The Living Novel: Your Name Here
June 19
With all the talk about what the online world means for the novel (copyright, distribution, form, content etc.) I thought it might be good to bring up an old egg. A while ago, Helen DeWitt, author of The Last Samurai decided to forgo traditional publishing and release her follow-up novel online via her website.
Please note that The Last Samurai is not to be confused with the movie that involved the overwhelming Ken Watanabe and a typically underwhelming Tom Cruise. DeWitt’s first novel is, according to A.S. Byatt, ‘a genuinely new story [and] a genuinely new form’. The central narrative focuses on Sibylla, a single mother and her young son, Ludo, a child prodigy proficient in maths, physics, music, ancient Greek and Japanese by the age of four. As time goes on, Ludo begins to want to know his father, but Sibylla refuses to tell him anything. Mother and son watch Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai compulsively – Sibylla writes later that she hopes the film has given Ludo seventeen fathers (eight characters, eight actors and one director). But Ludo is determined and he sets out to obtain another parent, whether by invention or trickery. His search, which leads him to several candidates, including a great classicist, an investigative journalist, a Japanese pianist and a Nobel laureate, forms the rest of the story.
The Last Samurai was a cult bestseller and has been translated into over 20 languages. DeWitt has a veritable legion of loyal fans who have long awaited her second book. But, according to this article in the London Review of Books, things did not work out smoothly:
'In 2003, DeWitt signed a two-book deal with Talk-Miramax in the US. But then Miramax went pear-shaped and DeWitt found herself stranded, under contract but without a champion. The rights for one completed book have only recently reverted to the author; work on the other one collapsed.'
It was during this time that DeWitt met Ilya Gridneff, an Australian journalist, in an organic pub(!) in East London. She felt an immediate connection and so, after the turn of events, began working on her next book with him. Disillusioned with the world of print, they decided to release the novel online as an ever-changing, ever-growing text. The narrative of Your Name Here is difficult to pin down, perhaps intentionally so. By all accounts, it’s an experimental work – something that wants to push the boundaries, use and abuse the freedom of the online and, it must be said, stick its finger in the face of what DeWitt calls cowardly publishing. You can read the synopsis (or buy the text for US$8) on DeWitt’s website.
Regardless of whether Your Name Here is a work of utter genius or confused absurdity, DeWitt’s choices are certainly interesting and relevant as publishing shifts restlessly between online and print. Jess Crispin of Bookslut I think puts the question quite well: ‘So how does DeWitt, with no marketing department, bring attention to the fact that she’s publishing online? And does the work suffer from being forever unfinished and not having gone through the editing system?’
Personally, I think it’s hard to make a blanket statement about this. I’d be the first to agree that good, careful editing can make all the difference and that there are many benefits to having a house back you in terms of marketing and promotion. But the point is, DeWitt does not want any of this, so can we say that her book fails simply because it does not conform to popular understandings of ‘success’? It is also important I think to experiment once and a while, to take risks. Your Name Here is probably not everyone’s cup of tea (I doubt that it’s mine), but it does that at least.
JA
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Comments
19 Jun 09 at 13:30
Thanks for the background on this, Jess - I do remember hearing about it. If a first novel sells as well as Last Samourai, then something like this is certainly worth trying once. At least.
...26 Jun 09 at 14:16
I very much the doubt that the work suffers from being unfinished and unedited, some readers may on the other hand. There have been lots of interesting experiments in this area over the last five years. The internet allows the creation of a non-linear mulitdimensional text, using links and tags. It also allows collaboration in ways limited only by the imagination. In fact, it is possible to see the entire internet as one vast non-linear multidimensional metatext, a collaborative canvas created through the interaction of all the icon/avatars. Of course, doing so marks you as a Philip K Dickensian nutcase in the world inhabited by the real people who think they are typing into computers when they are in fact operating time machines.
...26 Jun 09 at 21:07
Or I could just be talking to myself, either way, nothing to lose.
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