I sat across from Shelley Jackson at dinner at Spring Street Natural once night a few months ago, part of a large group that had schooled off to dinner after a reading at Housing Works Used Book Cafe. I listened in amazement as she described her project to print a short story entirely in tattoos on other people's bodies, one word per participant. No one would know his word in advance, and only participants would ever receive a copy of the full text of the finished story.

I kept my mouth shut at the time, but I had never heard of a literary project so exclusionary and elitist. Experimental fiction is all well and good, but this is a case where a participant cannot access a work of art without permanently becoming a part of it. I'm not surprised there are two thousand people so eager to belong to something "important" that they would agree to this. But with a secret text available only to the initiated, this strikes me as less a literary statement than the makings of a cult.