Cheque Book Story
Published by Christy Dena January 6th, 2007 in games, Text Art.I saw this months ago on MetaFilter but forgot to post about it. It is a story written by cheques. ‘Ordeal By Cheque’ by Walter Crue was tracked down in pdf form. I guess a contemporary version would be ‘Ordeal By ATM Receipt’.
Citation on pdf:
Crue, W. (1932 [renewed 1960, 1988]). Ordeal by Cheque. Vanity Fair. Cited in Vacca, R. T., & Vacca, J. L. (1999). Content area reading: Literacy and learning across the curriculum (6th ed.). New York: Longman.
[view academic citations]
Interesting idea. I suppose that narrative by cheque is a special form of epistolary narrative - envelopes only, so to speak (the message content is a number). Transactional literature? It is definitely vector rather than coordinate based - where the message goes, leaving implicit why.
ATM receipts might be a good contemporary version. Also: ebay / Amazon / Paypal transaction lists. Also, “Ordeal by Feedback” - Amazon or other commerce network feedback comments from buyers or sellers doing all the work of narrating, although this might violate the spirit of the transactional narrative form.