Part 33 (1/2)
Recent literary work in the medium of hypertext-a structure within which non- linear connections are possible-sho far this assuiven The reading involves the deterh determination of contexts In turn, these affect the behavior of characters in the fictional world This can unfold as a literary work conceived as a ga: The reader defines the attributes of the characters, inserts herself or himself in the plot, and the simulation starts
Neither the writer nor reader needs to knohat progra, and even less to understand how they work The product is, in all of these cases, an infinite series of co- writing The reader changes dialogues, time and space coordinates, names and characteristics of participants in the literary event No torks are alike Characteristics of self-ordering and self-infor-such as ”X knows such and such about Y's peculiarities,” or ”Group Z is aware of its collective behavior and possible deviations from the expected”-allow for the constitution of an entirely artificial do to discover as is the mystery behind a suicide, the complexities of a character's philosophy, or the existence of yet unknown universes
This extrees as they are for-was anticipated in the various fores (anticipated in Homer's epics), explorations of future worlds, and science fiction have paved the way for the writing of es constituted a ories whose object are fictions, not realities
There is no need to be literate to effectively appropriate this kind of writing, although at so the literate allusion awaits the literate reader (at least to tickle his or her fancy) To a certain extent, it is almost better not to have read Madame Bovary, with its es' universe takes place at a different level of human practice, and in a context of disconnected for shared code as a strategy of literary expression The es of literary criticism and interpretation- such as coical analysis, structuralism, semiotic interpretation, deconstructionise literate reader as scientific and philosophic languages, are duplicated in the specialized language of creative post-reat deal of preparation for some of those works, or at least the assue The writings of Donald Barthel, for sheer enjoye, e code, as part of the practical experience it facilitates, does not coe, rather fro that the purpose of this writing is knowledge about writing and reading The episteical made into a subject of fiction-hoe knoe know?-e, it is possible to have readers of a one and only book (I auage of that reader Alice in Wonderland is such a book for quite a few; so is Ulysses; so are the two novels of William H
Gass In the civilization of illiteracy, we experience the eence ofEfficiency considerations are such that the non-standard practical experience of writing isbooks, and otherCD-ROM) that address a small number of people
The effort to recycle (art or literature) is part of the say The co-writers are authors (recycled) and readers whose past readings (real or i (na other things, the atte, even the literate expectation of originality Taking a piece fro it in its entirety uration That piece resee, or, to force the ie, between the parts of a sonata It entails its own history and interpretation, and triggers a an transplants The convention of reading is broken; the text is e to the reader The seaether are not hidden; to the contrary, a spotlight is focused on them Gertrude Stein best exemplifies the tendency, and probably hoell it synchronized with similar developments in art (cubism fore for characters, object, and actions; he invented neorlds where the writer can define rules for their behavior Concrete poetry, too, in , which comes froered by the dodecaphonic composers In concrete poetry, one can even discover the expression of jealousy between those interacting in the systees, and those in the doraer to experience the sequential! The effort to recycle, interpret, visualize, to read and explain for the reader, and to compress (action, description, analysis) corresponds to the ever faster interactions of humans and to the shorter duration of such interactions The reader is presented with pieces already known, or with easily understandable iine, as writers always expected their readers to do, if one can see-this seereat novel
The ideal of the great novel was an ideal of a , such as word processing rareat novel is not only impossible, but irrelevant Expectations associated with the great novel are expectations of unity, hoeneity, universality Such a novel would address everyone, as the great novels of the civilization of literacy tended to do The extreeneity, the new rhythe and of human experiences, the continuous decline of the ideal eainst the possibility of such a novel An all-enco such a novel ier possible We live in a civilization of partial languages, with their corresponding creative, non-standard writing experiences, in a disenification If, ad absurdum, various literary works could talk to each other (as their authors can and do), they would soon conclude that the shared background is so li and some political statements (more circumstantial than substantial), little else could be said
Furthered And since there is a consubstantiality ae affects the self-constitution of the writer, and subsequently that of the reader Technology takes care of spelling and even syntax; more recently it even proy in creative writing is far fro neutral Different rhythms and patterns of association, as eebetween us and the machine-are projected volens-nolens into the real, corresponding to the new kinds of human interaction, become possible One can already have a novel delivered on tape, to be listened to while driving to work The age of the electronic book brings other reading possibilities to the public An animated host can introduce a short story; a hand- held scanner can pick up words the reader does not know and activate a synthetic voice to read their definitions froe used to be the enerations in the fraeneous practical experiences Edmund Carpenter correctly pointed out that for the civilization of literacy, the book-and what, if not the literary book, best e principle for all existence” Yes, the book see (we are all born), middle, and end (at whicha form of memory), followed by new books Carpenter went on to say, ”Even as written manuscript, the book served as a ed a habit of thought that divided experience into specialized units and organized these serially and causally Translated into gears and levers, the book became machine Translated into people, it beca, typing, dictation, and word-processing define a context for the practical experience of self-identification as novelist, poet, playwright, screenplay author, and scriptwriter Interaction ord-processing progra that testifies to endless self-correction, and to rewriting driven by association Word-processing is cognitively a different effort fro with a pen or typewriter And no one should be surprised that what is written with the new media cannot be the same as the works of Shakespeare, Balzac, and Tolstoi, entrusted by hand to paper A distributed narrative effort of many people, via network interaction, is a practical experience above and beyond anything we could have had in the framework of literacy
The first coe of co) nobody really understood how far the genre would go, or how many literacy-based conventions would be undone in the process
Coe part of the reith the names of characters from books The influence of new media (film, in particular) on the narrative of the strip opened avenues of experi When classics of literature (even the Bible) were presented in comic-strip form, and when comic strips were united under the cover of books, the book itself changed Structural characteristics of the strip (fast, dense, focused, short, expressive) correspond to those of the pragmatic framework of the civilization of illiteracy
Does the civilization of illiteracy herald the end of the book?
As far as the practice of creative writing goes, itdoes not necessarily have to take a book format Narrative, as we know from oral tradition, can take forard to books should not be understood as prophecy Pointing to alternatives (such as digital books, electronic publications distributed on networks and stored on disks), soh as yet, keeps the influence of our own framework of reference at a distance A video forht seem to someone raised with the book, is a candidate everyone can naeneration ago are known to the students of this tih television and movie adaptations The ether with their video simuli Computer-supported artifacts, endowed or not with literary intelligence, are another candidate for replacing the book What we know is that paper can be handled only so(even if it is non-acid paper)
Furthermore, it becomes more andour forests into books, which huer be able to afford, or which are so disconnected fromatics that they have lost their relevance
Today, while still entirely devoted to the ideal of literacy, societies subsidize literary practical experiences which are only peripherally relevant to huo to writers ill probably never be read; many more to contests (themselves anchored in the obsession with hierarchy peculiar to literacy) open to students lost in the labyrinth of an illusion; and even inal or very narrow interest, or to publications that barely justify the effort and expense of their endeavor Frorants is the right thing to do In the long run, this altruishly specialized contemporary society perceives as necessary in respect to efficiency require the world at the current scale In labor division, the literate writer and reader constitute their systematic domain of interaction
The book will no doubt remain in some fore of a portable reading device) as long as people derive pleasure or profit from the printed word But as opposed to the past, this is only one a many literary and non-literary domains of interaction It is, for exaraffiti yptian hieroglyphs, or painters ords, or both Keith Haring, their best known representative, covered every available square inch-horror vacui-with expressions that constituted a new syste people, as well as a new space for his own self-constitution as a different type of artist
Instead of decrying the end of an ideal, we should celebrate the victory of diversity Those who really feel that their destiny relies on the ideal of literature ive up some of their expectations, stimulated by the literate model, in order to preserve the structure within which literacy is possible and necessary The demand for more at the lowest price that heralds the multi-headed creature called the civilization of illiteracy affects more than the production of clothes and dishes, or of cars and an insatiable appetite for travel It affects our ways of writing, reading, painting, singing, dancing, co-our entire aesthetic experience
Libraries, Books, Readers
Carlyle believed that ”The true university is a collection of books” If books truly represent the spirit and letter of the civilization of literacy, a description of their current condition can be instructive Obviously, one has to accept the possibility that the civilization of literacy will continue in some form, or in more than one, that will extend the experience of the book, as we know it today through its physical form Or the civilization of literacy may continue in a totally new for the International Publishers association Congress in June, 1988, George Steiner tried to identify the ”interlocking factors” that led to the establish, paper production, and advances in typography that are associated with the ”private ownershi+p of space, of silence, and of books the the process
Another i fores, with powerful traditions of orality, and with patterns of behavior established within practical experiences different from those of book culture
Near the end of the 15th century, Aldus Manutius understood that the new technology of printing could be, and should be, more than the mere continuation of the tradition of manuscripts The artifact of the book, close to e know today, is mainly his contribution to the civilization of literacy Manutius applied aesthetic and functional criteria that led to the smaller-sized books we are familiar with He worked with covers; the hard cover in thicker cardboard replaced the covers of pinewood used to protectof aesthetics and of the experience of reading led hiraphy His concern with portability (a quality obsessing conteners), with readability (of no less interest to computer display experts), and with a balanced visual appearance make him the real saint of the order of the book
The book also entails conventions of intellectual ownershi+p In their effort to stop the disseh print, Philip and Mary, in 1557, li to the ht for ht for authors From that time on, the book expanded the notion of property, different fros, especially in view of the desire, implicit in literacy, to literally spread the word Now that desktop capabilities and technologies that facilitate print on demand affordably reproduce print, old notions of property and ownershi+p need to be redefined Our understanding of books and the people who read them, too, needs to be redefined as well
Today, books can be stored on media other than sheets of paper, on which words are printed and which are bound between hard or soft covers One hundred optical disks can store the entire contents of the Library of Congress This nificance cost five cents per book printed digitally Another result is that the notion of intellectual ownershi+p becomes fuzzy Actually, the word book is not the proper one to use in the case of digital storage The new pragmatics makes it crisply clear that the book is e and transe, and wisdoarity
For people who prefer the book for presses are able to efficiently provide runs for very precisely defined seg for the Great American Novel that is custom written and produced for one reader at a ti Your Child,”
screams an advertisement It pro stories with positive i storylines” All that e, city of residence, and the names of three friends or relatives
The rest is permutation (and an order form) Grandma did a better job with her photo and keepsake albuo Paper is available in all iies of typesetting, layout, i are all in place
Nowadays, there is enough private space The wash of noise is not a serious obstacle to people ant to read, even if they do not wear noise cancellation headphones And never were books published at more affordable prices than today Sorated in broader hyper- books on the World Wide Web A word froe experiences-connects the interested reader to other books and articles, as well as to voices that read texts, to songs, and to ier a self-sufficient entity, but a medium for possible interaction
At the threshold of the civilization of illiteracy, how many books are printed? In which medium? How many are sold? Are they read? How? By whom? These are only so the subject of books Even more important is the ”Why?”-in particular, ”Why read books?”-the real test of the book's legitiitimacy of the civilization which the book e, or to be h which an author can address many readers