Joe’s Luck: The World’s Longest Literary Remix

By Jason Boog 

screen1small.jpgIn the spring of 2010, a dedicated crew of GalleyCat Reviews readers rewrote one page of Horatio Alger’s novel, Joe’s Luck: Always Wide Awake. We are very proud to share the final product with you. The complete remix is embedded below for your reading pleasure–click the “download” tab at the top of the frame to get a free PDF copy.

One hundred years after the novel was published, these readers found new ways to tell Alger’s rags to riches story: creating video games, comic books, poetry, and rewritten prose. Readers remixed the story with H.P. Lovecraft monsters, Twitter feeds, the Wizard of Oz, zombies, Hunter. S. Thompson hallucinations, and countless other literary styles.

To celebrate their work, we’ve created a free eBook edition of the remixed novel–in two different editions. The abridged edition reads as a complete novel with author attribution in the endnotes. In this edition, we also condensed some of Alger’s meandering passages. The unabridged edition breaks the novel into distinct pages and features the entire text–following the original numbering of the page assignments, granting each individual writer an individual page.

These writers are eligible for a random drawing of special giveaway prizes. The winners will be announced on Monday. Follow this link to see the prizes. (Remix image via Jenny Sparks)


Joe’s Luck: The World’s Longest Literary Remix