Excerpts from Viimeiset Viestit
(The Last Messages)

A text message-based novel by Hannu Luntiala




To: Rokka
Sent: 23:01:15
When one knows, no one knows, when two know, everyone knows. Old African saying. You could call this project Final Countdown

From: Rokka
Sent: 23:22:27
Very cryptic message. So the countdown has begun? Really? From ten to one?

To: Rokka
Sent: 23:33:41
Took a towel and a robe with me from the hotel in Stockholm. Very serviceable ones, too. Strange that my conscience isn't bothering me. I'm getting hardened.

From: Rokka
Sent: 23:40:11
 I'm satisfied with the occasional soap or shampoo. You're obviously ahead of me on this. Which doesn't exactly upset me much.

To: Rokka
Sent: 23:51:33
There's a little criminal in all of us. It's purely a matter of chance whether he keeps himself hidden or wants to come out.



Translated by Lola Rogers.
To read more, visit Rogers's blog for an extended excerpt.

(Copyright Tammi, 2007)

In Finland, narrative finds a new medium



Last year, Finnish author Hannu Luntiala made a concise mark on literary history with "Last Messages," a novel based completely on SMS text messages. Plot twists and emotional expressions unfold through the mobile dispatches of a former tech firm executive journeying through Europe and India. The narrative is a cascade of hundreds of terse, often cryptic exchanges between characters, each limited to 160 letters or less.

In an interview with Newsday, Luntiala likened SMS storytelling to a "hide and seek" game, each line hinting at subsurface meanings. "The technique also forces the readers to use their imagination," he said, "to try to find out what exists between the text messages--or is there something you don't want or dare to say?"

Lola Rogers is currently working on an English translation of the work (see the sidebar for a some snippets). The central challenge, she said, is distilling a rich story into its barest elements. As she had to both fit words in the tight space limit and at the same time capture the novelist's original meaning, the process revealed nuances in English and Finnish, as well as emerging sophistication in the digital lingua franca of SMS.

Making each passage as concise and efficient as possible made her "more aware of what we can leave out when we speak or write in English," she said. She noted the "tentative but firm control that Luntiala maintains over the narrative, with just these thin strands of text holding the web of the story together. In other words, the form of this novel demands that every word count."

Luntiala believes educators have a "new duty" in teaching formal literature comprehensively in an SMS world. Still, he added, "the language reflects the development of the society, and new technological inventions are part of this. So unfortunately you can not stop it."


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