So I think I might as well make this new book a novel. I mean, Jack Kerouac didn’t write “memoirs,” nor did Burroughs or Ginsberg. They wrote transreal novels and poems! Some possible themes…

* A state becomes a sunken, glowing hole in the Earth, permanently lost.

* A character has a lasting relationship with an intelligent, humanlike being that he meets in a UFO.

* How it feels from the inside carry out fictional fabulation.

*The meaninglessness/meaningfulness of life, or reality/unreality of death.

As I mentioned before, I’m seeing the title for his novel as Nested Scrolls . I like the phrase because it describes the chaotic, self-organizing, artificially alive artificial life simulations that I love. And “scroll” is good, as it refers to a document or even a sacred text, and if the scrolls are “nested,” that’s fractal and self-referential and heavy.

I think I can get literal with the title, and have the book in the form of a memoir that an aging man is trying to write, and he begins finding extra stuff in the document. Maybe he can somehow zoom in—it’s an electronic document—and he sees stuff that he doesn’t remember writing. And he goes into time-travel flashbacks. And maybe some characters from the past show up. Nested Scrolls.

I have an unreliable narrator named Jim Oster, and a woman (maybe she’s a woman) that he lives with, Anne Wowesse. I like that name better than Weena Wesson; it’s an anagram with a wow.

Usually I put together a fairly thorough outline of a novel before I begin writing the book itself. But maybe this time I could do less of an upfront outline than usual. I have this urge to just dig in and get going. Later I could still do some outlining in any case, especially if I get stuck. And it’s not like the outline is such gospel anyway, I usually end up revising it a dozen or so times during the course of the book. But just for now, let’s try writing an opening scene.

The book starts with Jim Oster reminiscing about his life with Anne Wowesse.

Twenty years ago, I had a few days of publicity for appearing in an online sex video. My partner, Anne Wowesse, was rumored to be a saucer alien. Our video link was everywhere: “New UFO You!” But then the public’s fickle attention moved on.

I do feel it’s possible that Anne is non-human—this is something I periodically think about, as I still live with her. In certain moods, I can visualize her body as a tissue-culture grown from tweaked cow liver cells, and her mind as a holographically implanted alien engram.

Not that just anyone would notice this, whether by talking to her or by having sex with her—which is, I might add, not especially difficult. Live and let live.

Our Surf City neighbors regard Anne and me us as unsavory or even beneath contempt. But I’m dreaming of restoring us to the level of fame that we deserve.

What’s going to make the difference is the “scroll nesting” technique that Anne recently taught me.

Jim Oster wants to write his autobio, well not write exactly, he wants to make a kind of electronic version of his autobio, a pattern of nested scrolls that’s based on what he says or types. The scroll nester isn’t a computer-science kind of thing, it’s more like a cell phone earpiece that you talk to a lot. Jim himself isn’t a techie. For much of his career he worked as an assistant for a guy installing wooden screen doors.

What’s gonna happen with the scroll nester is that Jim Oster stares into the display and gets hypnotized and flashes back into the past.

This entry was posted on Friday, August 1st, 2008 at 4:03 pm and is filed under Rudy's Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.