Here’s the synopsis:

Everything can turn on the spin of the wheel… Prokofiev’s opera is packed with action as we follow the collapse of hope through the addictive power of gambling. There is an irresistible force that drives a Russian General to gamble with an inheritance he has not yet received, and push his daughter’s young tutor to risk his love on a turn at roulette. This new production of The Gambler is also the first ever staging of it by The Royal Opera. Making this an even more exciting event is the partnership of Richard Jones as director – his insightful and unusual interpretations are acclaimed worldwide – and Antonio Pappano, Music Director of The Royal Opera, as conductor.

To buy the ticket, I had to register online with the Royal Opera House. It’s the first time I’ve ever encountered an online form where the list of title options extends beyond Mr, Mrs, Ms, Other to include things like Baroness, Count, Dame, Lord, Sir…

Hmm. I wonder where these accusations of opera being the preserve of the elite come from?

(Their verdict: “Après L’Ame détournée, accrochée à ses bases classiques, la plume légère de Morris réussit son décollage vers une intrigue plus personnelle, grâce à un carburant mêlant ironie et références ludiques au roman russe.”)

Ah well, nice to get some coverage so far from home. Which reminds me, we spotted copies of Le Temps de la Vengeance in Geneva airport bookshop on the way back from our half term break. And I didn’t even have to go looking too hard for them!

Hey, it’s a book!

And here it is with its siblings:

Most people are talking about e-book readers such as kindle as if they are recent developments, but actually the idea has been around since the early nineteenth century. An early (magical) prototype features in Hoffmann’s story The Choosing of The Bride (from Tales of Hoffmann). At the end of that tale, Albertine’s disappointed suitors are compensated with a series of magical consolations. Chancellery Private Secretary Tusmann receives “a little book bound in parchment which when he opened it proved to contain nothing but blank pages’. The secretary despairs, thinking he has drawn a worthless bundle of paper. The mysterious goldsmith tells him he is mistaken:

“No treasure could profit you more than that which you have found. Do me the favour of putting the book into your pocket. Now think of a book you would at this moment like to be carrying with you.”

“O God,” said the secretary, “in a thoughtless and unchristian way I threw Thomasius’s Short Introduction to Politic Policy into the pond!”

“Reach into your pocket, take out the book,” cried the goldsmith. Tusmann did as he was bid, and behold! – the book was none other than Thomasius’s.

At the goldsmith’s further bidding, the secretary places the book back in his pocket and thinks of another title. When he takes the magical book out again, it has transformed into the book he just thought of (Johannes Beer’s Musical War, or Description of the Pitched Battle between the Two Heroines, Composition and Harmony, and how They Took the Field against One Another, Skirmished and after a Bloody Contest were at last Reconciled.)

So delighted is he with his magical book (or kindle) that he completely forgets about Albertine and throws himself into an armchair, repeatedly putting the book into his pocket and pulling it out, his face transformed by joy. For, from now on, whenever he takes it out, it will become whatever work he desires to read.

Yes, Hoffmann certainly saw the Kindle coming, alright.

I don’t seriously think anyone will have followed the twitterisation all the way through. As a communication channel, twitter simply doesn’t suit the transmission of an extended text. Not only is the story broken up, but if you come into it late, you have the problem that everything that’s already been published is in reverse order. Not very satisfying to the reader.

All of which, of course, begs the question, why I bothered publishing my book in this way in the first place, as I promise you I was well aware of these flaws before I began the experiment.

Each tweet would necessarily be seen out of context, which would deny it much of its meaning. Or rather, the context it would be seen in was not that of the story – of all my previous tweets – but of all the random tweets published by everyone else any given ‘follower’ was following at the same time. My tweets about Porfiry’s investigations in 19th century St Petersburg might well be sandwiched between Stephen Fry’s latest dispatch from Luvviedom or a daily twittascope (horoscope on twitter).

So twitterisation changed the text from a continuous story to a series of isolated fragments. I found that interesting. My hope was that a reader, or follower, would too; that torn from their original context, these fragments would take on a mysterious and intriguing charge. That even if they didn’t contain the full meaning that the sentence would have had in its original context, nevertheless they would hint at some meaning, some other story, that perhaps the reader was compelled to supply themselves.

Take a tweet like:

“‘But I can’t believe it’s him,’ said Porfiry. ‘I’ve looked into his eyes. They were not the eyes of a murderer.’”

Viewed out of context, by a reader coming fresh to the twitterisation for example, it’s impossible to know who the subject of Porfiry’s speech is. Even someone who has been following the tweets on and off (the most I could possibly hope for) would be hard pressed to remember. But if you don’t worry about that, and allow yourself instead to respond to the suggestiveness of the tweet, then I think you begin to enjoy it in the way I intended. The tweet invites you to supply your own him with the eyes of a murderer. To start creating your own story, in other words.

Without doubt, some tweets worked better than others. Personally, I prefer the ones that were most oblique and therefore enigmatic:

They shivered with grim excitement in threadbare coats.

Or:

For an instant, he wanted to drag her out of the carriage and manhandle her over to where he knew the dead man lay.

And, of course, I liked the gory ones, all the more disturbing (or so I hoped) because they had no context:

Inevitably, his gaze went first to the head, which had exploded like a trampled fruit.

In the process of twitterising, I have become reacquainted with my own book – the first in my series of Porfiry Petrovich novels – which was useful to me as I wrote the third in the series and began work on the fourth. I think I’ve learnt a lot about writing. I’ve been made to reassess my own prose, which has forced me to think about what works – and what doesn’t – in my writing. I think my writing has changed as a result.

I have now reached the point in the story where the identity of the murderer is about to be revealed. And I am wondering whether this is a good thing to do. I don’t want to cheat people who have been following the tweets, but as I say, I seriously doubt that anyone has faithfully followed the whole story from beginning to near-end, tweet by tweet. But I do have enormous reservations about putting the ending out there. It is after all a spoiler, which means it would spoil the enjoyment for anyone who might want to read the book as a book.

So I don’t know. I’m thinking about it. There will be a temporary break in transmission while I decide what to do. Any views will be gratefully received.