crooked house

Corduroy Mansions, Alexander McCall Smith's Serial Novel at the Telegraph

Whenever I'm so sick I can barely read, I grab one of Alexander McCall Smith's books and take it to bed with me. McCall Smith, who is so successful I doubt very much he cares, might not consider this the most flattering recommendation, but a writer could do a lot worse than write the bookish equivalents of say, a good cup of hot chocolate or a bowl of homemade chicken noodle soup. For my next bad cold, I've got my eye on  The Comforts of a Muddy Saturday, the latest in the Sunday Philosophers Club series (my favourite) featuring Isabel Dalhousie, which will be out soon. If I develop a sudden illness before I get my hands on that one, I'll be reading (or listening to) Corduroy Mansions, the serial novel that will be published online at the Telegraph every weekday for the next twenty weeks, starting today.

In a perfect demonstration of his perfect grandfatherly-ness,* McCall Smith is even willing to take plot suggestions from readers:

I am writing the story as it is published, usually keeping about twenty episodes ahead of publication. This means that I shall be very happy to receive suggestions as to the plot, and will play close attention to them, incorporating them if possible. Obviously I shall not be able to use every twist and turn proposed by readers, but I'll certainly be reading everything sent to me and will give it serious consideration.

What will it be about? Well, Corduroy Mansions is a building in London, not dissimilar to 44 Scotland Street. The story is about the lives of the people who live there: William French, a wine merchant, and his feckless son, Eddie; four young women, sharing the flat below; a dog named Freddie de la Hay. Other characters include Oedipus Snark MP, an odious politician; his mother, Berthea Snark; and Marcia Light, a warm-hearted cook. I propose to enjoy myself writing about this little slice of London, and I hope that you will share my enjoyment. There will, of course, be illustrations by that greatest of contemporary British illustrators Iain MacIntosh, who illustrates Scotland Street and the von Igelfeld books.

*I know that's not a word but it should be and I can't think of a real one that means the same thing at this moment. If you can think of one, please leave it in the comments. Maybe I'm already coming down with something...

Does It Already Exist? An Internovel? A Nog?

I first came across Margene's blog when I became addicted to the HBO television show "Big Love" last summer. Over the course of a couple of weeks I'd watched the entire first season on DVD and all the current shows available on OnDemand.  I was desperately searching for the next season's start date when I noticed the blog. I find it amusing and well-written (only because it is very much in character) and also just a little bit creepy. You see, Margene is not a real person. She is a character on Big Love, played by the actress Ginnifer Goodwin. The comments section is particularly interesting. Most of the posters are either deluded -- like those people who attack the actors who play villains on soap operas when they happen to see them in public -- or else they are playing along really, really well. I had to fight the urge to post myself. I wanted to ask "Margene" leading questions, to try to draw out more of the story and more information about the characters. And then I thought, "Okay, this clearly means it is time to turn off the computer."

According to this article about the growing trend of television characters "writing" blogs, Margene's blog -- apparently written by a writers' assistant -- is one of the best of its kind because it reveals interesting and perhaps pertinent information about the world of the television show that wasn't on the show. Most blogs supposedly written by television characters offer nothing in the way of extra story -- they're little more than a cutesy marketing technique. And frankly, Margene's blog could go a lot further. It'd be interesting to watch/read a television show/blog that worked in tandem, where both media were equally important to the forward momentum of the story.

And then I was reading Absurdistan this weekend (I'm always late to the party) when I noticed this:

And so, for the next half hour, while I stroked her body up and down with my lurid male gaze, Nana told me many, many facts about the Cathedral of Saint Sevo the Liberator. I will try to relate some of the highlights (did I mention the orange highlights in Nana's soft brown hair?), but for a full appreciation of this weird octopuslike church, the reader should turn to the Internet.

And so I did. Not because I was particularly interested in Shteyngart's imaginary church but because I hoped that he'd provided some kind of extension of the novel that googling  "Cathedral of Saint Sevo the Liberator" would reveal. Nope. As far as I can tell that link leads only to a post about the book on the NABOKV-L listserv.  The novel is terrific but it would have been beyond perfect -- hilarious and somehow very fitting to both Absurdistan's plot and tone -- to discover more online, even if it were just a paragraph or two.

And that got me thinking about the notion of a kind of online novel written in the form of a blog with links to other kinds of sites. I don't mean a straightforward serial novel posted in blog form. I don't even mean some kind of densely literary, amorphous hypertext novel written on special software, like the kinds Robert Coover's students appear to be writing at Brown, or like Shelley Jackson's Patchwork Girl, which I purchased years ago and tried to read but never felt particularly drawn into. And I absolutely don't mean an elaborately produced game/story like the viral marketing campaign designed for the movie A.I. I'm thinking of  a kind of novelistic story -- something with narrative drive and  mostly in the first-person -- told online through a blog and associated sites, some of them real sites where the author would be permitted to post like anyone else, and some of them sites conceived and built solely for the novel's purpose. I think that would be fascinating. And I think it's inevitable. I'm guessing the first one will be written by a science fiction author and/or one who writes for young adults.

Or am I late to the party again, as usual, and something like this is already exists? And if so, what is it called? An internovel? A nog?