I've warned you about the forthcoming cellphone manga revolution, so perhaps it's not surprising to hear that the same thing is happening with novels. However, what makes this phenomenon an entirely different beast is the fact that not only have Japanese readers taken to reading novels on cellphones, they've taken to novels written on cellphones.

As you may have already surmised, these novels feature shorter sentences and frequent abbreviations, and tend to be rather light on the dialogue; in fact, I get the impression that they're kind of light on the everything, including kanji. While this obviously alarms those already concerned about the continuing existence Japanese language as we know it, that may not be the most important thing to worry about; after all, it's no secret to anyone that Japanese is not the most convenient language for reading and writing. What it is, however, is a beautiful language, and sooner or later the Japan is going to have to decide if that beauty is worth fighting for, cellphone novels or not.

I'm surprised that so many people have the passionate, supple thumbs necessary to produce this kind of work, but I'm left feeling strangely ambivalent about it. I'm much more forgiving of texting-speak than most self-professed literature fiends- especially because I think lots of people enjoy going on tirades about it just so they can feel superior. Also, plenty of modern novels are narcissistic and bloated, meaning that having motivation to be concise might benefit some of our modern wordsmiths. In fact, I generally only read novels that were written before the age of computers, or even typewriters, because people wrote better prose when they had to pay for paper and ink- excluding those paid-by-the-word types, naturally. Anyway, maybe if writing a novel goes back to being a slightly aggravating process, people will stop with the needless padding.

Not everyone needs such limitations though. John Irving? Should write on cellphone. Susanna Clarke? Should definitely write on cellphone. Haruki Murakami? Cellphone optional.

However, all that said, there is an undeniable are you kidding me? factor here. Imagine telling your child to stop texting for five whole minutes and read, and then they miraculously obey without an argument, and you proudly see them sit down gracefully by the fire with a volume of prose...only to discover that they are still reading text messages. I think I might prefer for my hypothetical kids to get molested; at least that won't make them illiterate.

In any event, whatever you think of this trend, it's probably not going away: apparently several of the best-selling novels in Japan have been written on cell phones for several years now.

[Via Kirainet.com]