review
Electronic Literature Collection, Volume 1,
Edited by N. Katherine Hayles, Nick Montfort, Scott Rettberg and Stephanie Strickland (United States), 2006
The Electronic Literature Organization's anthology, Electronic Literature Collection, Volume 1, was published online and on CD-ROM in October of last year. With sixty works, it is probably the most extensive, well-edited survey of the genre yet produced. Many of the pieces are already of historical interest, found deep in the late-`90s caches of the Internet, but only a fraction of them display the young brilliance we might expect of such a slice of the zeitgeist. Let us, then, make two observations about, or allowances for, "electronic" (or "digital") literature.
1. It has carved a precarious space for itself between the academy and the contemporary art world. Most works in the milieu come from one or the other source - rarely both. (Unless fan fiction is considered part of the enterprise, electronic literature has no popular component.) The collection under review is almost entirely funded by university arts departments, and many of its authors are academics, but the finest works in the anthology are those contributed by contemporary artists who also work in other media.1 Whether this perch is maintainable remains to be seen.
2. It is a young genre, and broad. There are parallels beyond baroque terminology between the nineteenth century's cinema-anticipating machines (the Zoetrope, the Phenakistoscope, and so on) and electronic literature, with its wealth of computer programs (Shockwave, Storyspace, and so forth). Both divide similar goals - be it the animation of still images or the disruption of generic boundaries - among a profusion of devices. Both rest on the cusp of greatness.
The Electronic Literature Collection, Volume 1, itself a work of electronic literature - an electronic anthology - deserves the same allowances, but it probably doesn't need them. The editors (including Nick Montfort2) have cast their nets wide and included many representative and important works - along with others that frankly do not deserve anthologizing. They have put fine organizational acumen into the design of the collection. We find, of course, the standard features of any anthology: an author list, the works by title, and a glossary, albeit amalgamated with an index and in the form of a keywords page (with helpful descriptions of generic markers, from "ambient" to "wordtoy"). Along with the enhanced organization these pages and their hyperlinks offer, there is additional information; and this is where the electronic anthology begins to differ from manual anthologies.
The editors introduce each piece (but not the anthology itself, which is a pity), and often-necessary advice is dispensed concerning how a given work must operate - e.g., some of the works included are programs the reader must download and run. Space is also provided for the authors to introduce their own work; this can be revealing, and the language in which the introductions are couched is indicative of the extent to which electronic literature is an endeavor of academe; it can also be baffling, and when the authors digress on the programming methods of their pieces, one begins to long for the ordinariness of devices (pens, maybe) used in creating non-electronic literature. A final peculiarity - the apparently arbitrary primary listing of works alphabetically, by author surname - is not unique to electronic publishing, but it contributes to the novel feel of the anthology.
Proceeding alphabetically, one is struck by the diversity of works; there is not the technological evolution, from hyperlink to Flash, which we might expect if the works were organized chronologically. Instead, within the initial tier of pieces, there are poems produced in both Shockwave and Flash, a "code movie," a basic HTML experiment, and a text-based work in homage to Jean-Pierre Balpe (whom we are fortunate enough to have contributing to CIAC's Electronic Magazine). This opening breadth is suggestive of the whole, and, as we shall see by examining the anthology's finest works, the term "literature" frequently becomes an inadequate, or even misapplied, generic marker.
A primary instance of this terminological inadequacy is found in Kenneth Goldsmith's Soliloquy3. Goldsmith, on the board at the indispensable Ubu Web4, is a conceptual poet, and Soliloquy is only nominally a poem; furthermore, having been originally published with a gallery exhibition in 1996, the piece's new presence online makes it doubly confounding to traditional, analog literary notions. In this instance, Goldsmith audio-recorded every single word he spoke in a week's time (every "um," every "uh"), transcribed it, and published it. He reportedly spent eight weeks in the typing of it, which (although it leads me to believe he is not exactly a touch-typist) emphasizes just how long this document is. Goldsmith himself grants that the text is far longer than one would want to read - so too is another of his works, Day, in which he transcribes the entirety of one edition of the New York Times while ignoring column boundaries. As he confesses in his article "Being Boring": "every time I have to proofread [my texts] before sending them off to the publisher, I fall asleep repeatedly."5
Nonetheless, browsing the text is revelatory. Soliloquy, obeying the rules of a Soliloquy, is of necessity one-sided, so there is frequent puzzlement over just whom Goldsmith is talking to and what concerning. He often discusses the nature and difficulties of the piece (he is wearing recording equipment), which brings about a helpless self-reflexivity, and he generally refrains from self-censorship. Soliloquy is candidly gossipy, awkward, and honest; art-scene beefs, conversational banalities, and private domestic moments are all transcribed as so much chatter. In the electronic version, which is divided by day, there is the asset of a search engine, but the Electronic Literature Organization's inclusion of the piece does not make Soliloquy electronic literature, per se; it seems more as though Goldsmith's conceptual poem has simply found its conceptual home.
A second piece in the anthology by an otherwise conceptual artist, and also one of the most impressive, is Shelly Jackson's my body - a Wunderkammer6. Although it is not apparent, Jackson initially published my body online in 1997 - well before references to curiosity cabinets became modish in contemporary art. She has since gone on to notoriety for being the author of Skin: A Mortal Work of Art7, an ongoing narrative in which words from her eponymous short story are tattooed on willing participants; as of this writing, 470 people have received tattoos; she is still accepting applicants.
This same emphasis on the body is evident in my body, which has, as its table of contents (so to speak), a nude illustration of a person we are meant to understand as Jackson herself. She makes a cabinet of her body, itemizing its various parts through links; the links bring up (frequently, fantasy) stories, reminiscences, and anecdotes about each respective part. "Toes" (which transpire to be prehensile), "tattoos" (invisible), and "tail" (vestigial) are particularly intriguing, and show her gift for a kind of dirty magic realism.
Also drawing from magic realism is Emily Short's Savoir-Faire8, a literate and lively example of interactive, historical fiction. There are five works of interactive fiction (IF) in the anthology, and Short's, from 2002, seems to offer the most potential. In it, the player / reader is assigned the role of an eighteenth century French dandy and must follow a series of mnemonic clues and make dinner (a strange task in a genre where, ordinarily, dragon-vanquishing is the rule) while exploring a chateau. Despite Short's evident abilities, there is the impression that the anthologization of Savoir-Faire may also be a paragraph in IF's obituary, as the latter is not much produced or played anymore.
Somewhat-interactive fiction seems to have some life left, however, and Richard Holeton's Frequently Asked Questions about "Hypertext"9, with its labyrinthine links and circular references, is an example of this. FAQs is aiming to be the hypertext version of Vladimir Nabokov's sui generis novel, Pale Fire, wherein Nabokov made a mystery out of the entirely unlikely: a fictional academic's poem, a deranged commentary upon it, and an index (that is integral to the solution of the mystery). Since its publication in 1962, Pale Fire has been engendering speculation of a volume entirely corollary with its genius - only two years ago, the cover piece of the Times Literary Supplement purported to "solve" the mystery - and Holeton's FAQs is one example of the prodigious homage which has also been dealt the novel.
FAQs replaces Pale Fire's commentary and index with another, ever-more-frequent genre, the FAQ, through which he progressively dissects the poem "Hypertext" that forms the root of the website. In Oulipian fashion, "Hypertext" is composed entirely of letters drawn from the word "hypertext" - and, as one may surmise, the poem is not exactly successful: "Re: Perth rep, PR-type hype. Per HTTP pretext, / Peer here: Eye thy eyer, pet yer petter." There is, in fact, meaning contained in these lines and, as a way into Holeton's consideration of the fictional author of "Hypertext"'s untimely death, FAQs is one of the most learned instances of electronic literature included in the collection.
J.R. Carpenter's The Cape10 introduces a central preoccupation of the anthology: place, and how we interact with it. Hers is a small, familial story about memories of whistling at Cape Cod. The Cape is principally assembled with charmingly animated government documents and old photos, both narrativized by her text. Apart from an amusing audio clip from the radio program Quirks and Quarks, this piece could easily have been published as a found-footage fumetti: the Internet and the Electronic Literature Association are lucky to have Carpenter. (As is Montreal, where she makes her home, and which her most recent work, Entre Ville11, addresses.)
There are a number of other vogues (poetry cubes, cut-ups, yet more Oulipo progeny12) and authors (Maria Mencina, Marko Neimi) in the Electronic Literature Collection, Volume 1 that bear mentioning, but at this stage it would be best for the reader to click through the anthology. A closing caveat, however: there are those contributions in the anthology that have so deftly sidestepped the formal standards of what is commonly called literature that they may more accurately, perhaps, be called cinema. Donna Leishman, Kate Pullinger, perhaps even Dan Waber: all of these artists in the collection would justifiably be considered in the filmic context.
As it happens, this subject - web cinema - will be explored by the American author Alejandro Adams in the next issue of CIAC's Electronic Magazine.
Notes
1 : Electronic literature, in this regard, has shades of Language poetry, although the former has seemingly found its home at the university more quickly and comprehensively than did the latter. 
2 : For a review of Nick Montfort's work, see: Ad Verbum, by Nick Montfort (USA), 2000, reviewed by Patrick Ellis in CIAC's Electronic Magazine no 24, Winter 2006.
3 : Kenneth Goldsmith, Soliloquy, 1997.
4 : UbuWeb.
5 : Kenneth Goldsmith, Being Boring, 2004.
6 : Shelley Jackson, my body — a Wunderkammer, 1997.
7 : Shelley Jackson, Skin: A Mortal Work of Art.
8 : Emily Short, Savoir-Faire, 2002.
9 : Richard Holeton, Frequently Asked Questions about "Hypertext", 2004.
10 : J.R. Carpenter, The Cape, 2005.
11 : J.R. Carpenter, Entre Ville, 2006.
12 : For examples of "Oulipo progeny", again see Ad Verbum, by Nick Montfort (USA), 2000, and JABBER: The Jabberwoky Engine, by Neil Hennessy (Canada), 2001, both reviewed by Patrick Ellis in CIAC's Electronic Magazine no 24, Winter 2006.
Patrick Ellis
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