Mobile phone novel: genre and generic specificity

Mobile phone novel is a literary form that arose in the beginning of 2000s in Japan and soon became widespread in other East Asian countries as well as in the USA and the Western Europe. Specificity of the works relating to this genre is characterized by a nonconventional way of their distribution: book fragments are sent sequentially to subscribers by means of SMS during several weeks or months. The article’s purpose is to determine and describe the key genre-forming characteristics of a mobile phone novel. Research material was, mainly, English language mobile phone novels published on the «Text Novel» publishing platform, including the classical American «mobile literature» work «Secondhand Memories» by the writer working under the pseudonym Takatsu. Also the key features of the first mobile phone novel «Deep Love» by the Japanese writer Yoshi are considered. Similarly to a «stream of consciousness» novel, a mobile phone novel refuses many fundamental epic narration principles. As a rule, it is not voluminous and consists of a series of fragments no larger than 200 words that are relatively independent in their plots and compositions. Connected and consecutive development of the plot, inclusion of detailed descriptions and characteristics of the characters are uncharacteristic of the works of this type. Their method is a «point», extremely laconic and succinct fixing of events and experiences that makes a mobile phone novel closer to lyrics and lyro-epics. The article demonstrates that deviation from traditional novelistic approaches to description of an event and a character helps ironically a mobile phone novel to return to the epic tradition origins. This becomes possible due to several factors. First, a mobile phone novel establishes an equilibrium correlation between the internal narration time and the subjective perception time: compulsory intervals between reading sessions make the reader move deep into an event, instead of linear moving along the event mainline. Second, an unusual way of delivery of the «mobile literature» works to subscribers destroys a feeling of conventionality and allows creating an illusion of personal contact between the reader and the storyteller; the latter is perceived not actually as a literary instance, but rather as a real SMS conversation partner. Third, a special cyclic pulse structure of the text returns us to the ancient cyclic models of perception and thinking. A literary potential of this innovative narration model is doubtless. But, unfortunately, focus on the general reader’s needs makes a mobile phone novel not the most fertile field for fruitful literary experiments. Thus, a mobile phone novel is an interesting experience of the genre «rejuvenation». At the cost of refusal of the fundamental generic and type attributes that are intrinsic to a classical novel, it aspires to waken an archaic epos’ narrative energy dozing in the novelistic genre and, at the same time, to fill it with an alive existential content. Appearance of the mobile phone novel genre is caused by the mainline culture development tendencies in the end of 20th and the beginning of 21st centuries, in particular by the aspiration to overcome a «death of the subject» situation established by poststructuralism by forming a polysubject textual dialogue space that is alternative to the traditional belletristic literature.