Short description:

Using Italo Calvino?s Six Memos for the Next Millennium as structure and methodology, this book conjoins literary studies with creative practice to interrogate, extend/subvert, and then reflect on the aesthetic and structural ambitions of multiple innovative print authors.

Long description:

In 1985, Italo Calvino proposed six values he deemed crucial to literature as it moved into the next millennium: lightness, quickness, ?crystal? exactitude, visibility, multiplicity, and consistency. Using Italo Calvino?s Six Memos for the Next Millennium as structure and methodology, this book conjoins literary studies with creative practice to interrogate, extend/subvert, and then reflect on the aesthetic and structural ambitions of multiple innovative print authors (Italo Calvino, Zadie Smith, William Faulkner, Virginia Woolf, Bernardine Evaristo, Roberto Bolano, Rachel Cusk, Shahriar Mandanipour, W.G. Sebald, Ross Gibson, Han Kang, and J.M. Coetzee) reimagined in new media in order to develop a model for digital literary practice-led research. This work contains four strands that are presented simultaneously. First, this monograph explores the rise of Calvino?s values within the Calvino corpus. Second, this value?s application to a contemporary literary predicament is explored through a digression. Third, conclusions from this interrogation are drawn as they relate to digital literary culture. Finally, the value?s importance is demonstrated through examining/reflecting on contemporary digital literary creative practice ? both the author?s own and works created by contemporary writers/artists who have engaged with the digital postmodern.

Table of Contents:

Introduction

            A Memo on Memos

            A Memo on Millenniums

            A Memo on the Literary

            A Memo on the Digital

            A Memo on Creative Practice

            A Memo on Writers

I

First Memo: Lightness

First Digression: Contemporary Weight

Beyond Maximalism

Creative Practice: WHALEFALL, Taroko Gorge, Most Powerful Words, The Data Souls.

II

Second Memo: Quickness

Second Digression: Lingering Interactivity

Beyond the Digital/Print Nexus

Creative Practice: The Gathering Cloud, Paige & Powe.

III

Third Memo: Exactitude

Third Digression: Relentless Precision

Beyond Precision

Creative Practice: A Dictionary of the Revolution, Little Emperor Syndrome.

IV

Fourth Memo: Visibility

Fourth Digression: Ekphrastic Strategies

Beyond Ekphrastic Despair

Creative Practice: Life After Wartime, novelling, The Buoy, The Boat, The Vine and the Fish, Voices, A Recombinant History of Australian Camels.

V

Fifth Memo: Multiplicity

Fifth Digression: Ethical Associations

Beyond Paranoia

Creative Practice: ?The V[R]erses?: An XR Story Series, The Library of Nonhuman Books, The Perfect Democracy

Conclusion

Beyond the Memos

Beyond the Millennium

Beyond the Literary

Beyond the Digital

Beyond Creative Practice

Beyond Writers

Appendices

Appendix A: Description of Most Powerful Words

Appendix B: Description of The Data Souls

Appendix C: Quotations opening A Condensed History of Australian Camels

Appendix D: Quotations opening The Perfect Democracy