| Author | Message | ||
     Jamie Rosen (Jamie) Username: Jamie Registered: 11-2008 Posted From: 99.241.220.139 |
That is, fiction written in the guys of letters, e-mails, or other correspondence. What do you think of it? I recently read Robert Boyczuk's "Query", and I thought it worked quite well, although I did have to question how (if) all those letters made it to the recipient. I know Lawrence Block is on record as saying that he went through a period (since past) where he couldn't read traditional fiction because he couldn't suspend his disbelief about the narration element, and so took to reading a lot of epistolary stories and other "false document" works. I've never had quite that problem, thankfully. | ||
| Frank (Frank) Username: Frank Registered: 09-2008 Posted From: 85.222.86.21 |
Jamie - was Dracula the first epistolary novel in the genre, do you know? I really like this kind of narrative, though to be honest I haven't read too much of it. | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.166.117.210 |
Done well it can be terrific. Done badly, it's. erm, bad. | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 194.176.105.55 |
did you mean written in the guise of??? Anyhoo - wot zed said. The book wot I'm reading at the mo - The Wrong Boy by Willy Russell is didstinctly non-genre but excellent. The last book I read in this form was We Need To Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver which was the biggest pile of excrement it's been my displeasure to read for a long long time. The writer could not grasp the form of letter writing and shattered any suspension of disbelief by using Dan Brown type cliffhangers on the ends of chapters. When you consider that these are supposed to be letters, when do you leave a cliffhanger on the end of a letter? Add to that the most predictable "twist" ending possible in fiction and a despicably overblown writing style - at one point she refers to fainting as "Collapsing in a vertiginous slump" - and you have a complete failure of a book. | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 194.176.105.55 |
I should have mentioned there that the wrong Boy is written as a series of letters to Morrissey - and is excellent. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
It's a style I have always loved and believe works especially well with horror fiction. Look at 'Dracula' for the finest example in literature imho. And wasn't 'The Strange Case Of Dr Jekyll And Mr Hyde' another earlier example? | ||
| Rhysaurus (Rhysaurus) Username: Rhysaurus Registered: 01-2010 Posted From: 212.219.233.223 |
John Barth took the form to its ultimate in his mammoth novel LETTERS. It was his seventh book and all the letters are between all the characters in his first six books. Some critics hailed it as an awesome masterpiece, the ultimate example of postmodern irony; others claimed it was the very worst self-indulgence imaginable... The truth is that it's both... | ||
| Huw (Huw) Username: Huw Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 220.138.166.130 |
I don't think Dracula was the first but it's probably one of the best (Goethe's The Sorrows of Young Werther came before, I think). Some of my favourite stories are in this form: Hoffmann's 'The Sandman', Aickman's 'Pages From a Young Girl's Journal', Collier's 'Evening Primrose', to name a few. I'm pretty sure Karl Edward Wagner wrote a good one, but the title escapes me. There's Sturgeon's Some of Your Blood, of course. A more recent genre novel told in this style is Jonathan Aycliffe's The Lost. | ||
| Huw (Huw) Username: Huw Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 220.138.166.130 |
Thinking about this, I suppose films like The Blair Witch Project and other 'found footage' films are, in a way, the cinematic equivalent of epistolary stories and novels. Not exactly, but there are definitely parallels. | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.166.117.210 |
Cannibal Holocaust, too. | ||
| Jamie Rosen (Jamie) Username: Jamie Registered: 11-2008 Posted From: 99.241.220.139 |
did you mean written in the guise of??? That I did, Weber. It was 4 am and I hadn't slept yet. That's my excuse.  We Need to Talk About Kevin sounds atrocious. | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 194.176.105.55 |
See if the Landlord want to share his thoughts about Kevin... | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
The first major novelist of the epistolary is the magnificent Samuel Richardson, who wrote PAMELA and SIR CHARLES GRANDISON, and his true masterpiece, the absolutely brilliant CLARISSA, back in the mid-1700's. CLARISSA is a long long long epistolary novel, but its power remains unshakeable, and though mostly neglected now sadly, was and remains one of the most influential novels ever written. | ||
| Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 09-2010 Posted From: 86.158.59.122 |
PAMELA and CLARISSA - major works in my reading past. Thanks, Craig. | ||
| Stephen Theaker (Stephen_theaker) Username: Stephen_theaker Registered: 12-2009 Posted From: 92.232.184.206 |
But also ones I think that show a lot of the weaknesses of the epistolary novel, and why it didn't ultimately become the dominant novel form - the awkwardness of finding times for characters to write, the repetition, the chaff, things like that. | ||
| Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 09-2010 Posted From: 86.158.59.122 |
I agree with, Stephen, too. But literary things often wait centuries if not aeons for the final judgement. | ||
| Carolinec (Carolinec) Username: Carolinec Registered: 06-2009 Posted From: 92.232.199.129 |
Des has himself produced a fine example of this - in his "Strollers" book, the story "Ladies" which accompanies the title story. In it, we have an increasingly bizzare exchange of letters between two old friends. Nice one, Des! I think my earliest encounter with this style of writing was "Diary of a Nobody" by - oh dear, name escapes me .. the Grossmith brothers, or something like that? Written, obviously, in the form of a diary and very amusing indeed. I also remember a story in an old Interzone or Fear magazine (80s?) which was written in diary format and was very memorable because of that. Trouble is, my memory is so bad I can't remember the name or author - also, I sadly dumped all my old mags ages ago when I moved. Anyway, I do enjoy this particular style of writing. (in fact, I've recently had a desire to write something in the form of blog entries, or message board entries, something like that. I reckon a skillful writer to do an incredibly good "descent into madness" style of story like this. Trouble is, I'm not that good a writer!) | ||
| Carolinec (Carolinec) Username: Carolinec Registered: 06-2009 Posted From: 92.232.199.129 |
>>But also ones I think that show a lot of the weaknesses of the epistolary novel, and why it didn't ultimately become the dominant novel form - the awkwardness of finding times for characters to write, the repetition, the chaff, things like that.<< In fact, for that very reason, I wonder if it's a better form for a short story rather than a novel? | ||
| Stephen Theaker (Stephen_theaker) Username: Stephen_theaker Registered: 12-2009 Posted From: 92.232.184.206 |
"in fact, I've recently had a desire to write something in the form of blog entries, or message board entries, something like that." You might enjoy these, Caroline: Get to Know an Internet Commenter. They're non-fiction (unfortunately), but often very funny. | ||
| Huw (Huw) Username: Huw Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 220.138.164.115 |
Portions of The Grin of the Dark use this form, with the back and forth internet exchanges between Simon and Smilemime. | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.96.253.77 |
Paula Tremblay wrote a brilliant end-of-the-world story in the form of blog postings. | ||
| Darren O. Godfrey (Darren_o_godfrey) Username: Darren_o_godfrey Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 207.200.116.133 |
I tried the form myself, once, with a tale called "My Paperboy" (which appeared in Black October magazine some years ago). Not only was it my first epistolary styled story, it was my first attempt to tell a story entirely from a female's point of view. Fun but tricky stuff. | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 194.176.105.55 |
Eminem did that classic Stan in this form... (i AM JOKING HERE BY REFERRING TO THAT IRRITATING PILE OF TOSS AS A CLASSIC - LET ME MAKE MYSELF CLEAR ABOUT THAT) | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 194.176.105.55 |
bloody caps lock | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.166.117.210 |
I have an epistolary style story appearing in the forthcoming anthology "Swallowed by the Cracks". That's from a female PoV too, Darren. The publisher has designed the tale so that it looks handwritten, and on notepad paper. Very impressive! | ||
| Darren O. Godfrey (Darren_o_godfrey) Username: Darren_o_godfrey Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 207.200.116.133 |
Very nice, Gary. For mine, they did it up newspaper style: masthead and duel columns, etc. Didn't exactly fit the story, though. Done the way yours is -- handwritten -- would have been a bit more apt. Might you, perhaps, like to swap & compare? | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.96.253.77 |
Sure, mate - drop me an email! | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.156.233.223 |
I was wondering if people could read a whole book in handwritten. I wonder if anyone has written for years on the net, lying about their identity the whole time, carrying out relationships. | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.166.117.210 |
Lots of people have done that. Most of them are child molesters. Allegedly. | ||
| Carolinec (Carolinec) Username: Carolinec Registered: 06-2009 Posted From: 92.232.199.129 |
>>I wonder if anyone has written for years on the net, lying about their identity the whole time, carrying out relationships.<< Yup, they certainly do, Tony. Here are links to two articles which were linked to on a illness support forum I use: http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2011/feb/26/faking-illness-online-munchau sen http://www.healthyplace.com/faking-illness/munchausen/sympathy-seekers-invade-in ternet-support-groups/menu-id-198/ Apparently, these people pretend to be ill to gain sympathy and attention, and can carry on relationships online for years with people who really are ill wasting lots of their valuable energy on supporting them - Munchausen on the internet. | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.156.233.223 |
You see it's where stories start. I bet there are other forms of munchausen than just being ill you see. | ||
| Jamie Rosen (Jamie) Username: Jamie Registered: 11-2008 Posted From: 99.241.220.139 |
Well, technically, Munchausen is defined as feigning an illness or trauma. So there are other forms of factitious disorder, no doubt, but not technically other forms of Munchausen, except of course Munchausen-by-proxy, which still involves illness. | ||
| Jamie Rosen (Jamie) Username: Jamie Registered: 11-2008 Posted From: 99.241.220.139 |
And of course "factitious disorder" is actually the currently-used technical term for "Munchausen syndrome", so ignore the whole second sentence. |