Contemporary novels increasingly mimic social media formats in their very form

Evidence

It is no wonder, then, that so many contemporary novels not only braid themes of self-manifestation via networked technology but also fabricate their form in emulation of these now-unavoidable idioms of expression. We find in twenty-first-century fiction successful works of email epistolarity such as Richard Yates by Tao Lin or e by Matthew Beaumont (followed by a novel-in-SMS, Squared), successful works that mimic ubiquitous online genres like the customer review (Rick Moody’s Hotels of North America) and acclaimed works that stitch together a novel out of fictional Yelp reviews (Gregg Gethard’s Karl G). … And, perhaps most importantly, we find traditional novels that are born digital, structured as twitfic (Jennifer Egan’s Black Box), Instagram posts (Olivia Sudjic’s Sympathy), Facebook shares (Jeff VanderMeer’s Komodo) or autofictions of the stream of all apps (Olivia Laing’s Crudo). — Anna Kornbluh, Immediacy, or The Style of Too Late…, 161

Categorization

• XREF: Useful catalogue of concrete works exemplifying ‘immediacy’ — exactly what the reader needs to identify these features in real works. Jennifer Egan (Goon Squad) is in her library.