Salon.com > Barry Yourgrau

Call me Ishmael. The end.

Thu, 14 May 2009 10:38:00 +0000

The cellphone grows more wondrous and indispensable to us every day. Talking is the least of it. We text and Tweet our heads off, send photos, watch TV shows, play video games. But in Japan, imperium of the future where all the above is old hat, the keitai (cellphone) has further spawned a wildly successful, populist fiction genre. Keitai shosetsu, the so-called cellphone novel, has been touted (in the pages of the New Yorker, among other places) and reviled (by Japanese literati) as the first narrative mode of the txt msg age -- the herald of a written-word future bent by wireless telecom's powers.

I'm the first and only American author who's written for Japanese cellphones (and with literary intentions at that). A happy lesson in old-fashioned technique, it was a sobering one about our brave new cyber-world's eternal essential: interactivity. Most of the auteurs of keitai shosetsu are Japan's vast demographic of girls and 20-something young women, who thumb out ultra-lurid, mawkish teen romances on their cellphone keypads in scraps of manga-like dialogue, skimpy action, texting slang and emoji (emoticons). They post these skeletal pseudo-confessions in installments, under cute pseudonyms, on dedicated Web sites like Magic i-land and Wild Strawberry where they can be read for a low fee.

“Water” and other stories

Sat, 17 Jul 1999 16:00:00 +0000

Water

I've been packed and waiting for close to an hour when I hear
the tap on the door. I open it. "Where've you been?" I ask the
taller of the two irritably. "I thought you said you'd be here
right after sunset." "The tide's running a little strange," he
says, with a shrug. "It is?" I exclaim, on a note of concern. The
guy holds up his hand with a slightly exasperated look, not to
countenance any alarm. He indicates their vehicle. I step out
between them toward it.

As we walk down the big guy peers askance at my backpack.
"What's in there?" he asks. "Why, what's wrong?" I reply. "You
said I could take a backpack." He mulls, frowning. "It's pretty
big," he says. I halt, anxiously, to settle the issue. "It's
just a camera, and some rope and specialized equipment. I really
need it," I protest. "How big can it be?" The guy pulls a face.
He says the name of his partner. The smaller guy droops his
eyelids and shrugs. He actually chews a toothpick. "Well, OK,"
says the big guy unenthusiastically.

“Carpet” and other tales

Wed, 28 Apr 1999 16:00:00 +0000

I come into my hotel room with my small bag. I put it down by the bed and look around. The room is dowdy and old, with a nondescript view through the dingy lace of the curtains. The carpet is threadbare; it has an ominous concave area in the middle of it. Very carefully I crouch and lift back the carpet by an edge. I stiffen, involuntarily making a noise. I drop to my knees and peer down.

A hole gapes in the floorboards, giving on to a naked abyss, a chasm that dives away into an unfathomable yawning space in the earth. A dank breeze plays at my hair. With a thudding heart I stare at what I've disclosed. Then I reach over and spread the carpet again as it was, and sink back on my haunches, my fists clenched at my thighs as I collect myself. This carpet appears to be the false cover to a trap. One naive step, one careless turn -- a person would plunge away into nothingness. I grunt to myself and shake my head with an intimate shiver. I run my hands through my disordered hair, and get to my feet and open the suitcase, to start putting some things in the chipped, flimsy bureau.