INTRODUCING OUR FIRST VIDEO
May 10, 2008
Writer, actor, and storyteller Katherine Wessling TELLS the issue's story, ushering in the age of VideoRightDown, available also on YouTube. See "I Did Save the Guy's Life."
A CROSSWORD PUZZLE BY BROOKS REEVES
April 20, 2008
Now this is the kind of submission we love to receive: something we never even dreamed of. Brooks Reeves's "The American Man, The Tourist, and Claire" is not just a crossword puzzle but a wonderful, funny story.
A STORY BY HARRY MATHEWS
April 6, 2008
Imagine our delight, dear visitors, when we received a submission from the great Harry Mathews, member of the Oulipo, inventor of the Mathews's Algorithm, author of Tlooth, of Cigarettes, of My Life in CIA: A Chronical of 1973, etc. We were so delighted by this contribution--"Observations of a Crab"--that we decided to redesign the entire site, make it simpler, easier to use. And voilà. We also promise, from now on, to add at least one new work every week.
NEW WORK ADDED
February 22, 2008
Fugue: a game by the great Interactive Fiction author Emily Short
Lee Berman, Author of "The Three Bells": a critique of yours truly by Israeli journalist Maya Nestelbaum
Side Chicks: an illustration by Israeli artist Zehavit Carmel
DISCOVERED BY THE FRENCH
February 18, 2008
Fabula
Edith CL
Axel Randers
THE BEGINNING
February 14, 2008
Here it is at last: the first installment of UpRightDown, showcasing works of fiction, drama, poetry, animation, and visual art--all based on the same plot, all telling the same story. Why? When? Who? How? What? URD is not an arts magazine, strictly speaking. URD is a game, a game of style, a game of form, a storytelling game. We insist on the word game because if URD isn't playful, if it isn't fun, it's nothing at all. But we could just as well use the word exercise. We got the idea (we stole the idea) from a book by Raymond Queneau called Exercises in Style, in which a single (and rather trivial) anecdote is cast in nine-nine different forms: as a sonnet, as a drama, as a letter, as a fable, as a book review, as a dream….
A dream it is. This could go on forever, we say. The possibilities are endless, we insist. Think of all the shapes our plot, or any plot, could be twisted into: a limerick, a haiku, an epic poem, a mathematical proof, a vampire movie, a puppet show, a postmodernist academic paper, a tabloid article, a gossip column, a comic strip for crying out loud, a song, a an opera, a symphony, an oil painting, a multimedia installation, a special edition of Trivial Pursuit or Monopoly, a burp (of course it would take an utter genius to convey the entire plot in a single burp, or even in a series of burps, but the possibility, we'll insist, exists), a fashion show, a children's book, a child's homework assignment (teachers, please assign this exercise to your students), a standup routine, a hand shadow show, and a thousand other forms and figures we haven't even dreamed of.
We are very fortunate to count among our first contributors the French literary magician Paul Fournel, who began his career as a slave of Raymond Queneau and his cronies and is now the president of OuLiPo. We have also recruited a good bunch of young talent. Nick Montfort, author of 2002: A Palindrome Story, recast the plot as a palindromic poem. And we got five writers--one for every vowel--to recast the plot as a univocalism, i.e., to write the story using only one vowel-letter. It was tougher getting artists in other media to participate, but we managed to get a few, and more are on their way.
Stay tuned.
