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Basic Background on |
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HYPERTEXT |
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An article published in the 1945 Atlantic Monthly and written by Vannevar Bush calls for a mechanical system to help scholars deal with an excess of information. Bush's "memex" apparatus was meant to enable individuals to store all their records, correspondance and books; to construct paths between these texts, and to retrieve specific information within them (Travis, 117). This system of linkage and association would function somewhat like human memory. In 1960s Theodore Nelson and Douglas Englebert developed computer systems to link texts, and in 1965 Nelson coined the term hypertext: "non-sequential writing with reader-controlled links" (ibid.)
The first work hypertext literature was created by Michael Joyce in 1987, titled Afternoon: a story. In 1990, Joyce helped create Storyspace software for creating hypertexts. However, before briefly touching on several hypertexts, it is useful to point out some of the modern and postmodern texts that achieved a sort of hypertextual nuance through their employment of non-linear structure and layered narratives: |
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James Joyce's Ulysses and Finnegan's Wake |
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Virgina Woolf's The Waves |
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Gertrude Stein's The Making of American's |
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Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow |
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The works of Kathy Acker |
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Italo Calvino's If on a Winters Night a Traveler |
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There are considered to be two types of hypertexts: exploratory, in which the reader can traverse a text but does not have much agency in creating their own path; and constructive, which allows the reader to alter the text (as in the Hypertext Hotel). The works I am looking at are mostly exploratory, though Chan's work can be downloaded onto one's computer and interacted with. |
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Also important to note is the work of Robert Coover, who moved from postmodern fiction into the realm of hypertext. His essay The End of Books which was published in the New York Times in 1992 signaled a new era of writing. Coover also began the Hypertext Hotel project at Brown University, a collaborative effort in which students could check in and alter the text by adding their own story continuations. |
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Hypertext Links |
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Shelley Jackson |
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My Body & WunderKammer
Created in 1997. A beautfiully illustrated piece. In many ways, similar to Fisher's hypertext. |
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Carolyn Guyer and Michael Joyce
Lasting Image |
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altx - A digital and hypertext online journal. Great resource. |
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asian punk boy |
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dichtung digital - an online journal of digital and hypertext fiction, poetry and theory. |
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Eastgate - Hypertext publisher and distributor of Storyspace.Their catalogue is a history of hypertext literature. |
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Electronic Literature Organization |
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An extensive list of hypertext writers, and net.art |
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Back |
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Home |
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