Rev. of Sven Birkerts' The Gutenberg Elegies: The Fate of Reading in an Electronic Age.
Browsing the World Wide Web can serve as a quick antidote to the foaming euphoria proponents of hyperfiction foster. Most hyperfiction encountered here seems clumsy, unsatisfactory, and of little artistic merit. Once the novelty of clicking on underlined words or outlined icons wears off, there is not much left to be euphoric over-- the stories seem to be lacking in everything but innovative structure, and the structures seem murky and pointless. There is a sense that the basic elements of the form have not been understood properly and are used in a haphazard way by most of its pioneers, happily experimenting on the fringes of cyberspace. It might be the proper time to ask questions about the essential problems and assets of the form.
Probably the most striking feature of hypertext is the link-- the word, sentence, or icon that refers to the next node, or piece of text, which in turn offers more links to the reader's incessant mouse clicks. As Bolter rightfully notes (201, 204), the link is a sign that signifies the node it links to, which in turn signifies other nodes, and so on, ad infinitum. This endless chain of signification accounts for the feeling of vertigo (Johnson-Eilola 195) often reported by hypertext and WWW users--they are caught in a signifying chain very much like the one threatened by Jean Baudrillard (10). For hypertext fiction, however, this is less important than the nature of signification employed by the link. It seems that the way in which the link signifies is not properly understood. This is obvious to anyone who ever wondered why they read what they read after clicking on a link--the gap that yawns between the link and the new window that brings the next node is often big enough to swallow a lot of the Web's hyperfiction in its maw.
1965, Originally published in Something Else Newsletter 1, No. 1 (Something Else Press, 1966). Also published as a chapter in Dick Higgins, Horizons, the Poetics and Theory of the Intermedia (Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois Univ. Press, 1984).
Questions whether the world presented in interactive fiction is a "literary one." Defines "literariness" as quality of "making strange" that which is linguistically familiar. Randall presents study of: "Mindwheel,""Brimstone,""Breakers,""A Mind Forever Voyaging,""Portal," and "Trinity." Suggests that the literariness of interactive fiction comes out of its concern for "making strange" what is familiar and vice versa.
Editorial in alire 1 (published as book, disketts, and audio cassette)
"Quelque chose s’entreprend dans alire entre écriture et machine jetant les bases d’un travail où s’élabore et se transpose l’histoire de la lettre. L’histoire de la littera."Something is undertaken in alire between writing and machine providing the foundations of a work, which elaborates and implements the history of the letter. The history of the littera.