Cell Phone Novels – A Digital Form of Literature?
Cell Phone Novels – A Digital Form of Literature?

Summary/Abstract: In twenty-first century Japan, cell phones challenge literature by developing a type of fiction written on their tiny screens: Keitai shousetsu. High school girls have begun to write love stories based on their experience and their fantasies, posting them on a novel web site and successfully being published as bestseller paperbacks. Digital devices have enlarged their functions, allowing large texts to be written on, uploaded to or downloaded from the Internet. The impact on the younger generation has been major. Most criticized by the literary world, this type of fiction writing has filled up the bookstores’ shelves. Although it is not literature, teenagers felt encouraged to write and fictionalize their fantasies, temptations and fears, communicating with one another the best way they knew how: through a virtual Internet window. Thus they have created a marked point in the history of high technologies and of artistic creativity.

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