At the airport again, so naturally I'm inspired to write a post and have the time to do so.
Today I read an article in the WSJ by Alexandra Alter about a mixed media novel. The article titled Marisha Pessl bends genres and mixes media in her new novel 'Night Film' is about a novel that mixes the conventional written word with photos, audio, illustrations and even short films.
Marisha Pessl's sprawling, 602-page literary thriller, "Night Film," opens like a typical mystery, with a body. Ashley Cordova, a 24-year-old piano prodigy and the daughter of the enigmatic, reclusive horror filmmaker Stanislas Cordova, turns up dead at the bottom of an elevator shaft in New York's Chinatown, apparently from suicide. A washed-up investigative journalist sets out to unravel the mystery of Ashley's death, and gets sucked into the cultish, underground world of fans who reenact Cordova's terrifying films.
What begins as a conventional hard-boiled crime story—a mysterious death, an investigation, a suspect at large—morphs into a twisty, genre-bending tale that alternates between crime, suspense and horror, with a supernatural element (witchcraft).
Although I find the 602-page aspect of the novel a tad daunting, the idea has merit. It's something I wanted since I first started reading on my Kindle. Bully for Miss Pessl for giving it a go.
Ms. Pessl says she was aiming to capture the way contemporary storytelling has become "a 360-degree experience" by releasing the story as layers of narrative through multiple channels, as a novel, an app, and as videos and images on websites like YouTube and Tumblr. "If someone Googles 'Cordova,' they can find tastes of his works," she says. "It adds layers of narrative."
Now I just need to get my brother to provide a reasonable story line where I can add a multimedia aspect. That being said, is it odd that I doubt I'll read it?
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