About
“The internet democratizes everything.” At least that’s what we’ve been told, and if we’re talking about buying and selling, news blogs, or music, the propaganda isn’t far off. Strangely, though, the internet hasn’t democratized one of the most important human activities: storytelling. With a couple of exceptions, a couple of multinational corporate publishers and booksellers still serve as the funnel through which we get our novels.
In the 19th century, writers used the new medium of the daily newspaper to create a new kind of novel: the serial. Dostoyevsky and Dickens both wrote some of their most important works without a net, working on deadline for mass circulation periodicals. People waited impatiently for the next chapter, and rather like soap operas in Latin America today, they talked about the stories on the street, at work, in cafés…
Tolstoy Kicks Ass! can’t pretend to the genius of Dostoyevsky, but it does update the serial novel for the information age. Every month, we’ll see a new chapter in the adventures of Rai and Z on the streets of New York; you can either read it on line or download the most updated version with the button on the banner.
Please feel free to write with comments and criticisms; one of the reasons that 19th century novels were able to bridge the gap between “high” and “low” art is that periodicals gave a way for readers and writers to communicate and exchange ideas, a feedback loop that seems absent from contemporary fiction.
