Sep 4, 2008 12:00 AM
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San Francisco, 6:29 PM
Tue Feb 9
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At last, Timesman Matt Richtel has explained why he's posing as a female hooker on his personal Twitter account: He's writing a novel, 140 characters at a time. No, no, wait for it — he's invented a new genre of fiction which he's calling the "Twiller." How were people who don't read Editor & Publisher supposed to figure that out? Richtel, belatedly, has grasped the problem: He's just broken voice on Twitter to announce the addition of a plot summary to his blog. Richtel coauthors the clever comic strip Rudy Park under the name Theron Heir, so you'd think his new project has a chance. But his online tale fails. I asked Valleywag writer Paul Boutin, who moonlights as a Wall Street Journal book reviewer, to explain why:
Richtel's short posts are riddled with typos in an attempt at authenticity. But he hasn't given any of his characters an engaging voice — I can't tell them apart. There's clearly a puzzle to be solved, but a puzzle is not a novel. Unlike, say, the diary entries in Jack Womack's Random Acts of Senseless Violence, these posts don't add up to reveal the complex mind of a dynamic character created by the author. Instead, they mimic the what-the-huh intractability of most Twitter streams.
Even Boing Boing editor Xeni Jardin was perplexed by Richtel, wondering if he wasn't indulging in an ARG, or alternate-reality game.
The exercise seems much more fun for Richtel than for readers. He can zazz up his stuffy NYT image by boasting, "I'm writing a novel on Twitter." But had someone else announced a similar experiment first, would Richtel, who covers both digital culture and Internet prostitution for the Times, actually consider it newsworthy?
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