Let’s start by bitching a little. I heard about “253” from a booktube video. And it’s sort of a miracle I did. A lot of booktube videos now are listicles, with a picture of some dingus making a face while holding a stack of books *backwards* so you can’t read the spines and thus spoil the video. At best, there will be an index, so you can jump around to the spots on the list. At worst, you have to scan through the video to see the books. Because of my interest, there’s a good chance that your list of “10 Experimental Novels you MUST READ” is going to contain something I have read; I likely don’t know who you are or if your opinion is worth listening to, so being able to see if there’s something new to me is of value. But I am assuming that these dippy thumbnails and lists “drive engagement”. And in a sense, if did work, because on some random list, I ran across “253”.
And I’m glad I did. It’s a neat little book, which I had never heard of. Available entirely online, where it was first published, I sprung for a “print remix” as I loathe reading anything longer than a shortish article on a computer screen. 253 tells the story of, er, 253 individuals on a London subway train. Each person gets a page, with an identical format. Each page is 253 words. The author violates that structure with footnotes, and there are humorous asides after each car of the train.
Surprisingly, the structure does not prevent the book from having a number of plots. A number of people on the train are commuting to the same place, and there’s an obvious point of intersection there. But there are also happenings on the train (a comedy troupe “operating” on it for example) that serve to move things along. In other words, it’s a kind of rare beast, an experimental novel where the experiment serves as a jumping off point rather than a reason d’étre.
It can be a little overly clever (especially the “asides” between each chapter). But mostly, it’s a warm and human book, a reminder that every person we see has a story of some kind. Some complicated, some simple, but all real. I recommend it.
I’m also reading “Summer”, which is the last of Knausgaard’s “seasons quartet”, which are collections of microfiction, short essays, and other things, roughly lumped together in loose categories. I like Knausgaard a lot, but I’ve found these fairly uninvolving. He’s a sharp observer, and a good writer, but these feel more like notes than cohesive works.
And I’m continuing the slow climb that is “Bottoms Dream”. The less I say, the better for now.
The Lithole 
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