Ryan Call of <HTMLGIANT> stayed up late to write “an intelligent post to temper all of the madhouse raving” for “Under the Table.”

Unfortunately, the story itself is fairly boring and overdone, which I suppose you can justify with the argument that those little spreadsheet cells don’t have room for subtlety. But one would hope that restriction could create some really odd and mysterious language. Also, this is a first draft, which David emphasizes in his post, so apologies for my taking it as finished product. But really, people, I don’t see what’s so “brilliant” and “nicely done!”

I don’t agree with all of his comments, but I do think Ryan is correct in criticizing the language of the “Thought” columns.  It is in these columns that the real story is taking place, and I too don’t really like the way they’re currently written.  I feel like there are two options here:  either make the thoughts more like raw data (bullet points?), which may be appropriate for the spreadsheet form, or else try to make the language a lot more artful.  Instead, what I’ve done in this first draft is end up somewhere in the middle.  That’s not going to work.  I might have to try both of the extremes to see what reads better.

In any case, I’ll certainly include Ryan’s name in the list of contributors in the final draft, if he permits it.  But I suspect he won’t.

Well, it’s been a week since I posted the first draft of “Under the Table,” and it has now been downloaded over 10,000 times.  I’m extremely grateful for all the attention it has received and would like to thank everyone who promoted it, who commented (both here and elsewhere) and who provided feedback.  Yeah, I wrote the thing, but the people who blogged and tweeted about it and who linked to it are the ones who are truly responsible for helping this first draft find so many readers.

Let me say again:  THANK YOU!

Yes, I know that the novelty, the gimmick, of having a piece of fiction structured within a spreadsheet is the fuel that made this all possible.  In a world with so many available diversions, one must do what one can to get people to read a short story!  But the pure idea of writing in this way preceded the notion that it might be an attention-getter, and I think that fact made it possible that this piece of writing could be something readable and good rather than just a cheap stunt.

I have received some criticism that I didn’t go far enough, that Excel is capable of being far more dynamic and interactive than I’ve asked it to be here.  It was never my intention to push Excel to its literary limit, but I agree that it would be interesting to see someone try and heartily encourage others to give it a shot!

In fact, there have been rumors that others are planning their own spreadsheet fiction.  It could even be happening at this very minute.  Stay tuned…  Update: It has been done!  Jason Rodriguez has written a story in a spreadsheet as part of his project to tell the same story in 260 (!) genres.

Apart from the short storyspreadsheet concept, I’ve received enough positive feedback about the effectiveness of the story itself to convince myself that I’m not completely delusional for kinda liking this thing.  Remember, it’s just a first draft.  I can make this a lot better.  So do I plan on using the feedback I’ve received to go through the dreary editing process and work toward a final draft?  Absolutely.

Do I still hope to have this published by the online version of a highly esteemed literary journal?  Hell, yes!  With the kind of traffic it (still) has the potential to deliver, I might even make them pay me for the privilege (but don’t let that scare you off, dear editor).

Will I ever write another short storyspreadsheet, or even a novexcel?  Nah!  Well…maybe.  You never know.  We’ll see what happens.

A few weeks ago, I had a nutty idea and decided to Tweet it:

Naturally, I assumed that would be it.  Like one of Yoko Ono’s wacky concepts, the mere idea of such a thing would be entertaining enough.  No point in going through the trouble of actually doing it.

But there was a bit of a reaction to the idea.  Just a wee bit of a stir.  Then absurdist writer Nick Name came up with the term for such a creation:  novexcel.

That struck me as a beautiful new word.  It acted as a kind of fuel for my inspiration.  I decided that, for once, I really ought to put one of my nutty ideas to the test.

But the time required for a full-length novexcel would be more than I’d care to invest in an experiment.  Instead, I thought, how about a short storyspreadsheet?

So I’ve done it.  Here is the first draft of my short storyspreadsheet “Under the Table” (I hope I don’t need to point out the double entendre).  Other formats are available at the end of the post.  Read it.  I swear it’s not horrible (how’s that for a blurb?).

Click here to download the Excel version of “Under the Table.”

The first worksheet of the Excel file has the “raw data,” the story itself (8 columns x 30 rows).  The easiest way to read it is to click on the first cell and then use the arrow keys to move to the next cell you want to read.  The second sheet has a line graph that gives graphical representation to the “Character Intensity of Thought Units” (CIT Units) for each “Action Segment” in the story.

The raw data is formatted to print nicely, if that’s your thing.  However, I encourage everyone to read the story in its electronic format.  I’ve turned on “Track Changes,” thereby cordially inviting you to collaborate with me on this short storyspreadsheet.  Make any changes you feel are appropriate, and then send your version of the short storyspreadsheet back to me at david [at] theurbanelitist [dot] com.  I’ll be able to highlight any changes you made.  In particular, I’d like help with the language of each character’s thoughts.  I was not sure how best to handle this (Joycean stream of consciousness or ???).

All suggestions/edits will be considered and greatly appreciated.  However, I remain the master of this particular short storyspreadsheet.  This is not literature as democracy.  Whether or not a collaborator’s suggestions are used, all collaborators will be credited in the final version.

Of course, if you’d like to write your own short storyspreadsheet, please send it to me and I’ll add all submitted short storyspreadsheets to single Excel file (one story per worksheet).  The short storyspreadsheet collection will then be distributed globally in an electronic format, free of charge.  Those who download it will be encouraged to sneak a short storyspreadsheet or two into their dreary work-related Excel files.

Do I have any plans to turn “Under the Table” into a “normal” short story?  No.  This banal scenario, I think, would not work as a standard short story.  It only has the potential to be effective in the short storyspreadsheet format.  Besides, these characters are a rather despicable lot.  They deserve to be trapped inside a spreadsheet.  (Let that be your warning.  These characters are cruel and often crude.  Deal with it.  Short storyspreadsheets by their very nature contain only cold facts, like them or not.  Welcome to your world.)

Do I hope to have the final version of “Under the Table” published in the online version of a highly esteemed literary journal?  Yes.  I want to say something like, “Let’s see if any literary journal has the GUTS to publish a short storyspreadsheet!”  But if I were to do that, a significant percentage of people would not realize that I was kidding.  We can’t have that.  If I’m happy with the final result, I would like to see this published in a highly esteemed literary journal, but I do not actually believe that publishing it will require any “guts.”

Options for reading “Under the Table”:

Excel version (recommended)

Word version (the Excel table is pasted into Word)

Update: Google Docs Spreadsheet (thanks, Ryan)

Screen shots after the jump… Click to continue »

I’m thinking about the place of fiction in the 21st Century.  Might its role in our culture be diminished?  Among all the other distractions available, how likely is it that an individual will discover and choose a novel or short story over some other diversion?  Will most people be willing to invest the time and intellectual energy it takes to get through a longer work of fiction?  Do people still appreciate a story’s resolution, a proper ending (something that doesn’t go to the next “level” or that doesn’t link somewhere else)?  Might the fundamentals of a work of fiction change somehow?

Might it be true that, more and more, potential readers can’t find the BEGINNING, don’t have time for the MIDDLE and don’t want the END?

No, I don’t think things ever change that much.

Despite all the technological changes that are affecting the way people read, despite all the other distractions that are available today, I don’t think we’re seeing the end of Aristotle’s three essential plot elements.  There’s something inherently satisfying about a well-constructed story.  As has always been the case, there will be large portions of the human population who have no time for or no interest in a good, fictitious story.  That’s fine.  But for those in the know, for those attempting to peer a bit deeper into the human experience, there is no substitute for quality fiction.

Of course, writers, publishers and sellers of fiction should not assume that the rest of the world sees fiction’s indispensability as self-evident.  Don’t wait for readers to come to you.  Go to where people are and shove your valuable product in their collective face.  Act like a pharmaceutical company trying to promote a new drug.  Tell people you know they have a problem and that fiction is (part of) the cure.

Historians at the Czech Republic’s Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes recently discovered a previously unknown element of The Unbearable Lightness of Being author’s life:  at the age of 20, while a member of the Czechoslovakian Communist Party, Milan Kundera informed on a Czechoslovakian-born Western agent.  The man was then arrested, tortured and ended up spending 14 years working in a uranium mine prison camp.

Much like the criticism leveled against German author Günter Grass when he revealed that he had been a member of the Waffen-SS as a young man, Milan Kundera’s critics are focusing more upon his perceived hypocrisy than upon the supposed immorality of his actions.  Themes of betrayal and the struggle of memory against forgetting are, of course, continually recurring in Kundera’s work.  The author’s public statements in reaction to the uproar don’t exactly deny or verify the accuracy of the story, but it’s clear that he tried to suppress, or repress, this exceptional though pivotal event in his life.

We tend to hold those who speak publicly on issues of morality, be they religious leaders, politicians or writers, to a higher standard than we hold everyone else.  In the cases of both Kundera and Grass, of course, the original sin is compounded by each man’s having kept it secret (for so long in Grass’s case; until he was exposed in Kundera’s).

My thoughts:

• I don’t really care.
• This new piece of information only makes Kundera’s work more interesting to those who wish to include the author’s biography in their analysis of a work of fiction.
• An author’s life, his goodness or badness in particular, does not reflect upon the value of his work.
• Our cultural habit of giving writers, authors and other public figures greater moral authority than anyone else is the height of foolishness.
• A work is certainly the creation of the author, but it stands alone as well, and this information does not change the essence of Kundera’s writing.
• Kundera’s writing would certainly not be what it is if not for this particular experience.
• One must feel sympathy for the captured spy (currently living in Sweden, by the way), but each player was existing in a kind of moral gray area, each a product of his own time.  Such drama is part of the human experience.
• Great works of writing are not born of minds of mediocrity or lives of inaction.

I finally managed to read Denis Johnson’s National Book Award winner Tree of Smoke.  Though I’ve long been an admirer of Jesus’ Son, really a collection of related short stories, I’ve never found the same power in any of his novels (I believe I’ve read them all except for Angels).  I like them fine, actually, but none really hit me in the gut the way Jesus’ Son did.  So all the hub-bub and awards really raised my expectations for Tree of Smoke.  I’m sorry to say after lugging the brick-like 600+ page British paperback edition of the novel around for over a week, this one didn’t quite do the job either.

It has been a long time since I’ve read any work of fiction where I had a hard time distinguishing among the characters.  There are many here, and a number of them here just kind of melded together for me.  There was no cohesive plot to carry me through those 600 pages (that’s fine, but there wasn’t much else carrying me either).  And as true as they might be, there were also just too many Vietnam cliches here (the whores, the crazy Colonel, the rogue soldier going native, the self-destructive vet…you get the idea).

Some positives:

Kathy, a somewhat imbalanced Canadian nurse, is probably the best female character Johnson has ever written.  They’ve been a weakness of his, but this one really works for me and is my favorite character in the book.  It takes a while, but she really grows into a very original and very real figure.

Then there are just those fragments of truly inspired writing.  There aren’t as many as there should be but there were enough to get me to the end.  My favorite was the last sentence of this section:

He worried about his mother.  She didn’t make much money at the ranch.  She exhausted herself.  She’d grown thinner, knobbier.  She spent the first half of every Sunday at the Faith Tabernacle, and every Saturday afternoon she drove a hundred miles to the prison in Florence to see her common-law-husband…Whenever he mentioned enlisting in the service, she seemed willing to sign the papers, but if he left her now, how would it all turn out for her?  She had nothing in this world but her two hands and her crazy love for Jesus, who seemed, for his part, never to have heard of her.

Johnson is always at his best in down-and-out America.  As for Nam Lit, I think I’m pretty much satiated by Tim O’Brien’s Going After Cacciato and Graham Greene’s The Quiet American.  Roger that.