CRITICAL FUDGE is a collection of satirical 750-word newspaper columns posted on the worldwide web daily, as they are written, and then published as an ink-and-paper book, by a bricks-and-mortar publisher, sometime later, as literature.
Much of what is written for newspapers is not literature. Much of what is posted on the worldwide web is not literature.
Why would CRITICAL FUDGE be literature?
Because of who the author is, and what his intentions are.
Is it a novel? Is it a memoir? Is it an online journal (OLJ)? Is it a weblog (blog)?
It’s a book-length collection of unpublished, or underpublished columns. Self-published columns. Jakeleg and for-the-nonce. Transitory, ephemeral.
Is it literature?
Too soon to tell. Was Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas literature? A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream?
When did it become literature? As soon as it was published? As soon as it was written? If it didn’t get published, what would it be? Not literature? Anecdotes and ravings? Literature stifled? Literature murdered in utero?
It was published. Not to worry.
I make fun of Cacoëthes Scribendi’s paranoia in the book.
With his track record you’d be paranoid too.