Over the course of 2020, Brad Phillips and Gideon Jacobs are writing a 12-chapter "serial novella" for Autre. It will be written Exquisite Corpse style — they will alternate who writes each month's chapter, and won’t have access to the previous chapter until it has been published. Brad and Gideon have not discussed plot, structure, format, themes, characters, etc, and promise not to do so even once the project is underway. The idea is to react to each other's work, and hope the final Frankensteinian product is something that deserves to exist. If the authors like what they've made when it's done, the editors might publish it as a "zine." Installments will go up on the 15th of every month. Click here to read Chapter 1: G and B.
text by Gideon Jacobs (and Brad Phillips)
To: Brad and Gideon
From: The Editors
Dear Brad and Gideon,
To start, we want to thank you for writing your “exquisite corpse serial novella” with us. When you mentioned the concept back in winter, we were immediately intrigued. It sounded like the perfect sandbox for writers like you two to play in, a recipe for something unusual and surprising. Over these months, it’s been fun to watch you ping-pong the novella back and forth, unaware of the other’s intentions and ideas, fingers crossed that it will result in something cohesive and whole. We’ve laughed out loud at some point while reading every single chapter.
All that said, we’re emailing today just to express a few concerns. The first is that we’re a little worried that in December, the final chapter will be published, and the cohesiveness and wholeness we were all hoping for might be, well, lacking. We’ve spent the last few days reviewing the story as it’s been written so far, and to be honest, there’s just not much of a story to speak of. The chapters are individually compelling, but there’s no real traceable connective tissue or logic between the chapters. Sure, sometimes a character will appear more than once, but often these appearances are more confusing than they are orienting, and the reader is left a little out to sea.
I know the point of this experiment was for you two to not have a plan, to not communicate, but after much discussion, we’ve come to the conclusion that it would do the project a tragic disservice if, when it comes to an end, it has the feeling of an experiment that failed. We’re not recommending that you guys tie a neat little bow around the narrative—that would also do the project a disservice. There doesn’t need to be a linear plot. There doesn’t need to be a plot at all. What there needs to be, in our opinion, is some small payoff for those who have been following along, some kind of ending that makes the project feel justified and complete.
Maybe the issue here is more philosophical than it is editorial. Do we owe the reader anything? Is it our obligation to reward them for their time or our prerogative to do so? Is the goal of this project to make something “good?” It seems that you two have been more focused on process than product, which is, in a way, exactly what you should have been doing—we never like writing that feels like a means to an end. But, that said, it’s our job to focus on product, our job to make sure the result of your guys’ process is something we’re all proud to have worked on.
OK, so now, with the business out of the way, our second concern is of a more personal nature. Basically, we just wanted to check in about your respective mental states. While both of you are known for focusing on dark themes, sadness, and suffering, often writing about life and death with a kind of nihilistic flippancy, there has been kind of a lot of mention of suicide in several of the chapters. Suicide is a fascinating subject, totally fair game, and we wouldn’t be bringing it up at all if you hadn’t started referring to this project as a “groundbreaking innovation for the murder-suey industry.” That line caught our attention, had us worried that you two might, in fact, have had a plan for how this thing ends after all, just not the sort of plan we had in mind.
If this novella has, in any way, become a negative force on your mental health, we would like to pull the plug immediately, and make sure you both have the psychological support you need. Frankly, the idea that this project may be even vaguely serving as a container for suicidal ideation or stoking depressive flames makes us sick to our stomach. Your wellness comes first; the work comes second. We mean it, and to be very clear, we’re not just covering our moral and legal asses in case you guys aren’t kidding about the “murder suey.” We care about you both and are legitimately concerned.
So, in short, please tell us how you are. We would greatly appreciate it if both of you could write us back letting us know if you’re OK, and if you are, then we’d also appreciate it if you sent over a few ideas as to how we might end this project in a way that renders it a creatively fulfilling success.
Looking forward to hearing from you. The Editors
For more from Gideon Jacobs, follow @GideonsByeBull on Instagram.