Thread by @_jesse_andrews_

munmun. it's out in paperback today. one year after publication, i wanted to talk about its writing style.

if you haven't read it, it's written in the first person from the perspective of a kid named warner, who is very poor and therefore about six inches tall. in this world, your size corresponds to how much money (munmun) you have.

warner has never been to school and it's not until the middle of the story that he even begins to learn how to read. because schools are not built for people as small and poor as him. illiteracy is the norm for littlepoors.

so there are some basic grammatical and spelling mistakes that he makes. he tends to use run-on sentences with lots of commas, he spells words wrong by making them out of smaller words (like "reservewar" [reserve+war] instead of "reservoir"),

and he concatenates words that seem like they should belong together, likethis.

the story reason for that choice is warner's incomplete schooling. but the *tonal result* is what interests me a lot more. the choices is just obnoxious if the style it produces doesn't taste right. that's why i spent a year and a half fussing over the style like a maniac.

specifically i wanted to create a register that reflected the two places where the book is set.

it's half in 1) the real world, which is dominated by marketing and sales and unconstrained libertarian capitalism, and half in 2) dreamworld, where everyone dreams communally and nothing can be bought or sold.

so the voice of MUNMUN is designed to reflect 1) the emotional space of high-capitalist desire—its fizzy run-on breathlessness, abrupt lane-switching, bouncy fungible hopes, tactical cuteness, habit of accelerating past structural cruelties and absurdities—

and 2) the rulebending and shapeshifting and unpredictable pacing of dreams—taking the familiar, making it unfamiliar but still intuitive. finding a preconscious logic and letting it go where it will.

in other words i started with poverty-induced semi-literacy, and tried to marry it to those two things. somehow, astonishingly, they fit. at least in my ears i heard it all fitting. most of the best writing days of my life were spent making this book.

so about the voice that resulted. it's pretty strange. some readers bump on it. others find it weirdly intuitive and it stays in their heads for days and weeks.

if you're looking for comfort food, and there's nothing wrong with you if you are, this probably is the wrong place to look for it. but if you like weird books, then MUNMUN could really be your book.

there are readers who are always out to find the most unexpected thing. the strangest newest book in any genre, on any shelf. readers addicted to the thrill of adding new territory to the map of what they know.

i love those readers. i am one. MUNMUN is my best attempt to make something for them. at least until the next one.

ok that's enough for now. thanks for reading. i love you. now get off your phone and read a book. any book. doesn't have to be mine. could be mine though