project earned me the moniker âGossip Girl of the Book Worldâ among my regular visitors. Early versions of some of the stories that appear here originated there.
The pieces are bite-sized, reflective of an age in which communications are disseminated through texts, tweets, and status updates. Twitter, for instance, places constraints on the user, one hundred and forty characters per tweet, to be exact. Itâs taught us how to be mindful of our words. In a venue where every character counts, complete words and entire sentences take on a whole new meaning. How and why we place importance on each character, word, and sentence becomes a craft. Whatâs followed is an increase in the popularity in online microfiction, postcard fictions, poetic short fictions â whichever term you prefer. The economy of a tweet, by way of contrast, however, should not be mistaken for a creatively constrained art form. Take Ernest Hemingwayâs infamous short story: âFor sale: baby shoes, never worn.â When I read this the first time, I couldnât help but wonder if it was a sentence that had been cut from one of his novels, or a rushed scribble on a napkin intended as the starting point for another. Mostly, though, I wondered if the first draft had been seven words. Or seventeen. Do we say more when we say less?
Iâm far from alone in my impulse, the Seen Reading Movement alive in any person who has ever wanted to ask a complete stranger how he or she is liking a book as they rumble down the track together to their final destinations. While commuters may feel anonymous on public transit, the vehicles are structured in such a way that we face one another, always in the line of someone elseâs view. Public transit situates us so that we are given license to accept whatâs right in front of us, but will likely arouse our desire to compare our narrative to someone elseâs, to give ourselves permission to speculate upon a personâs private space, or life, with no fear of recourse or punishment. Where did you come from? How did you get here? Where are you going?
After five years of watching readers, Iâve arrived at the conclusion that as there is no one way to read a book, there is no one way to know a reader. To that end, I address each character only as He or She to invite many readings of the text.
Be seeing you.
Julie Wilson
How often have you sat in a restaurant, theatre, or bus and wondered who the people around you are? This novel will give you the illusion that you can know â indeed, that you are Godlike and omniscient. This can be a very pleasurable sensation.
GEOFF RYMAN, 253
Regret had never been the thing he did, but the thing he did next.
Tin Can
In the train tunnel for five minutes, a young mother has let her child go to the front. Here he presses his face to the glass inside cupped hands, eyes adjusting to the dark, bobbing headlamps crossing in the distance, workers on the track. The mother reads while the woman beside her watches a telenovela on a portable player,
Malhação
or
Patito Feo,
she wouldnât know.
The passengers get tense, the train showing no sign of moving. The banter from the soap opera is rapid-fire, the audio hollow and far away, like tiny people yelling inside a tin can. We are in a tin can, the mother thinks. What would our voices sound like from the next station? How much longer before weâll break down and talk to one another? She looks over the forearm of the woman to see what drama is unfolding. Her son jumps unsteadily on one foot, hands stuffed into his back pockets.
READER
Caucasian female, late 40s, with long blond hair, wearing leather pants, black fleece, and large gold necklace.
The World to Come
Dara Horn
(W.W. Norton, 2006)
p 10
After Joe Brainard
He remembers a bump to his forehead, the cat ten minutes before the alarm.
He remembers the police, thirty-one arrests, the deep voice on the clock radio sounding
The pieces are bite-sized, reflective of an age in which communications are disseminated through texts, tweets, and status updates. Twitter, for instance, places constraints on the user, one hundred and forty characters per tweet, to be exact. Itâs taught us how to be mindful of our words. In a venue where every character counts, complete words and entire sentences take on a whole new meaning. How and why we place importance on each character, word, and sentence becomes a craft. Whatâs followed is an increase in the popularity in online microfiction, postcard fictions, poetic short fictions â whichever term you prefer. The economy of a tweet, by way of contrast, however, should not be mistaken for a creatively constrained art form. Take Ernest Hemingwayâs infamous short story: âFor sale: baby shoes, never worn.â When I read this the first time, I couldnât help but wonder if it was a sentence that had been cut from one of his novels, or a rushed scribble on a napkin intended as the starting point for another. Mostly, though, I wondered if the first draft had been seven words. Or seventeen. Do we say more when we say less?
Iâm far from alone in my impulse, the Seen Reading Movement alive in any person who has ever wanted to ask a complete stranger how he or she is liking a book as they rumble down the track together to their final destinations. While commuters may feel anonymous on public transit, the vehicles are structured in such a way that we face one another, always in the line of someone elseâs view. Public transit situates us so that we are given license to accept whatâs right in front of us, but will likely arouse our desire to compare our narrative to someone elseâs, to give ourselves permission to speculate upon a personâs private space, or life, with no fear of recourse or punishment. Where did you come from? How did you get here? Where are you going?
After five years of watching readers, Iâve arrived at the conclusion that as there is no one way to read a book, there is no one way to know a reader. To that end, I address each character only as He or She to invite many readings of the text.
Be seeing you.
Julie Wilson
How often have you sat in a restaurant, theatre, or bus and wondered who the people around you are? This novel will give you the illusion that you can know â indeed, that you are Godlike and omniscient. This can be a very pleasurable sensation.
GEOFF RYMAN, 253
Regret had never been the thing he did, but the thing he did next.
Tin Can
In the train tunnel for five minutes, a young mother has let her child go to the front. Here he presses his face to the glass inside cupped hands, eyes adjusting to the dark, bobbing headlamps crossing in the distance, workers on the track. The mother reads while the woman beside her watches a telenovela on a portable player,
Malhação
or
Patito Feo,
she wouldnât know.
The passengers get tense, the train showing no sign of moving. The banter from the soap opera is rapid-fire, the audio hollow and far away, like tiny people yelling inside a tin can. We are in a tin can, the mother thinks. What would our voices sound like from the next station? How much longer before weâll break down and talk to one another? She looks over the forearm of the woman to see what drama is unfolding. Her son jumps unsteadily on one foot, hands stuffed into his back pockets.
READER
Caucasian female, late 40s, with long blond hair, wearing leather pants, black fleece, and large gold necklace.
The World to Come
Dara Horn
(W.W. Norton, 2006)
p 10
After Joe Brainard
He remembers a bump to his forehead, the cat ten minutes before the alarm.
He remembers the police, thirty-one arrests, the deep voice on the clock radio sounding
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