Wired Love
July 29, 2013 10:03 AM   Subscribe

“It would be dreadfully unromantic to fall in love with a soiled invisible, wouldn’t it,” Clive Thompson reviews Wired Love, a novel about romance over the network, in this case, the telegraph network, circa 1880. posted by zabuni (7 comments total) 16 users marked this as a favorite
 
Thanks. I've been a Victorian reading kick, & was wondering what to read next. Yoink.
posted by broken wheelchair at 11:45 AM on July 29, 2013


Hey, baby, wire me a shot of one of your ankles... Please? All alone in the office... No one will ever see...

(Did Gutenberg to Dropbox with it. Will report later.)
posted by Samizdata at 12:36 PM on July 29, 2013


I believe this book was mentioned in Tom Standage's "The Victorian Internet" . (The book found an amazing number of parallels between telegraphy and the Internet.)
posted by of strange foe at 12:50 PM on July 29, 2013 [1 favorite]


Yup, I also stopped RTFA due to spoilers but am reading this later. Neat.
posted by deludingmyself at 2:01 PM on July 29, 2013


It's a very enjoyable zippy read. As well as presaging internet dating, it's almost beat-for-beat a modern rom com and the lead is like literally Meg Ryan. There's some very Friends-y sitcom stuff (six Young People Of Hilariously Contrasting Personalities in a boarding house) too.

If the bad parts weren't bad in such a pitch-perfect Victorian way I'd almost suspect a modern pastiche and an elaborate hoax to plant it in Project Gutenberg! Most freaky bit:

"I had a young woman come in here once, who asked me to write the message for her, and after I had done so, in a somewhat hasty scrawl, she took it, looked it all over critically, dotted some 'i's,' and crossed some 't's,' I all the time staring, amazed, and wondering if she supposed I could not read my own hand-writing, then scowled and threw it down disgustedly saying, 'John never can read that! I shall have to write it myself. He knows my writing!'"

"Can such things be!" cried Miss Archer.

"But," asked Quimby, from his uncomfortable perch on the edge of the chair, "Isn't there a—a something—a fac-simile arrangement?"

"I believe there is, but it is not yet perfected," replied Nattie."


Which introduced me to early fax machines and the startling information that the fax came before the telephone.
posted by Erasmouse at 3:39 PM on July 29, 2013 [2 favorites]


(Did Gutenberg to Dropbox with it. Will report later.)

Me too.
posted by hapax_legomenon at 6:01 PM on July 29, 2013


Thanks to this link, I started reading this today. Only in the early parts but it is strikingly modern so far. One of the touches I'm liking very much is how both of them are trying to manage expectations. C confesses to being as young as she thinks he is and has a touch of crows feet but still has all his hair so he doesn't look ancient yet. N confesses to being short, brown eyed and not a great beauty, but manages to distract his attention from this by being so flirtatious.

It's so exactly the game I used to play back in the day when talking with someone from irc or alt.personals, where both of you want to be relatively honest about appearances and personal details, but not so honest as to be a complete turn off.

And the passages about the difficulties of her customers, especially the passage quoted above, shows that technologically-challenged people are annoyingly the same, no matter what the century.
posted by honestcoyote at 6:29 PM on July 29, 2013 [1 favorite]


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