A novel, delivered via text message, was sent to cell phone users in China yesterday and has since created a buzz in Internet news sites. According to a New York Times article: “‘Out of the Fortress,’ showed up on tens of thousands of mobile telephone screens on Friday. It is the text-message novel, a new literary genre for the harried masses in a society that seems to be redefining what it means to be harried.
Weighing in at a mere 4,200 characters, ‘Out of the Fortress’ is like a marriage of haiku and Hemingway, and will be published for its audience of cellphone readers at a bite-size, 70 characters at a time – including spaces and punctuation marks – in two daily installments. ”
Ellen Sander has also blogged China’s reaction to the new form of literature here.
