February 5, 2007
The World's First Wiki Novel?
Some critics of Wikipedia have complained that the site’s communal-editing ethic tends to quash individual expression. For an encyclopedia, that may not be much of a problem. But a group-edited novel? To literary critics, that idea may sound like the kiss of death.
Nevertheless, a group of students at De Montfort University, in Leicester, England, are going to give the Wiki novel a shot, according to The Guardian. They’ve invited Web surfers across the world to contribute to an open-source book sponsored by Penguin Books, the publishing house.
The novel already has seven chapters, and so far it looks a bit, well, scattered. A few passages seem to attempt a jokey lyricism:
As the last notes of the Vivaldi concerto faded away in the background, he began to think about food. He wanted a thick grilled sirloin with a generous serving of pommes frites. He imagined dragging a chip through the bloody juices, a French chip, fried til its outside was diamond crisp, biting through to the fluffy, steaming center.
But other sections read like they came from a cut-rate erotic novel:
Just getting their pants off, the dawn sun lighting the top of the Rockies, the guys entered a small coffee shop in Boulder, Colorado. A diminutive waitress approached. She gave them a table near the window and then took their orders. “I would like two coffees, black no sugar” He said, looking up at her sullen little face. “And perhaps I’ll take a waffle with blueberry syrup too, baby.”
Update: Within minutes, one of the aforementioned passages — “the guys entered a small coffee shop in Boulder, Colorado” — had already been edited. For the time being, it’s “two young muscular anonymous american proletarian factory workers, looking like they had walked straight off a Socialist realist propaganda poster,” stopping in for a coffee. Nabokov it ain’t, but the Wiki novel should be fun to keep track of, thanks to fast-paced editing like that. —Brock Read
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They didn’t write a new book, but Lawrence Lessig placed the first version of his book “Code” into a wiki and let others work on a revision. After adding his own edits, Lessig published “Code v.2” last month. The wiki is still online at http://www.socialtext.net/codev2/index.cgi.
— Kevin Guidry Feb 5, 12:39 PM #
The Institute for the Future of the Book is all over this kind of thing! They have many experiments going on with group authoring. Google ‘if:book’ to find them. They always seem to have someone “in charge” however, a sort of blend of group authoring and authorial voice models. It’s great to see this kind of experimentation going on.
— Georgia Harper Feb 6, 10:40 AM #
I would have to respectfully disagree with the above comment. While it is true that this modern phenomenon of universal authorship (thanks to recent communications technology advances) allows for a plethora of diverse content on the net, I simply don’t see the point. In the end, it’s just a blog that everyone has access to. What’s so interesting about that? Literary works are a form of artistic expression, and that artistry should be revered… not exploited.
— Blain Dennis Feb 6, 07:24 PM #