Editor’s note: For a bit of fun, The Berkshire Edge is publishing an eight-chapter serial novel titled ARTIFICIAL INSANITY. Each chapter is being written by a different author who doesn’t know where the story is headed until the previous chapter has been submitted. We have already published four chapters which you can read by clicking on these links: Rachel Siegel launched us with Chapter One, followed by Jess Bennett’s Chapter Two. Then came Sam Bittman’s Chapter Three, and Daniel Tawczynski’s Chapter Four.
We publish a new chapter every Sunday. There are still four to come, to be written by Matthew Tanenbaum, Tom Cathcart, Daniel Klein and Sonia Pilcer. There are surprises ahead. Please join us.
Here, Sonia Pilcer, whose final chapter will wrap up the action, recounts the origins of this amusing project
It begins with coffee, of course. Edge editor David Scribner and me, a sometime novelist, a frequent Edge contributor, sitting in Fuel. Several years earlier, he had convinced me to serialize my novel: The Last Hotel. Each chapter took place in a different suite in the hotel. Weekly, I sent him an excerpt, often with a photograph to suggest a visual. He released them on Tuesdays. We did that for months.
A few years ago, David summoned eight local writers, myself included, to write a serial novel. That was a riotous rollercoaster ride of arbitrary plot lines crossing like electrical wires. Does anyone remember the best-selling Naked Came the Stranger by “Penelope Ashe”, written by 24 New York City journalists led by Mike McGrady? We followed in that tradition.
David Scribner wanted to do it again. He knew writers in the area who would be interested. I told him I’d love to be part of this “exquisite corpse.”
That’s what the literary form is called. Exquisite corpse, a translation from the French surrealists’ le cadavre exquis boira le vin nouveau. A collection of words or images is collectively assembled. Each collaborator adds to a composition in sequence. This began as early as 1918. Andre Breton, Marcel Duhamel, Yves Tanguy, Henry Miller were among the participants.
This was once a popular parlor game. Sometimes players saw the others’ work before they wrote theirs. Sometimes they didn’t. In our version, we see the prior chapters before we begin ours.
To get started, the writers meet on a zoom for our exquisite corpse. I recognize a few people, some I don’t. I see Matt Tannenbaum from the Lenox Bookstore. Dan Klein and Tom Cathcart, who I know from their satiric philosophical books. After some discussion, Rachel Siegel volunteers to go first. That means that she will create the characters, perhaps the story, or will she?
The Edge asks Ben Hillman to create the novel’s logo.
We discover that the story Rachel has created concerns a woman, Marion, who was once an egg donor for a friend of a friend. The chapter opens with her meeting her three biological children, who have discovered the connection through DNA testing with 23andMe.
This is a coincidence for me since my daughter-in-law, Lauren Makler, has recently become the CEO of a startup Cofertility, which enables women to freeze their eggs for free if they donate half of the eggs to a family that can’t otherwise conceive (couples suffering from infertility or gay dads).
Rachel’s chapter is followed by Jess Bennett, Sam Bittman, Daniel Tawczynski, Matt Tannenbaum, Thomas Cathcart, Daniel Klein. We will have eight chapters all together. I volunteer to go last. To be the caboose.
Dan Klein’s chapter takes a dramatic turn, which really shakes up the story. And now it is my turn to try to end gracefully. But instead, I introduce another story line. Where will it go? There’s talk of a second go-around—a sequel. Perhaps publishing a book.
Link into The Berkshire Edge’s ARTIFICIAL INSANITY. Join the party.
