1,000 Words

On September 20, 1943, LIFE magazine published a photograph of dead American soldiers on a Papua New Guinea beach. With it they ran an editorial that asked, “Why print this picture, anyway, of three American boys dead upon an alien shore?” One reason given: “Words are never enough . . . words do not exist to make us see, or know, or feel what it is like, what actually happens.”

Is that true? Do photographs speak more volumes than words? Does the writer exist in a glass box inside which she can feel the power spewing forth from her pen but knows that in reality her thoughts and imaginings and voices can never be actually, authentically transmitted to the reader? What about before the camera, or the video, or the lithograph even existed? Were words enough then?

I think words, in fact, have the capability of communicating more than pictures or photographs or footage. Words give each reader an individual identity, so that the same text holds entirely different meaning for two different people. We read through the lens of ourselves. That is, “reading between the lines” means just that- inferring what one will, breathing individualized meaning into what just one person originally formulated into words. A picture, too, can be interpreted as a viewer wishes- but it stands that there is just one image for all audience members alike, just one icon to behold. Words, conversely, can take on a life of their own and conjure a whole mixed bag of visual thoughts. The way Alexandre Dumas describes Edmond Dantès' breath-taking escape from the Château d'If in The Count of Monte Cristo plays out one way in my mind, but with infinite variety in others' minds. I imagine the savage mutilation of the baby water buffalo in Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried unlike any other reader imagines it.

But everyone sees the same, singular LIFE image of American war casualties: the same tropical treeline and the same number of bodies strewn like rag dolls over the same damp packed sand. What we choose to take away from the photograph will be quite divergent, yes- and I am a full believer in the awesome power of photography- but words bypass this initial maintenance of a common denominator and skyrocket the reader into a personal imaginative plain right from the get-go.

Where does the digital media revolution come into play with the expressive capabilities of photos vs. words? I don't have any technical familiarity with digital photography, but I do know that modern-day advances have exponentially increased photographers' abilities to manipulate images. In some cases, techniques like High Dynamic Range imaging produce mind-blowing photographs: John Tierney cites one in his TierneyLab blog. As Tierney himself points out, "Some of the images seem otherworldly, but others strike me as more natural than the alternative made by conventional means." So high-tech photography can both expand and warp the power of the framed image to communicate.

But so, I think, does high-tech writing. 21st century writing sledgehammers the quill-and-ink-stand purity of the written word. Outlets like blogs, discussion forums, tweets, Facebook status updates, online dating profiles, text messages- these, and their infinite cousins, change how we interpret writing. "Reading between the lines", to repeat myself, often becomes a moot point with 140-character thought balloons, or one-line status updates, or users' article comments, or Google Reader notes. But that same phrase "reading between the lines" can also ironically become even more relevant with confusing, variously-interpretable text messages, or with adjustable statements on politicians' websites, or with Podcasts that render audible a piece of writing that may not use the same tone or inflection the author intended.

Progress in applying new media to both photographs and writing has also been manifested in the form of text-accompanied slideshows, like this one of Obama visiting New Orleans this past October. We need the fluidity of flipping through the whole selection, and reading the text, to get a grasp of the material. Then is it the captions or the images that feed our brains? Do we need both? Which artform speaks more volumes?

There hasn't ever been a definitive answer, and with the complicating factors of today's technology, there's little hope for one.

Is Serialization a Serial Killer?

Max Barry is an Australian novelist. He's published three books: Syrup, Jennifer Government, and Company. He has a wife, a daughter, and used to work as a marketer for Hewlett-Packard. He also may be contributing to the destruction of what our culture has come to recognize as the novel.

His latest project is a "real-time serial novel" entitled Machine Man. If you're confused as to what that means exactly, you're in good company. Basically, Barry wrote 185 pages on a one-page-per-day regimen, posting each in turn onto his website. Every day, he'd use reader feedback from the previous post to inform the next page of the story. The goal was to use the Internet to "successfully deliver fiction" in what he calls a "drip-feed" format. The content is free up to page 43, then you can buy your own feed to access the entire story for $6.95. Since the work is complete as of December 1st, you can choose to read it in the paginated way Barry wrote it, or else read it in full.

Incidentally, the story is about a man who loses his leg in an industrial accident and decides to build a new one. I can't help but notice the bearing this plot has on Barry's project's effect on the publishing industry at large. Isn't he trying to forge a replacement for an appendage (the book arm of traditional publishing) lost to technology? He defends his idea:

"I think there are a lot of gimmicky attempts to mash fiction and the web together, regardless of how well they fit. They are promotions for a print novel, essentially, rather than genuine attempts to engage the medium and work to its strengths and weaknesses. I wanted to write something that fit."

I like his forthright effort to cross swords with new media rather than admit defeat. Other ventures, like Dahlia Lithwick's Slate.com serialized chick-lit novel and the Protagonize site where members "create Choose-Your-Own-Adventure-style fiction and build interactive stories", are making similar stabs at digitizing fiction. So maybe, with regard to my opening statement, the destruction of the novel that Barry is contributing to isn't a bad thing, but rather a creative solution. However, as Barry says himself ("I don't think the web is a great medium for novels, because novels are supposed to be immersive: you need to sit down and disappear into them."), adapting the novel to the Internet may be virtually impossible; digital serialization might just be incompatible with the form.

But what about vintage serialization, à la Dickens? Author Nicholas Rombes is publishing his new detective novel Nightmare Trails at Knifepoint via the U.S. Postal Service. The subscription period runs, for $18, from January 2010 to January 2011. The Rumpus blog writes that Rombes is publishing the book "stuffed into small manila envelopes, addressed by hand, with personal messages typed out on old hotel stationary and delivered right to your doorstep." This format harkens back to the days of installments shipped across the Atlantic, tossed in twine-bound parcels at the feet of hungry readers. Maybe, in contrast to Barry's project, regression is the appropriate defense mechanism in lieu of almost assuredly suicidal exploration into dangerous territory.

MediaBistro's GalleyCat blog asks, in a post on writer Helen DeWitt's inability to make any headway on new books given the distraction of the Internet, "Will the Internet Spoil the Next Great American Novel?" There are programs to explicitly block out the incessant stream of IMs, emails, texts, and BBMs, like DarkRoom and Writer, which may be enough for some authors. But workflow interruption aside, the very use of that word- "author"- may become an anachronism in a society inundated with writers upon writers who pay no heed to forms of yore, like the novel.

Mother Goose 2K9

I was seven when I published my first book.

My dad set me up on Storybook Weaver at his giant gray-yellow block of a Macintosh. I sat on the cushy chair, feet dangling, typing into the text box and assembling clip-art illustrations. I don't remember what the story was about. But I do remember waiting, itching, by the printer as it spooled out my work. There was even a cover page. My dad helped me staple the sheaf together. "By Allison Stadd", it read.

Even at that time, the dissonance between traditional and high-tech publishing was ostensible. I reiterate the assertion that my age bracket is situated in the problem's perfect storm: we grew up with Shel Silverstein hardcovers, AOL usernames, Highlights magazines, Oregon Trail computer games, Peanuts comics, and AskJeeves.com, all in equal measure. Too young to remember a time before e-mail existed, but not young enough to forget when "buy stamps" was a weekly entry on Mom's fridge-magneted to-do list.

The Internet's cannibalization of print publishing has been remarkable (Canadian web marketing agency Dialect moved from documenting traditional publishing's decline to officially declaring it dead with a formal elegy). To the extent that the collision between old and new affects both my personal and work life, to keep afloat I take a unicycle position: pedal forward, pedal back, swivel this way or that, arms out for balance, senses always attuned, can't stop-content- or you'll fall.

So it isn't simple. Every pressure point between traditional and 21st century media has infinite facets to consider both in developing an opinion on each matter (say, you can boycott the idea of citizen journalism, but also subscribe to ten average Joes' RSS feeds) and in negotiating the effect on cultural consumption (Do I buy a Kindle? Do I cancel my Time subscription? In my case, the first answer is "not yet", the second is "just did"). But the conflict's complexity doesn't mean that every new publishing development is equally tangly.

What about something as crisp-autumn-day clear as giving kids the opportunity to create their own books? Storybook Weaver planted a seed for me. Today the software has a newfangled cousin in the form of, for one example, Tikatok.com. A fresh-faced approach to children's publishing, Tikatok markets itself as a “free creative community” for children 13 and under to become published authors. Two mothers developed the idea in 2007. Tikatok kids write and illustrate their story ideas, then can order the finished products in paperback, hardback or eBook form. Joining the site is free, and the editing software is available right from the site. The kernel of the idea is that Tikatok is more than a crafting venue for budding Hemingways; the site includes features for collaboration made capable by the Internet. It's a refurbishment of the Storybook Weavers of my own youth. Tikatok cultivates the notion that the act of writing centers on more than the physical application of utensil to paper. Writing should be a social outlet, thriving from the cross-pollination offered by a community. Tikatok features book clubs, discussion threads and other opportunities for social networking.

It's hard to imagine people taking issue with the facilitation of constructive dialogue among children who want to write, or with the opportunity for these children to self-publish. But critics may claim that the ease of the process deemphasizes the idea of writing as a honed art. Or that it doesn't hold kids accountable for the building-block-instruction necessary for coherent, cogent writing. Or that their time would be better spent on math homework, or learning vocabulary lists, or getting mulch in their shoes from running around the playground with their friends- in person.

I'm not a parent, or a teacher, so I can't weigh in on how I think my kids' or students' time would best be allocated. But I do know that a tool like Storybook Weaver, forebear of Tikatok, enshrines the practice of story-telling so endangered in our Internet-driven society.

Ben Macintyre of The Times in London writes in "The Internet is killing story-telling",

"Storytelling is the bedrock of civilisation. From the moment we become aware of others, we demand to be told stories that allow us to make sense of the world, to inhabit the mind of someone else... [But] the internet is there for snacking, grazing and tasting, not for the full, six-course feast that is nourishing narrative. The consequence is an anorexic form of culture."

In his elegant blog "Anecdotal Evidence," Patrick Kurp writes, similarly,

"[St]ories, telling them and listening to them, are primal human acts. They entertain us and help make sense of the world, and most everyone outside of the nation's English departments enjoys them."

Sometimes, too, storytelling is a way to preserve, like pressing flower petals flat. In "Spin" from They Things They Carried, soldier-cum-author Tim O'Brien writes,

"[S]ometimes remembering will lead to a story, which makes it forever. That's what stories are for. Stories are for joining the past to the future. Stories are for those late hours in the night when you can't remember how you got from where you were to where you are. Stories are for eternity, when memory is erased, when there is nothing to remember except the story."

It's also a release. O'Brien writes later,

"Telling stories seemed a natural, inevitable process, like clearing the throat. Partly catharsis, partly communication, it was a way of grabbing people by the shirt and explaining exatly what had happened to me."

Storytelling can be an unbottling that quenches both server and drinker.

The Tikatok homepage nudges kids to "Imagine a Story. Create a Book." Equal emphasis on each step. A lifeline, then, for the ritual of narration; a story circle for the modern age.

When I was twelve and thirteen, I published two stories in “Stone Soup” magazine (my first official paychecks!). Later they were posted on the publication's website, with a soundclip of my narration. Learning, through a computer game and a website, that publishing my own writing was possible was a beacon for me. I would have drooled over the chance to talk about writing and publishing and stories and character traits and plots with other kids. What better use of the imagination and energy of the Internet than to channel the imagination and energy of children?