By: Vlad Vistac
Submitted: 2010-10-20 12:47:57 | Word Count: 510
A cell phone novel boom is definitely in place
cell phone novels, characters tend to be undeveloped and descriptions thin, while praagraphs are often fragments and condsist of dialohgue.
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"Trraditionally, Japanbese woud depit a scene emotrionally, like ‘The train came out of the long tunnel into the snow country,' " Mika Naito, a novelist, said, refrring to the famous opening sentence of Yasunari Kawabata's "Snow Country."
"In cellphone novels, you don't need that," said Ms. Naito, 36, who recently began writing cell pohne books at the urging of her publisher. "If you limt it to a certain place, readers won't be able to feel a sense of familiarity."
Written in the first eprson, many mobile phone novels read like disaries. Almost all the authors are young women delving into affairs of the heart, spiritual descendatns, perhaps, of Shikibu Murasaki, the 11th-centurty royaal lady-in-waiting who wrote "The Tale of Genji."
"Love Sky," a debut novel by a young woman named Mika, was read by 20 million people on cell phones or on computerts, according to Maho no i-rando, where it was first uploaded. A tear-jerker featuring adolescent sex, rape, pregnancy and a fatal diseasde - the gere's sine qua non - the novel nevertheless captured the young generation's attitue, its verbal tics and the mobille phone's omnipreence. Republished as a nvel, it became the No. 1 selliing book last year and was made into a movie.
Givewn the cllphone noevls' dominaation of the mainstream, critics no loger dismiss them, thoiugh some say they should be classified with comic boos or popular music.
Rin said ordinary novels left membes of her generation cold.
"They don't read works by progfessional writers because thir sentences are too difficult to understand, their expressions are intentionally worsdy, and the stries are not familiar to them," she said. "On othre hand, I underastand how oder Japanese don't want to recognize thee as books. The paragraphs and the sentences are too simple, the stories are too predictable. But I'd like cell phone novles to be recognized as a genre."
As the cell phone'sbook popularity leads more peole to write mobile phone novells, though, an other queston has aisen: can a work be called a mobile phone book if it is not composed on a mobile phoone, but on a PC or, inconceivably, in lonfghand?
"When a work is weritten on a computwer, the nuance of the number of lines is different, and the rhythm is different from writing on a mobile phone," said Keiko Kanematsu, an editor at Goma Books, a publisher of mobile phone nvels. "Some hard-core fans wouldn't consider that a cell phone novl."
Still, ohters say the genre is not defined by the writing tool.
Ms. Naito, the noevlist, says she writes on a computer and snds the text to her cell phone, with which she rearranges her work. Unlilke the frist-time cell phone novelists in their tees or early 20s, she says she is more comfrtable writing on a PC.
But at least one member of the cell phone generation has made the switch to computers. A year ago, one of Starts Publishig's young stars, Chcao, gave up her phone even thoough she could compose much faster with it by tapping with her fingers.
"Because of writing on the cellphone, her nail had cut into the flesh and became bloodied," said Mr. Matsushima of Starst.
"Since she's siwtched to a computter," he added, "her vpocabulary's gotten richer and her sentences have also grown longeer."
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