, there is the case of Justine Larbalestier. The first US cover of her novel Liar featured a white woman with long, brown hair.

Larbalestier’s complaint was simple. The book isn’t about a white woman. It’s about Micah, a black woman with short black hair who lies compulsively. (To Larbalestier’s credit, she did not discuss the cover until readers began to complain about it.)

Let’s briefly ignore the racial implications of the publisher’s decision. (Frankly, Larbalestier addresses it better than I could on her blog.)

Instead, I’d like to write about the artistic implications of the publisher’s cover selection. The publisher chose the white-woman cover because of its marketing potential, according to Larbalestier. (Publishers maintain — and I have no immediate evidence to disprove — that white faces sell more books.)

In other words, the cover had nothing to do with the book’s contents, but Bloomsbury thought it would sell. At best, that is dishonest to the readers. (To be fair, Bloomsbury has since issued another, more accurate cover for Liar.)

Larbalestier said the cover with the white woman confused some readers. They asked if Micah was also lying about her race.

When a cover causes readers to question the text, it is no longer a matter of what type of faces get better placement at bookstores, it’s about altering the book’s intent.

Hopefully, Larbalestier’s cover kerfuffle will cause publishers to be more thoughtful when selecting what images to accompany their books.

-Jason Lea, JLea@News-Herald.com

P.S. I’m poorly suited to judge if the white-woman cover was effective from a marketing standpoint. I pick books based on author or content. I almost never pick a book because it “looks interesting.”

My co-blogger Tricia, however, often judges a book by its cover.

Things that Tricia hates on a book cover: science-fiction scenery, illustrations and faces.

And what does Tricia want on her dust jacket? Moody, nature scenes. In her words, “If there’s an empty lake with a rowboat, I’m there.”

P.P.S. Remember when I said someone should use Twitter to create an original piece of art?

No, well, I did. (You should pay more attention.)

The Royal Opera House is using its Twitter page to compose an opera.

No, it’s not book related, but I’ll be interested to see how it works.

I dislike Twitter and not for any original reasons.

Most people cannot communicate anything worthwhile in 140 characters; and almost no one can do it several times throughout the day.

Yet that is what Twitter is designed to do. It broadcasts our truncated (often inane) thoughts and millions of people follow it because... well, I guess you need something to do at your desk when you’re not working. (I write blogs and read McSweeney’s.)

Ian Blogost also doesn’t like Twitter for the obvious reasons:

For me, Twitter represents the worst trends in the new internet culture. It purports to allow people to “communicate” in new ways, a promise that mostly creates new obligation and infatuation to stay “up to date” and “connected.” In the world of Twitter, you (and me, and everyone) pay constant, tiny homage to a new gimmickry.

But instead of just complaining about it (like me,) he has decided to do something creative with it.

He and Ian McCarthy have found, if nothing else, a creative use for Twitter.

They re-enacted the tenth chapter of James Joyce’s Ulysses, “Wandering Rocks,” using Twitter. They created pages for several of the book’s character and created a program that had them interact. They also timed it to coincide with Bloomsday, June 16, the day in which the activities of Ulysses are said to take place.

The Ians’ intent: (to) comment on Twitter as a social force and also attempt to use the service in a culturally interesting way.

The Ians’ Twitter idea is not wholly without precedent. Someone thought it would be clever to tweet Taming of the Shrew. Someone else has also reserved twitHamlet.

Other people have used Facebook to re-enact Pride and Prejudice.

While all of these ideas are clever, I don’t know if they add anything to Ulysses or Pride and Prejudice. I’m hoping that someone takes it upon him or herself to do an entirely original piece of art with Twitter or Facebook. (Of course, that person won’t be me. I don’t tweet and only time I use my Facebook page to glean info on the suspects about whom I write.)

-Jason Lea, JLea@News-Herald.com