The sustaining magic of Defoe's novel is that the reader comes to regard Crusoe's self-sufficient solitude first with pity, and then with grudging envy.
The author recently spoke with The Wall Street Journal about novel writing's black magic, the ordeal her hometown went through this past week and the books she reads when nobody's looking.
As the name suggests, cell phone novels are written entirely on handsets and posted on sites like Maho no i-rando (Magic Island), the first and largest mobile novel portal in Japan.