If you enjoy word games, you’re going to like this. If you enjoy word games and you’re fascinated by the idea of a semi-randomly generated narrative that continues “forever”, you’re going to love this! Word Journey is my latest game – and program; and literary effort – that bridges these two aspects together.
The game goal of Word Journey is very simple: You are given the definition of a random word, and you must guess what the word is, gathering points and racing against the clock. But that’s not all! Every time you correctly guess the word, a sentence relevant to the word is added to the stack, generating a theoretically infinite semi-random narrative! When you run out of time (there is also a “Zen Mode”, without time constraints) you can export the text to a file.
Sounds great? I think so too 😉
Word Journey is a combination of a game and an infinitive narrative generator(more…)
So, what should a review of Invisible Cities, by Italo Calvino be like? One thing’s for certain: It can’t be like any other review, because the novel (if one may still call it that) is like no other, either.
If that way of describing it sounds familiar, you’ve likely read my review of Confessions of a Mask, by Yukio Mishima. In that review, too, I had real trouble placing the work in a certain framework. Invisible Cities defies characterization. It’s what art should really be like: Focusing on affect, foregoing plot.
With these in mind, it will likely be no surprise to hear that I loved Calvino’s book. But reviews aren’t about what we like, but about why we like them. And so, in this review of Invisible Cities my goal – as with everything else I review – is ultimately to show you what the book feels like, rather than what it is.
Invisible Cities is a book that defies categorization(more…)
“The meaning of novels: What’s so novel about a novel”. If you think the title is a bit insane, that’s what you get when you make a post out of a discussion between me and Igor da Silva Livramento, friend and fellow writer, academic, and creative-writing advisor. We talk about novels, language, and whatever else comes to mind. Igor is also a composer, music theorist, and producer. You can find him on LinkedIn, and also take a look at his blog and his page on Bandcamp.
Chris: This convo kind of started with my suggesting “No news is good news, I suppose”, which you expertly picked up.
Igor: No news is neither good nor bad, because there is no news to be valued or assessed. Yet, a certain literary background allows you to use this sentence the way you did. In a sense, it is a paradox. But it is only a paradox insofar as that paradox is the clearest and most direct way of saying what is condensed in the sentence. But how so? As I always say, but few people listen to me: Logic concerns only a very limited subset of human languages. Everything that really matters to say, that is, everything that is really interesting in the events of language lies beyond the limits of logic.
To jump to a more interesting part of the reasoning: This means that literature carries (with)in itself – encodes, someone will (wrongly) say – a knowledge (of a generative kind). But why all this? The strongest empirical (from the marketplace) evidence of what I am saying is in the growing trend of publishing houses adding “a novel” to the front cover of fiction books!
Usually I would’ve inserted here a stock photo relevant to the topic, the meaning of novels. But one meaning of a novel could be this: Create your own meaning. So, take this photo and create your own meaning on how it’s related to the “meaning of novels”.(more…)
