Boox
By Daniel Strauss - Nov 13th, 2008 at 12:57 pmI would be remiss not to mention my former boss Ben Greenman’s latest literary project (you have to click on the “books” link), the boox. It may sound strange, but it’s also very cool. Greenman has written a collection of short stories, fashioned them into an accordion-style book, and asked his readers to finish the last story by writing the ending on a postcard, sending it in, and possibly being published in a future edition of Correspondences .
He describes it in an email to me:
On the one hand, it’s a normal collection of short stories about letters and letter-writing. On the other hand, it’s a very beautiful high-end structure for housing that short fiction. On the other hand, it’s a collaborative project in which readers write in and help me complete one of the stories. How many hands is that so far? Three?
So many books today are based on trite plots, comprised of characters that are supposed to be just like the reader, a storyline with one “unexpected” plot twist that sadly turns out to be rather expected, and an unsatisfying conclusion (the usually masterful Haruki Murakami’s A Wild Sheep Chase, for example, and Neil Gaimon’s Anansi Boys). With Correspondences , Greenman (and the readers) is trying something new and different.
I liked Anansi Boys.
But then again, I can’t remember the ending.
November 13th, 2008 at 1:38 pm