MachineMachine /stream

In the beginning was the Word. Then came Gutenberg, and it was good. But then came a giddy army of Japanese school girls, writing and “publishing" novels on cell phones. And lo, the end was nigh. And loudly did the literati bewail the Death of the Word. But then those clever girls revealed their true intent. Mere moments after the emergence of the so-called keitai novel, heralded worldwide as a revolutionary blow against the hoary tradition of the literary elites, this exciting new creature morphed like a perverse genie into plain old paperback form, where it now fights for shelf space in brick-and-mortar bookstores. It turns out that success for these young writers, as ever, means being published. Their innovation was simply to apply a new tool to the ancient task of breaking into print, which is where they all want to be – and where the best of them now thrive.