Cell me a story

It could all have been so different. Just think: every thorny literary problem solved by modern technology.

It could all have been so different. Just think: every thorny literary problem solved by modern technology. Who hasn8217;t read Wuthering Heights and gnashed her teeth at poor Cathy8217;s fate, yoked to dreary Edgar Linton when we all know she yearns to swoon into hunky Heathcliff8217;s arms? But alas, unaware that her beloved is listening, she appears to refuse him in no uncertain terms: 8220;It would degrade me to marry Heathcliff now.8221; And so Heathcliff lopes away into the storm-wracked night without hearing the rest of her speech 8220;He shall never know how I love him8221;, and readers are denied the swoony bliss of true romance. So admit: You8217;ve thought it. I8217;ve thought it. We8217;ve all thought it. If only they8217;d had cellphones!

Maybe things would have been easier for Emily Bronteuml; too. You can see her, can8217;t you, mischievously texting her older sister across the garden at Haworth; scholars guess that, many years after Emily8217;s tragic early death, her sister Charlotte was raising a literary memorial in the text-messaging lingo that plays so crucial a role in Jane Eyre 8220;Hlp! Im in the attc!8221;.

Lately I8217;ve come around to the realisation that cellphones, while they might have their uses in what we are pleased to call 8220;real life8221; though I8217;m still to come to a final verdict on that, are nothing but an albatross around the neck of any writer who wants to tell a story.

Think of all the stories that hinge on the simple fact that X has no idea where Y is and no way of finding out. Take the Odyssey. With cellphones, it becomes an epic version of 8220;Honey, I8217;m on the train; is there anything you need from the store?8221; Reception8217;s a bit dodgy between Scylla and Charybdis, I bet, and things might get noisy sometimes 8220;Sorry! That8217;s just the Sirens!8221;, but you8217;d have your hero home before tea and save everyone a passel of trouble.

Think about it. No Robinson Crusoe. No Lord of the Flies. The atmosphere on that train out of Moscow would have been rather different if Mrs. Karenina had had a Nokia tucked into her coat. Would she have thrown herself under a train if Vronsky had been able to reach her on her cell? Would Anna Karenina be 800 pages long?

Now, it must be said that landlines and fiction have happily coexisted for some years, but8212;quite literally8212;you know where you are with a landline. All a character had to do to be out of range was leave the house.

These days, if you want a character to be out of reach without depositing him in the past, you have to make some effort to explain why he should be so cut off, poor lamb. You can make excuses. You can conjure a storm to blow down local cellphone towers. You can argue for a dead battery or spill a cup of coffee on the wretched thing.

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I8217;m with Stephen King, who chose the perfect vehicle for destruction in Cell, in which the wicked devices have the power to turn their hapless users into vengeful zombies. That8217;s the right role for a cellphone in a book. Our clever hero is wise enough to keep his switched off, but there aren8217;t many like him. King calls them 8220;normies8221;. King8217;s genius has always been to get to the heart of what8217;s really bothering us and demonstrate that it8217;s much, much worse than we feared. Cell is a vindication for those of us who long to be out of range, and keep our literary characters there as well. Sorry! You8217;re breaking up! Erica Wagner8217;s nearly cellphone-free novel Seizure will be published next month.

Erica Wagner