~by J. Capó Crucet

http://jadedibisproductions.com/

Paperback: $15.00

iPad App: $4.99

Fine Art Limited Edition Snow Globe: $8,500

I have a confession to make: I don’t own an iPad, and so I’m not the target audience for the original format of Alexandra Chasin’s Brief. (The iPad, we’re told in a note from the publisher that opens the book, is “the device for which [the text] was specifically written.”) I also don’t make the kind of bank to afford the $8500 limited edition fine art snow globe version (which features a fake Warhol and has “a tiny print copy” of the book buried in its wooden base). That left me with the monochromatic paperback option, tried and true but, as the book’s opening note warns, somewhat limited: part of the experience of the app version is that it randomly splatters images (and snippets of images) in and around the novel’s text in an effort to “evoke the novel’s time period and storyline, probing the role of cause and effect in history.” The paperback version is just “a snapshot of the app,” and with that intro, it’s hard not to feel like you’ve chosen wrong for picking paper over plastic (or whatever iPads are made of). Continue reading →