There’s something meaty, spicy, and ultimately satisfying about certain Tweeters’ (tweeps’?) tweets. Namely–mine! Oh, I know there are many other powerful tweet-authors out there, but who has the time and patience to follow the rushing stream in which 20 tweets go by in about 3 minutes? I don’t know what people following 10,000 people do… Speed read, I guess! But I know MY stuff… and I think I’ve become one heck-of-a candidate for eventually collecting about a thousand tweets, okay, two thousand tweets at the rate I’m going, that are funny, thought-provoking, entertaining, mind-expanding, etc., and making a book or two out of ’em. In fact, at the rate I’m going (1,400 tweets in about a month!) I could publish 10 books a year of this stuff — I’d be all-a-twitter, in that case, eh?
One good reason, if I do say so myself, why it is readily apparent that the quality of tweets is worthy of being collected into book format, is because the writing is as compressed to fill the tiny space allotted, as possible. If all I’ve got is 140 letters & spaces in which to word my message, you can bet I am going to write it as tightly, yet cogently and attractively, with an eye toward aesthetics of words on the page, how they scan and sound, as I possibly can! There is 10X more thoughtful effort put into the writing of a tweet than in, say, a paragraph of some ordinary article or book manuscript! This mindful condensation allows us to formulate tweets that are in a league with, say, Japanese Haiku.
Take this rather poetic utterance. Neither the Greeks or the Romantics could have done such a thing, much less sent it out to many hundreds of followers with one click of the “Update” button:
A fatal joke, ala Monty Python, written in the Cyrillic alphabet, or Japanese,
wouldn’t make a dent on a citizen of Denver Dallas or Douglas
I hope you’ve seen the Monty Python sketch in which the army has devised a joke which is fatal to everyone who hears or reads it. The joke is used to win the 2nd World War. Maybe that one is a bit too cute… Let’s look at another one in which I’m TRYING to “tell a tale”, make my point, in 140 letters & spaces. That isn’t always easy!
This ‘worldwide’ community we’re all plugged-into on-line reminds me of the Krell,
that mighty race of mental giants, which destroyed itself
Are you familiar with the film I’m speaking of, dated approx. 1956, in which Leslie Nielsen plays a 25-ish space commander? I am trying desperately to make my point in as few words as possible. Do I do it? CAN I do it?
In “Forbidden Planet”, the Krell linked-up mentally to all the other Krell.
But in their sleep, the Id is released, which kills ’em all.
I have to take certain liberties to save space… ’em instead of ‘them’, which only saved me one space, but I desperately needed that one space… This one is far from perfect, I notice I mixed the past and present tenses up a bit… But I think I made my point, but it took two tweets for me to do it!
What do you think? Do tweets have a future in American or world literature? Literature that can be played on I-phones? Imagine that you are reading a new form of — not Japanese — but American poetry! Twitterized, tweeted, re-tweeted, and tweeped by the masses who are now practicing this limited form of writing every day & night!
Best, —-Ed
I was going to send you to my website, but we’re there right now!
