Cell Phone Novels

"In October, the cover of Popteen, a magazine aimed at adolescent girls, featured a teenybopper with rhinestone necklaces and pink lipstick and an electric guitar strapped to her chest, wearing a pin that said, “I’d rather be reading.”"
(D. Goodyear, The New Yorker, December 22 & 29, 2008, p. 65)

Popteen is a Japanese fashion magazine and the cover picture is a reflection of the phenomenon of cell phone novels which seem to have transformed the literary culture in that country. The fact that a teen girl would rather be reading than doing anything else is telling of how pop culture in Japan is different from that in the United States. Cell phone novels, novels written predominantly about and by young Japanese women on cell phones, have been embraced by much of the Japanese youth culture. Yet the hierarchy of the literary culture in that country has shunned the genre as not worthy of being considered in the same class as novels written in the more standard form. This phenomenon is documented in the article “I (heart) Novels” by Dana Goodyear, The New Yorker December 22 & 29, 2008,

pp. 62-68.

Cell phone technology provided the medium for this genre of literature to flourish in Japan. Cell phone use and ownership is much more prevalent than personal computer use and ownership. Websites that allow people to sync their work from their cell phones into a "published" form have allowed cell phone authors to have their voices heard. These voices are supposedly autobiographical, much like a blog, yet use pen names and do not have any personal information attached. This is the result of a culture that does not allow or focus on individual fame or expression.

"Roland Kelts, a half-Japanese writer born in the United States and the author of “Japanamerica,” sees the Internet as an escape valve for a society that can be oppressive in its expectation of normative, group-minded behavior. “In Japan, conflict is not celebrated—consensus is celebrated,” he said. “The Internet lets you speak your mind without upsetting the social apple cart.”"(D. Goodyear, The New Yorker, December 22 & 29, 2008, p. 66)

This article was very intriguing to me. It is exciting to see how the internet and cellular age has given birth to a whole new genre of writing in Japan. This is probably just the thing that many of those involved in the development of the net hoped for! I do wonder if this same genre would have the same predominance in the United States. (The article does reference two websites that are acting as forums for cell phone novels in the U.S., Quillpill and Textnovel.) Our culture is quite different from Japanese culture. Would people really be willing to publish their work without getting personal recognition? Maybe most would not but I bet that many would. This could be a great forum for students to publish their works of fiction. I need to check out these sites to see if it is being utilized for this purpose.

As Mone, the pen name of a cell phone author featured prominently in the article, states,

“People say these horrible things about cell-phone novels, and I’m not sure they’re mistaken. They say we’re immature and incapable of writing a literate sentence. But I would say, so what? The fact that we’re producing at all is important.”