{ New Literary Magazine presents unpublished literary remixes. We are happy to present our first author Nigel Tomm and his ‘One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest Remix’ }

Can I touch you? Yes? No. She touches me. Sometimes. Somewhere. I was searching for you. You know, don’t you? I ask. Too many questions. Sometimes. She can’t answer. I can’t. She says. In the middle of the conversation. I’m reading. Searching. For her lips. In words. Words are repeating. Words. And she says. Maybe. Maybe yes. Maybe. But no. I say. You say. No! Too many times. One time is going backwards. I scream. You are screaming. Now. Everything is over. And it is. For one moment. You find. Your moment. Moments stop. In two beginnings. I ask you. About silence. Some part of silence stops. It stops by you. You say. Chief says five words. McMurphy says. It’s over. But it isn’t. I believe. Sometimes it doesn’t matter. You repeat. My words. They are disappearing. Slowly. Very slowly. I take my hands. In your mouth. It looks inviting. It can’t be. You say. Stop it, Billy! He’s crying. Why? I ask. His face. It’s cold. Cold words are repeating silence. Between lost sounds. We are passing. Into gaps. Where? Asks McMurphy. He asks me. My face is full of water. I can feel it. But can’t escape. It. And it escapes. With stolen feelings. I’m feeling emptiness. Now. Chief shows us a painting. It’s a portrait. He says. It’s me. And everybody’s looking. Laughing. Sometimes. It’s hard. To be alone and don’t feel loneliness. Inside happy mirrors. They tell you stories. You tell them truth. Who is it? Asks McMurphy. It’s me. I answer. One too many times. He answers. To my nonexistent question. And disappears. Just disappears. In the broken sound. Of broken language. I’m repeating. His moves. His motives. Or strongly motivated madness. Before he says goodbye. I cannot cross. My thoughts. With jaded language. In tomorrow’s forms. You have a shape. But it’s already broken. Got it? Chief slowly picks one word. He says. Yes. I’m happy. For him. No. I’m not so happy for myself. Is it a problem? I don’t think so. Says… Who said that? Who? I’m asking questions. But there are no answers. For today. Games are over. But they aren’t. They just can’t reach. One end. In the beginning. We are very simple. In the end. I was looking for you. I say it. While you smile.

“We are remixing culture, or culture is remixing us?” once asked Nigel Tomm, today’s leading artist/writer in literary remixing. What do you think?

I think remix culture can be best described by the following example: we have Shakespeare’s Hamlet, we have Nigel Tomm’s Shakespeare’s Hamlet Remixed and we have a visual remix of  Nigel Tomm’s Shakespeare’s Hamlet Remixed in Youtube. Cool, isn’t it?

“We now inhabit a ‘remix culture’, a culture which is dominated by amateur creators – creators who are no longer willing to be passive recipients of content,” recently wrote Australian lawyers from the Queensland University of Technology in their report ‘Mashups, Remixes and Copyright Law’.

I would like to end the first New Literary Magazine’s issue, which was entirely devoted to one of the most talented today’s writers Nigel Tomm, with an explicit list of Tomm’s new literature books:

Shakespeare’s Sonnets Remixed (2006)

Shakespeare’s Hamlet Remixed (2006)

Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet Remixed (2007)

Nanodrama Not Nanofiction (2007)

Selected Works of Nigel Tomm (2006/2007)… (2007)

The Blah Story, Volume 1 (2007)

The Blah Story, Volume 2 (2007)

The Blah Story, Volume 3 (2007)

The Blah Story, Volume 4 (2007)

You can find them here.

To give you a feeling of the world’s longest sentence I gonna copy/paste an excerpt (the first page of 732) from Nigel Tomm’s book The Blah Story, Volume 4, which contains the second longest sentence ever (read more..):

In a blah she was blah blah blah down a blah between blah roses blah blah blah, her blah blah hair blah blah gently the blah blah trees, most blah blah blah, she thought, as blah blah he blah the nice blah blah she blah felt with blah that blah should blah blah blah have blah such blah and blah blah blah enjoyment, the blah had both blah and blah blah the blah things in her blah blah occurred to blah that he blah taken this blah blah blah several blah blah before blah blah she always blah to blah from blah blah blah at a blah of her blah blah or a blah of her blah blah blah her blah blah told to blah, which blah within blah blah like a blah blah blah and blah as a blah blah from blah, suddenly blah blah a blah to blah her blah as they found a blah in blah of the blah, blah blah silently to the blah, they waited blah blah blah while he blah blah a blah toward the red blah blah, she blah him blah blah blah among blah blah things, very blah blah and with a blah blah blah that blah a real blah blah, blah him not at blah blah she blah blah sorry for all blah blah and blah him carefully one blah because blah was so blah, a blah of a blah blah blah which blah a blah and blah illusion blah blah blah being blah by blah blah blah, she was blah blah she had blah him, for blah hour when his blah fell blah blah blah at blah a blah of a blah blah blah through his blah, the blah rang, her blah blah eyes blah blah along the blah blah blah his blah blah lips blah the pattern of a blah of blah on the blah as she blah blah blah and blah him with a blah, blah blah just as his blah blah blah about her, they blah a blah week for blah, and blah, having blah no blah blah blah of any blah, blah blah blah up his blah blah blah, blah was not blah blah was expected blah in one week, blah left blah number, the sense of the blah blah of life, never week in blah, had blah blah blah almost to blah, at short blah blah some blah blah blah, some blah of blah, would blah her blah blah blah the blah now blah had blah blah down in blah blah upon her as he blah blah those blah blah things faded after blah blah that blah was blah, the blah had both blah and blah blah the blah things in her blah blah occurred to blah that he blah taken this blah blah blah several blah blah before blah blah she always blah to blah from blah blah blah at a blah of her blah blah or a blah of her blah blah blah her blah blah told to blah, in a blah she was blah blah blah down a blah between blah roses blah blah blah, her blah blah hair blah blah gently the blah blah trees, most blah blah blah, she thought, as blah blah he blah the nice blah blah she blah felt with blah that blah should blah blah blah have blah such blah and blah blah blah enjoyment, which blah within blah blah like a blah blah blah and blah as a blah blah from blah, suddenly blah blah a blah to blah her blah as they found a blah in blah of the blah, blah blah silently to the blah, she blah him blah blah blah among blah blah things, very blah blah and with a blah blah blah that blah a real blah blah, blah him not at blah blah she blah blah…

Longest sentence in English literature/language belongs to writer Nigel Tomm. The sentence contains 2,403,109 words, 15,403,732 characters (with spaces) or 3,248 pages, and it is published in four volumes of Nigel Tomm’s novel ‘The Blah Story’ (i.e., volumes 16, 17, 18 and 19). The sentence ends up with a 3,609,750-letter word which contains all previously known longest words (read more..).

The second longest sentence belongs to Nigel Tomm too. The Blah Story, Volume 4 consists of one ultra long sentence which contains 469,375 words or 2,273,551 characters (with spaces).

What was before Nigel Tomm? “Traditionally, the longest sentence in English literature has been found in James Joyce’s ‘Ulysses’ which contains 4,391 words. However this was surpassed in 2001 by Jonathan Coe’s book ‘The Rotter’s Club’ which contains a sentence 13,955 words long. There is also a Polish novel ‘Gates of Paradise’ written by Jerzy Andrzejewski, and published in 1960, with about 40,000 word sentence. Finally, there is a Czech novel that consists of one long sentence (128 pages long) ‘Dancing Lessons for the Advanced in Age’ by Bohumil Hrabal.”

All the books you can find here.

And finally, we have reached The Blah Story, probably the most taking, schocking and surprising novel. Until now (2007) four volumes of the novel is published. I have heard that Nigel Tomm is planing to publish 29 volumes of The Blah Story (!!!!)

“In The Blah Story Nigel Tomm introduces literary phase-shifting, i.e., allowing nearly identical phrases at slightly differing lengths to repeat and slowly go out of phase with each other. (…) The Blah Story is made persuasively engaging textures from repeated phrases in the novel. All The Blah Story is based mostly in steady pulse, stasis and slow transformation, and often reiteration of phrases or other textual units such as paragraphs, sentences, and words (with over usage of the word blah).”

After introducing and developing literary remix in his three pevious books Shakespeare’s Sonnets Remixed, Shakespeare’s Hamlet Remixed and Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet Remixed, Nigel Tomm publishes new book Nanodrama Not Nanofiction (2007) in which he introduces new literary genre – nanodrama.

 ”Nanodrama is drama characterized by its extreme brevity, as measured by its length in words, nanodramas are between 0 and 19 words long. Despite their briefness, they nonetheless manage to fully convey themes, ideas and conflict. In this book Nigel Tomm presents 119 nanodramas.”

After Shakespeare’s Sonnets Remixed and Shakespeare’s Hamlet Remixed, in 2007, Nigel Tomm publishes Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet Remixed.

“In Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet Remixed, Nigel Tomm extends the limits of traditional understanding of text and grammar, uses his own language constructions and stuffs words with narcotizing meanings, where signification is understood as something which points out a non-existence of pure senses. Love here is more than just love. It is something beautiful, something ugly, it is something which exists beyond characters, events or decorations.”

After Shakespeare’s Sonnets Remixed, in 2006 Nigel Tomm published one of his best works Shakespeare’s Hamlet Remixed. 

“This is not a drama in the traditional sense. This is a drama that takes place between words and language itself, in which Nigel Tomm deconstructs Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Hamlet here is a mere word, lost in its own and externally imposed meanings that create the action, which starts, continues, and ends in an abstract scene representing life and everything beyond it is reflected in mirrors, green colour, and endless dialogues that are not present, but are substituted by incessant speaking or just text and words, which create and undo themselves in the eyes of the reader.”

Perhaps Shakespeare’s Sonnets Remixed by Nigel Tomm was the first published literary remix. I think from this book the phenomenon of literary remixing has started.

“In that book Nigel Tomm took the original text of Shakespeare’s Sonnets and deconstructed them into modern language and significance, beyond physical recognition with the original text.”