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
About the Author :
David Thomas Henry Wright is an author, poet, digital artist, and academic. He has been recognised by the QLA Digital Literature Prize, the Robert Coover Award, and the Carmel Bird Digital Literary Award. He has been awarded multiple research/arts grants and published in various journals. He has a PhD (Comparative Literature) from Murdoch and a master’s (Creative Writing) from The University of Edinburgh and has been a lecturer at Tsinghua University. He is co-editor of The Digital Review and Associate Professor at Nagoya University. Now he is working at the University of Bergen.
