Friday, October 27, 2006
Meditation on Psalm 139
I got the bright idea to make a failed novel into a blog, thinking that because the novel was written in journal entries, it would work as a blog. It didn't, so I have deep-sixed it. Are there any successful novels written in a journal form? I can't think of any at the moment. The pleasure of reading published journals is partly in knowing that the people are real and are going through real experiences, maybe even akin to your own.
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The one journal-form novel that springs to my mind is Sartre's Nausea - the critics are still out as to whether it's successful or not! But that form was supposed to indicate an intimacy and an immediacy of narrative that supported the existentialist philosophy of its author. So what I'm saying is that I think journal form novels need some kind of experimental hook if they are going to come off. And the daily format of the blog doesn't really lend itself to it. Still, you have to try these things.
Griffin and Sabine trilogy? More a novelty than a novel, letters more than journals too. Letters perhaps being more common, and usually as a framing device rather than the body of the novel (Frankenstein).
Journals, real ones, tend to skip explanations, being internal dialogue. Letters tend to want to communicate, and there is more a sense of evesdropping - which is compelling. Showing is even more involving. Blogging is such a new convention, it's hard to even describe. A puzzlement.
William Boyd's Any Human Heart is written as "the intimate journals of Logan Mountstuart." One of my favorites from a couple years back.
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