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In Praise of Short Attention Spans

Issue One November 2019

In This issue

This is the debut drop of The Lit, exploring publishing and storytelling in all its forms. Issue One finds us in praise of short attention spans. Of poems that won’t sit still. Of single clause stories daubed on walls. Of hooks that get you in an instant. We peer through the cracks in our concentration to explore the post-digital landscape. Time is tight. Attention’s expensive. Are you with us?

Credits

  • Clare Howdle
     Editor
  • Anna Kiernan
    Publisher
  • Phyllida Bluemel
     Assistant Editor and Writer
  • David Devanny
     Writer
  • Samuel Crosby
     Writer
  • Harry Webster
     Podcast producer
  • Zander Grinfeld
     Creative Direction
  • Naomi K
     Visual Artist

Say What? | “Social media makes me depressed” – authors open up about digital.

From Cathy Rentzenbrink to Kit de Waal, a host of leading writers and journalists spoke out about how digital makes them feel – as readers, writers and humans trying to survive in this ridiculous world we live in.

Fighting Form | Does length really matter?

Is it time to give up on the novel? Are the days of 1,000 page tomes numbered? Clare Howdle explores whether short fiction is perfectly fashioned for today’s fast-paced landscape or if our fixation with form is too fractious by far...

Too Long; Didn't Read | Wittgenstein, Wikipedia and the chilling potential of algorithmic reductionism.

Why Reader’s Digest was onto something and how AI can pay attention for you. Phyllida Bluemel delves into the dark art of condensing content.

First Class Flash | Stories on a postcard.

Stories told in a moment, to call us to attention and then send our wandering minds on their way. Take a stolen minute to read the winning entries of our postcard fiction open call.

Noble Amateurs | Insta poetry and the politics of emotion.

Does an action need to be recorded on a smartphone to exist?

Brevity Bombing | Micro stories to save us from our busy selves.

Profound. Absurd. Perspective-flipping. Micro publishing in unusual places is an antivenom to modern life, jolting those lost in a stupor of busy.

Podcast | Cathy Rentzenbrink on attention spans.

Books journalist and author Cathy Rentzenbrink talks to us about distractions, the benefits of patience and the “sensuous intellectual pleasure” of reading something long. All in just six minutes.

Time to Choose | The Oxford Professor of Poetry in the post-digital age.

In the month that Alice Oswald takes office as the new Oxford Professor of Poetry David Devanny considers the recent history of the position. How relevant is the position today? Why does the position attract controversy? What has been the impact of social media?

Book Review | Bass, Mids, Tops

Joe Muggs’ first book shares a life shaped by subculture and sound. Viewed through an immersive, ethnographic lens, Joe’s pursuit of the sublime through bass forms a visceral account of a collective appetite for breakneck beats.

Poetry Review | Orange Sweatshirt

Like your adjectives a little less Pound and a little more Nabakov? Prefer a Whitman-esque sprawl to your line break rather than a Bukowski-esque punch? David Devanny’s digital-first poem 'Orange Sweatshirt' puts the reader in control, with a piece that is exquisitely crafted and endlessly playable…