Reading a Novel, 140 Characters at a Time

With a main character named Esmerelda Van Twinkle, you’d think Matt Stewart wouldn’t have much trouble attracting attention to his new novel, “The French Revolution.”

But rather than, say, holding a release party or kicking off a bookstore tour, he’s releasing snippets of the book, bit by bit and in chronological order, on Twitter. The 140-character limit and abbreviated language used on Twitter may seem contrary to the objectives of literary fiction, but as he writes on his Web site, “July 14 is Bastille Day — the day that kicked off the real French Revolution. It’s the perfect time to do something crazy.”

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This is a section of the AllThingsD Web site featuring posts that have been curated from around the Web: pieces we’ve read, discussions we’ve followed, stuff we like. Five posts are included here each weekday, but only the headline and the first two sentences. We link to the original site for the rest. The section is explicitly labeled, so it’s clear that content comes “from other Web sites.”

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