Category Archives: authors

M.A. Project “Continuing the Conversation”

After all this time researching, complaining, writing, avoiding, editing, and drinking more coffee than can possibly be good for a human I have finally finished my M.A. Project*.

My project basically argues that the communication technology available today is blending the lines between author and reader. This isn’t a bad thing. So I hope you enjoy it!

Continuing the Conversation (heads up – it’s a Microsoft Word .doc)
Creative Commons License
Continuing the Conversation: How Communication Technology Impacts Traditional Roles by Chandra Jenkins is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License

I have to thank Cory Doctorow and Scott Sigler because my project couldn’t have worked without them. And if you’re a neglected family member or friend, I owe you way more than a thanks on my blog!

*Yes, it is basically a thesis. Yes, there is a really boring, technical reason why the English Deptarment at CSUF can’t call it a thesis. No, I don’t really know what that reason is.

authorship

This will probably be a recurring title as I work on finishing my MA. I love authors. My favorite authors also tend to be literary critics.eliot
LikeT.S. Eliot. I love him. Yeah he was kind of a jerk (or really, whatever), but not only was he a great poet, he was an excellent theorist. Decades before Barthes, Eliot advocated for authors to be disregarded while reading a work.

I don’t do this.

It’s not because I don’t like Eliot (see above), it’s just that I can’t! I love to learn things, anything, and when it comes to authors I really enjoy learning about them and their time. It opens up so much for me when I read their work.

But I don’t get bound by them either. I think only red-herrings are more annoying to me than an author trying to control how I understand the work they’ve created. I don’t completely discount them, but authors aren’t God (sorry authors). As much as some of you would like to think you’re omniscient, especially concerning your works, you aren’t. I think it would be impossible. Even in this post, a relatively non-creative work, I will see ideas, insights, flashes of stories, brief reflections of brilliance, and so much more that I am not intending in this moment as I write.

Why don’t I know everything if I’m the author? Well, partly because I’m not smart enough to keep track of all of my thoughts and influences consciously, but also partly because language is dynamic. These words might not mean the same thing to me tomorrow that they do now. Don’t believe me? What did September 11 mean in 2000? What did it mean in 2002? What does it mean today? What will it mean in 3001? Language, even seemingly static language stuck on a page, changes.
So while I don’t disregard the author completely, neither do I worship the author. I simply add all of that information that informs the text to my reading of the text this time around and then let it blend together in the sieve of my mind. And as I add more information and readings and life, I run it all through the sieve again.
Maybe I feel most comfortable discussing literature from this platform because I like to read and edit and analyze and enjoy literature. I think the editing is particularly helpful for this.

See, when I edit I have to keep track of the story. This may sound simple, but it’s really not. I have to keep in mind the scope of the story as a whole, something complete and finished even as it is in progress. But I also have to keep track of the tiny details. And to use my time effectively I have to keep all this in my head on top of my own reactions as a reader and thinking as a more generalized reader, while I read the story once.

As if this wasn’t hard enough, I also have to keep in mind the voice and tone of the work when I offer suggestions and try to prevent my own voice from dominating. I can never take myself out of a work, but I can do my best to minimize my presence so that it can fade into the background and emphasize the brilliance of the author.

But does that make me a co-author?

This was the question I found myself asking today while I was reading through another draft of my friend’s story. The question probably would have wander back and forth like a ten year-old trying to attract parental attention before wandering away, except that this version was ensconced in an email that mentioned each draft of the story had been completely re-worked based on my comments.

At first I was taken aback by the comment simply because I don’t think of myself as offering insight that powerful. I honestly felt a little bad, as though somehow I had destroyed another’s creation through mis-guided attempts at help. But then I realized

this is what editors often do for authors.

And in a way it was kind of freeing.

Because I know that I have not forced or coerced these changes in the story (for the most part), I can rest assured that this story still belongs to the author and that I haven’t destroyed anything.

But that doesn’t make my relationship with the text any less complicated.
There is only one part of one line that I created in the story so far, and I offered it amongst several options for a phrase that didn’t seem to fit. Other than that, the story has changed and shifted because I provided my questions/thoughts/reactions/associations/opinions/ for the author to consider. Any changes steming from that are completely authorized.

And yet, they still reflect me. Certainly they reflect more my immiatation of the author, but they still reflect me. And the story exists in the form I read through today in part because I read it, and also because I shared my thoughts.

And when I read this story I see the author almost distilled and reflected in it, which I expect without acknowledgement. But I also see today, with all our hopes/fears/pains/loves/concerns/joys/lives also distilled and reflected in this story. There are phrases that if I weren’t living today I would never read as allusions. I see the political environment, our economic environment, our world precariously balanced as it is in this story. And the hope for a better tomorrow also shines in this story. But they are so slight as to be overlooked should this story be read in 30 years.

And I will, more likely than, not never be known in association with this story, so my reflections will go unnoticed and understood differently. Which leads me to another question – would I still be an author in that time when my fingerprints are smudged?

I don’t know the answers to these questions. They are ones I think about often, not only because I enjoy editing, but because I am an English academic with an emphasis in textual criticism and authorship theory. The questions don’t get any easier when applied to dead authors. But the complexity is fun. I will probably be thinking of answers to these questions, especially as I move into fields where my livelihood depends on having a definite answer to what role I’ve played in producing a work, for the rest of my life.

And I’m quite content with that.

BoingBoing game/ Craphound fanfic (of sorts)

So BoingBoing.net is a fantastic blog that I follow and they decided to have a game. They asked the people in the community to write their own creative pieces dealing with anything that comes up frequently on the blog. So I wrote a short story that continues Cory Doctorow’s short story “Craphound” that even attempts to take on his style. I’ve been working with it over the last few weeks for the second chapter of my MA project/thesis, and I liked it so much I decided to post it on my own blog as well. I was also impressed that I wrote this story and posted it in the comments within two hours, but that’s probably greatly due to the fact that it was the middle of the night. I recommend reading some of the other pieces that came up in the comments as there are some excellent pieces.
———–

I was looking around the Secret Boutique on my daily pilgrimage when I saw the Raconteur. I knew it would take convincing Scott that it fit with the Western theme, but that it would be worth the effort. It was a gorgeous piece of machinery that someone would pay good money for.

On my way into the store, I made sure to touch the miniature steamer trunk that The Beaver stood on. Ever since he went up in the window, my superstitions had expanded to include touching him on my way back from expeditions. Scott thinks that it is an action to remember Craphound, and I tell him I think he is getting soft since his retirement.

I think it is too soon to tell that story.

With a hint of dread for the coming conversation, I headed to the back room of the Queen Street boutique with my prize. Scott looked up from the books and I could see an expression of confusion cross his face and mix with concern. Scott trusted my hounding skills, but I could see the Raconteur testing his faith.

“What’s that?” he asked with an edge of forced nonchalance.

“It’s called a Raconteur, makes music by twisting a key.”

“Oh. Is it big with cowboy collectors? I’ve never seen anything quite like it.”

“Well, it’s a niche that’s gaining. It’s called ‘Steampunk.’ People will pay a fortune for it.” I wasn’t entirely sure on this last point, but I made sure not to let on. You can’t give away your bluff in the middle of a hand.

But it ended up that I didn’t need to worry about my speech. Scott accepted me at my word and we set the Raconteur out in a place where it would get enough traffic and gather interest. As it turned out, I picked it up right as the Steampunk wave was rising. I started finding more of this stuff in the rummage sales and thrift stores, and slowly Scott’s boutique began to expand. We moved out from strictly cowboy stuff to include more of my Victorian-esque finds.

The Beaver still stands in the window in his cowboy gear, but he’s accompanied by several Alice in Wonderland tin wind-up toys now. I’m putting up a picture behind him today that must have been painted close to an opium den. I get the slightest twinge that I’m betraying something with each addition, but if there’s one thing I’ve learned being a craphound, it’s that, no matter how hard we try to preserve the life we know, it has a nasty way of changing. It works out best if we accept this and change with it. Only through change can we truly live.

The Graveyard Book

So I’ve just finished Neil Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book, and it’s fantastic. And by finished I mean that I just finished watching it here. He’s put video of himself reading his book on his book tour last week on his website (so many ‘his’ in that sentence). So when I found out that this book (that I’ve been excited about since I read a small bit somewhere on the web) was out, I had to listen to it immediately.

 

And it was like I was reading it.

 

Though slightly frustrating because he didn’t read quicker through the tense parts to get to the resolution of that action like I do. But as I listen to Gaiman read his story, I still felt as though I walked along side Bod through the course of his adventures.

 

Really though, I love Gaiman’s use of language and the way he blends these beautiful images and characters with the inanity and insanity of the life that I see everyday (which I find particularly astounding since he’s a middle-aged man born in England living in Minnesota). His characters talk in a way that I wish I could, and yet it sounds real. They talk in a very literal style and respond with acceptance of whatever circumstances the conversation presents. It’s a book for younger readers, that does not shy away from difficult topics, and the speech patterns seem to reflect that audience.

 

I can’t wait to pick it up and get to read it for my own self, and this is after listening to Gaiman read it completely. I love Bod and the way that he interacts with all of the characters, as well as the way the characters are and aren’t what I expected. I read a lot of fantasy and have a rather macabre view of life, and this story surprised me in several places and made me smile in others. Gaiman usually makes me laugh out loud at least several times while I’m reading, and The Graveyard Book definitely fell into that quite a lot. I also decided that I really need to read The Jungle Book because this apparently riffs on that story, just in a cemetery. I was describing this work to a friend as a mix between Tim Burton, Monty Python, and Douglas Adams, and I mean that as the best possible view since I love them all.

 

So there’s my nerdy share for the day. Enjoy this beautiful cemetery!

What I’m doing with my life (for the moment)

So someone earlier asked what this blog was about and I told them it was pretty much whatever I wanted to share, but that really this blog was all kinda connected by language that I find interesting. And then I thought that I could use this blog to get feedback on my master’s thesis idea. So I’m going to post my proposal here. I hope you enjoy it and share your ideas. (and the title will be revised because I really don’t like it as it stands)

Community Authors: How Authors Use Others to Develop Texts

 

            Editors often take the brunt of scholarly critique of corrupted texts; however, they are not the only ones who meddle with a text either during its composition, the process of a text’s production, or in the interpretation of the text. Friends, family, printers, typesetters, other authors, scholars, and readers all interact with the text and introduce their own variants through marking on the text or reading it. In the first half of the twentieth century, Modernists authors shared their manuscripts with one another. Marianne Moore exemplified this in her sharing of manuscripts with contemporary authors such as H.D., Ezra Pound, and T. S. Eliot. With communication broadening through the internet and the digitization of the twenty-first century, this group sharing and editing has expanded to online blog communities as authors, such as Cory Doctorow, publish drafts of their work on their personal websites, blogs, and podcasts. Through this technological change the debate about the role of the author(s), editor(s), and readers becomes more fluid. For textual scholars, such as Jack Stillinger, D.C. Greetham, and George Bornstein, who build the case that there has never been a single author, the shift of writing communities to an online forum illustrates their argument and forces literary critics to deal more directly with the readers’ ability to change the meaning of the text.

            Editing theory has developed to focus on deciding who acts as the responsible party for determining the meaning of a text. In response to the discussion of the authorial role in defining textual meaning, current editorial theory places an emphasis on the way the historical and personal context of the author affect the meaning and interpretation of a text. This examination has only recently shifted to value all versions of the text from the author’s life rather than elevating one version, typically the first or last, of a text as the most authorized (Bornstein, Editing Matters). While Greetham explains the theoretical path in “Editorial and Critical Theory: Form Modernism to Postmodernism” that led to this revisionist view, Bornstein discusses the ways that the exploration of the stages of textual development affect the potential interpretation in Material Modernism. By looking holistically at what surrounded the text in production throughout the author’s life, as well as production that occurred, and continues to occur, after the author’s death, Bornstein and those who follow him seek to understand how, and in what ways, the meaning shifts over the course of a text’s existence. While this type of investigation has more firmly set guidelines for studying physical manuscripts, the rules for dealing with the nearly complete digital production of texts have yet to develop similar conventions. Kathryn Sutherland’s Electronic Text: Investigations in Method and Theory, as well as Graham Barwell’s “Original, Authentic, Copy: Conceptual Issues in Digital Texts,” emphasize the ways moving to digital format affects texts and the reader’s interaction. Published research tends to focus on the ways readers of digital texts are affected by the format rather than the ways readers affect digital texts.  

       Scholarly focus to date has primarily looked at the application of making older, canonical and non-canonical, texts widely available. The shift to electronic texts has concerned most scholars, such as Peter L. Shillingsburg, primarily in the ways that electronic versions would allow readers to easily see the broader scope of textual transmission.  While some scholars have voiced concern about the degradation of the older texts that are transferred to electronic formats, there have been few scholars discussing the ways that electronic texts of new literature and their dissemination over the internet affect the development of the text. With newer authors utilizing their readers to shape works in progress in venues such as blogs, the future of literary studies from several critical frameworks will be even more difficult to apply than its current state.  The online and electronic formats of the text make the determination of meaning directly connected to the discussion between the author and the reader, both figuratively and literally. With the ease that readers are able to access the manuscripts of older works, as well as the authors of current works, the position of literary theorist is expanding to include those who have no formal training in the field of English. Regardless of how this broadening affect of the electronic text is viewed, the ability of any reader to look through the manuscripts of any text poses questions for scholars concerning how this affects the theoretical views of the role of the reader in assigning meaning to texts.

            In an effort to better understand the ways that texts have been influenced by fellow author-editors, my first chapter will look at the text of Moore’s Poems and the course it followed throughout in its production stages. Moore wrote a prolific number of letters concerning her work to her family and editors. She also kept a great number of her own papers that she arranged to have stored at the Rosenbach Museum and Library. Using the letters and other texts that surround the development of Poems, this chapter will focus on the ways Moore functioned with other authors to complete and publish her text.  Moore’s first book of poetry would not have existed without the unasked assistance of H.D. and Winifred Ellerman (Bryher). Through their editing and arrangement, H.D. and Bryher impacted the way readers interacted with the poems. Moore’s response to the unrequested interference with her work not only demonstrates the way Moore worked with H.D. and Bryher, but also highlights the connections she had with other authors. Moore’s letters demonstrate that she communicated with T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound about her work and the further development of Poems. Through the letters she wrote, Moore leaves a record of how she worked with this small writing community. This chapter will examine the ways that these written discussions impacted Moore’s revisions. This community relied on the postal service of the day to create the collaborative works that we continue to study; the writing communities today have moved to the internet and other technologies to communicate and collaborate.

            For authors searching for an easy to contact collaborative group, technology provides the most user friendly format. My second chapter will look at ways the technological changes affect the current production of fiction texts. Focusing on current author Cory Doctorow, who lives his publishing life online through his website, group blog, and podcasts, I will look at the ways readers have changed his texts from beginning drafts, to publication, and after he has called them finished. By publishing his work online during the process, as well as after he has finished it, Doctorow invites comments from readers concerning the direction his work is taking which places them in a role parallel to an editor. These files then can be searched and compared by scholars to see the development of the work through Doctorow’s publishing even before the publisher’s release. Looking specifically at his newest work Little Brother, I will follow the development of the text through production in May, 2008. Doctorow’s work is also interesting in that he publishes all of his novels and most other work under a less restrictive Creative Commons copyright license which allows readers of his work to make derivative works of their own. These derivative works also get posted to the sites which host his original work unsettling his digital texts even more. Looking at his first novel, Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, along with several of his more popular short stories, “Ownz0red,” “Other People’s Money,” and “Scroogled,” I will explore how this invitation to the reader to translate, incorporate, and create from his stories extends the community of influencers to unknown and anonymous readers and how this affects the authority of Doctorow as the author.

            My third chapter will focus on what the movement of texts to electronic formats and easily accessible forums means for the scholarly discussion about the source of meaning in texts. Allowing readers to have a more direct influence on the development of the text affects the meaning of the text in ways that make it difficult to place in context. Because the anonymous readers of online community pages have nearly impossible contexts to trace, what they say is as close as we get to authorless comments. Understanding the context of the comment thread and the historical context are the best that scholars get for authorial context. Yet this authorless comment potentially shifts the meaning of a text in production more than the traceable comments of the editor. As scholars begin to focus on the texts of authors who work in this unknowable fog of internet forums and comments, the question becomes which comment(s) affected the development of the text. The decision about the importance of the context of the comment author rests with these scholars, and the final chapter will offer some thoughts on how editors might handle the online communities in discussing the context of the text.

            As technology becomes more integral to the way we function, it becomes even more important for scholars to look ahead and see how it affects the development of texts. While research about technology primarily focuses on the ways moving texts from paper manuscripts to digital, the affect of readers on texts is an important aspect that has only recently begun to surface. The shift of small, fairly well known communities to the larger, anonymous online communities affect texts in ways that need more study. Tracing the authorial need for community in the development and production of texts from the first part of the twentieth century through the beginnings of the twenty-first century will demonstrate the areas that should be watched.

 

Rock and Water (part 2)

So here is the second part. I’ve already started on another section. Who knows – it might grow up to be a real story….

After a fall through something that might have constituted a Muse video, Leau and Felsen found themselves on rather squishy ground. Taking a moment to check that they were each themselves and in one proper piece, Leau stood up and brushed some of the flotsam from their journey off her jeans. Looking around where they had landed, Leau and Felsen immediately saw that this world wasn’t too different from their own on the surface. Sure the ground resembled the safety coverings on new elementary school playgrounds, both in feel and maroon-brown color, but other than that they could have been in nearly any park at home. The air was apparently close enough that they didn’t have any problems breathing, and the environment generally resembled home. Felsen looked at Leau and began to think that maybe he’d gone crazy. There wasn’t anything in his experience that prepared him for this squishy grounded insane dream world reached through a wave. Particularly the large creature he could see approaching them over her shoulder. Shaking his head he asked, “Where are we? How did we get here? What’s that large creature?”
Leau had known that these were the types of questions she’d be facing for the first part of their trek, and that knowledge partially formed her lingering dread for the adventure she’d been secretly hoping would happen her entire life. She had already been formulating answers to his first two questions as he opened his mouth, so it took Leau a few moments to realize that Felsen had asked a question she wasn’t prepared for. Swallowing her first responses, Leau spun on her heel to face whatever was coming up on them. She swallowed again to contain the fear.
What was quickly approaching looked like a cross between a sun fish, a giant squid, and the Dalek/human hybrid from the new Dr. Who. Very creepy – particularly after a fresh fall through the ocean holding hands with a friend who was simply that. What Leau wanted to do more than anything else in the moment she saw the creature was to run screaming, but she knew that would do nothing to help the situation. So she took a deep breath, and faced the unknown creature with all the poise she could muster.
“What are you?” the squid creature demanded.
“Ummm, I’m Leau and this is Felsen. Where are we?” Leau, for all her reading, entered into this conversation with much trepidation. The creature’s appearance and physique had completely thrown her off and she was unsure just what this new encounter would bring. She could only hope the Felsen would let her take charge and not muck up the whole thing. There was a small part of her that was also worried about whether she’d be able to not muck up the whole thing either.
“What are you doing here if you don’t know where here is? How did you get this far in without talking to anyone? What is this nonsense? You’re coming with me – now.”

Rock and Water (part 1)

So I’m totally enjoying this time. I’ve started writing another story. I have no real idea where this is going. I’m still writing it. Maybe it’ll be long. Maybe it’ll just be long for me. In any event, the first part is done enough for the moment. I’m sure it’ll be revised several times. It’s kinda a fun game.

Leau couldn’t believe that she’d followed Felsen up here. It was true that there was nothing she liked better than water and rocks, but this was more than a little crazy. The water was crashing over the rock, and he wanted her to walk on top of it all? What kind of crazy person had she let lead her here? There was every possibility that they could get washed off. That was all well and good, but you never knew what could happen. What if they got swept off the rock and into some other world? Who knew what kind of crazy things would happen to their lives while they were away. Unless they ended up in a world that ran on a different time from theirs, then it wouldn’t be as bad because they would only be gone for a bit. That could be fun – traveling to different world. What if it was all underwater? That might be a bit difficult to manage, but the great thing about traveling to other worlds was that if they were significantly different from your own something in the traveling process made it so that you could survive. That’s how it always worked in the stories she’d read.
“I wonder what would happen if a wave washed us off… What would we find under the rocks?”
“I dunno. We’d probably get bashed into them and drown. The waves aren’t that big though, so there’s no need to worry about it.”

That was Felsen – practically pessimistic. As they reached the top of the rock and looked over the edge, Leau was beginning to hope (for one of the first times in her life) that nothing fantastic would happen. She’d forgotten that Felsen had never really read fantasy books, and while he’d watched some anime and science fiction, his favorites were always the rational ones and not so much the fantastic. He would have no idea how to fight a dragon, or what to do in the event of a goblin attack, or where the best places to find help would be. If they did get washed off the rock Leau would have to take charge because Felsen would immediately entrap them in the wizard’s plan to take over the kingdom, or the queen’s plot to overthrow the ruling powers. They would be dead in about two seconds if she didn’t take over. And while she didn’t mind taking charge, she didn’t want to have to explain all the conventions of the story they were in the midst of trying to save their lives. It’d just be easier if Felsen already understood how whatever world they found themselves in worked.

But those were all simply stories that Leau had played out in her head, and there was no real way that they would get washed off the rocks and into one of them. She wasn’t calling on the Goblin King, so there wouldn’t be an owl or anything; it would just be like all the other times they’d climbed on the rocks and played along the tidepools.

As the sun set over the ocean, the golden light gleamed off the water’s surface and made Leau squint. The sun was getting ever closer to the golden moment when everything would look like something out of the King Midas myth and even people like Felsen could feel the magic that bubbled under the surface of the world. And as Leau squinted into the sunset, she saw, for the briefest of moments, what she thought was a building. She looked harder and convinced herself that it was a new oil tower and not anything to be worried about. But as Leau looked again, she was unconsciously inching closer to Felsen. If they were about to be transported to another world, she wasn’t going to be too far to reach his hand. If there was one thing that she knew was imperative to their survival in whatever might happen in the next few moments it was that they had to end up in the same place together. Since he wasn’t interested in her, Felsen would never be close enough for Leau to grab his hand to ensure that wherever they went next, they would go there together. And at the moment that a wave she never saw coming swept up high onto the rock, the building resolved and she reached for his hand.
Felsen, however, didn’t have a clue as to what was happening, and so he didn’t reach out for her. He hadn’t been watching the sunset and the liquid gold flow over the surface of the earth. Oblivious to the glorious wonder he was missing, Felsen had been staring down in a tidepool and watching the progress of one of the numerous hermit crabs through its daily gauntlet for food. He’d heard the wave coming and quickly stood up. Felsen had just enough time to see that Leau was captivated by something out in the water and peer out into the sun. He hadn’t noticed Leau’s move closer to him, and didn’t reach out for her because he had no idea that her movement was necessary for them to end up in the next place together. But as Leau felt her body slipping off the rock and into the water that would conduct them to the unknown, she reached out farther and just managed to grab his hand. Once she was certain that they were now going to end up in the same place, Leau began to relax ever so slightly. Even if she’d have to teach him the ways of fantasy, at least she was with someone reliable and smart. He’d learn fast enough and then would be tremendously more fun to travel with.   

Cellophane flowers

So here is (probably the first) part of a story that I’ve written. And while I’m the author, it should be noted that I operate under the view that authors can write pretty much anything and not have it be completely autobiographical, nor something that they completely believe. I also do not work within the framework that authors completely determine the meaning of texts. That said, here is a story that I have written, take it for what you will…

“Cellophane flowers of yellow and green, Towering over your head. Look for the girl with the sun in her eyes, And she’s gone. Lucy…” His mind began to wander away from the words in the radio. It’d been like that for awhile now – jumping from one thing to the next. Whether this jump was out of self-preservation or just the same ADD he’d been suffering from was still up for debate. The song always had reminded him of everything he was drinking to erase, but with the self-destructive bent he’d been on recently, self-preservation didn’t seem like the most likely option. Brains were funny things though so he was left with the glimmer of uncertainty.

And really he’d nearly drunk enough to go through into the lab to begin the erasing process so he could’ve simply left Lucy in the sky to prep himself for this next phase. Memory erasure was still pretty new and he wasn’t entirely convinced he wouldn’t end up in a vegetative state from this brilliant idea. It was rather convenient that part of the process was to get drunk. He tended to feel much braver after a few drinks.Downing the last of his beer, he got up and walked to the back door. The attendant scanned him and, after verifying his blood alcohol level, moved aside so he could enter the lab. After one final bracing breath and quick review of why he couldn’t not do this, Led stepped over the threshold and walked with resolve to the next attendant. And while he was prepped, that same stuttering entered his consciousness. He ignored it, and, as the process began, he surrendered to the inevitable release and embraced the life that waited.

Led wasn’t actually running from anything more specific than a less than noticable life. He’d opted for the premium treatment to have the life he’d known erased and a better one uploaded. It was an easy decision as soon as he’d heard about it. There wasn’t much anything in Led’s life that he couldn’t let go of. There was no family, no friends that would really care if he suddenly didn’t exist, he wasn’t even irreplaceable at work. He was just another mediocrity taking up space in the world. He’d originally thought that suicide would be the best use of his life so that there could be more resources for someone the world would actually give a damn about, but he wasn’t that level of discontent yet. So he figured he’d push the restart button and try life again. If it failed this time, he’d left himself a note in his safe deposit box so that he’d avoid being stuck always trying again and again and be able to end his sad excuse for a life.

When Led had given his two week notice, his manager looked slightly surprised, but didn’t ask any questions. He hadn’t bothered to tell any of the other people he knew; what the point was in explaining his actions to an audience who didn’t care? The company had asked their routine questions to prevent people from dodging the law through the erasure, but once they were satisfied that he was legit, they too stopped caring. Even Led hadn’t really bothered to push himself to answer why he’d decided that the life he’d had wasn’t worth his, or anyone else’s, time.

If pressed, Led might have mumbled something about not doing much with his life and about how, as just another drone, the best thing he could do to advance society was give up his place so that someone with ideas (or a backbone) could thrive and make life better for everyone.  

Very altruistic sounding.

The reality of the situation was not as self-sacrificing (it never is).

What Led was unwilling to face, even for himself and with no one ever knowing, was that Led was tired of being alone.

For as long as Led had been alive, he’d been alone. For reasons he didn’t fully understand, he’d never found anyone to be paired with. He’d seen the few friends he’d had get married, or thought of them in conjunction with other friends, but he’d never experienced that. Even at work he’d never been put on a project with the same person consistently. There would occasionally be groups that he’d work with, but not one person who got to know him better than anyone else. If he’d taken the time to reflect on his life, Led might have thought through why it was that no one was paired with him, and why he’d never invited anyone’s curiosity.

But that was not something that occupied Led’s mind. And so Led had led a life that left him unsatisfied to the point of restarting it through the new erasure process. That was pretty much all there was to Led – a life alone full of non-self-reflection. But as he opened his eyes, rubbed his hand through his sandy-brown hair, and took stock of the room he found himself in, all that had made up his life before was gone. He no longer even had the option of taking stock of why people hadn’t ever felt the need to get to know him because that Led was gone. Sure the safe deposit key was there, along with a very few other personal affects, but the man who had created and cared for them no longer existed. Led was on the brink of a whole new world.

Alice in Wonderland

Cory Doctorow read all of Alice in Wonderland out loud and posted it on his website. He reads so very well and has a fantastic voice for it. And since it’s one of my favorite stories (though I do like Through the Looking Glass slightly better, only because it has Humpty Dumpty) and he’s one of my new favorite authors, I couldn’t help but share. It’s nearly two and a half hours, but definitely enjoyable and worth it.