Hello and Happy Friday,

I was listening to a radio program this morning, a story about twittering and how a group of guys are publishing classics such as the Iliad and the Odyssey by Homer as well as Shakespeare’s Taming of the Shrew in “tweet”. They have condensed these classics down to 140 words or less. One of the tweeters read the Iliad, it was funny—they’re suppose to be funny--and of course short, as short as can be. I thought it interesting on the one hand, on the other, I was put off. I see it as another dagger in the hearts of reading and writing. If people get used to reading classics that are hundreds of pages, in a page or less, will they want all novels to be condensed to almost nothing, which will loose so much?

What would this mean for us who spend hours writing thousands of pages to capture a story in a few hundred? Will people want to read those few hundred? Will it come to be too many? At the end of the program a specialist on the tweeter phenomenon said he didn’t believe “twittiture” would last and would go away as quickly as it appeared. I don’t mind this new form of literature because it’s writing that folks are reading; never a bad thing. Yet I hope people continue to crave great full-fleshed, big, rich novels that span far and wide in story as well as in pages.

My guess is that they will, but only if they find the story is worth their time, that it magically pulls them in, the stories are ones they cannot put down or can’t get enough of because they enjoy every aspect of the writing: the characters and the storyline. Only then will it not matter if the novel is 200 pages or 400, the story is so great even that many pages will not be enough.


“Better to write for yourself and have no public, than to write for the public and have no self.” Cyril Connolly

If you have any comments or suggestions I have a new e-mail address at: mathewsla@hotmail.com