Reclusive Nobel Laureate Publishing Latest Novel Online

By Veronika Oleksyn
Associated Press
Published July 4, 2007

VIENNA -- By some measures, Elfriede Jelinek's world is small. The reclusive Nobel literature laureate cloisters herself inside her homes in Vienna and Munich, Germany, and rarely ventures out in public.

But online, the Austrian writer -- who suffers from what she has described as a "social phobia" -- connects with ease to people around the world. Little wonder, then, that she chose to debut her latest novel on the Web rather than in bookstores.

"I find the Internet to be the most wonderful thing there is," Jelinek said in an e-mail interview with The Associated Press. "It connects people. Everyone can have input."

Jelinek, 60, has been posting chapters of the new book, "Neid" (German for "Envy"), as she writes them. The first two chapters of the work she describes as a "mixture of blog and prose" are already available on her site, www.elfriedejelinek.com, and there are more to come.

"It's a wonderfully democratic method, publishing a text on the Internet," Jelinek told the AP.

Link to Elfriede Jelinek's website

(From the AP, published in The Chicago Tribune, linked to via: Boing Boing)