Writing Machines (Mediaworks Pamphlets) [Paperback]

N. Katherine Hayles (Author), Anne Burdick (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0262582155 | ISBN-13: 978-0262582155 | Publication Date: November 15, 2002

Tracing a journey from the 1950s through the 1990s, N. Katherine Hayles uses the autobiographical persona of Kaye to explore how literature has transformed itself from inscriptions rendered as the flat durable marks of print to the dynamic images of CRT screens, from verbal texts to the diverse sensory modalities of multimedia works, from books to technotexts.Weaving together Kaye's pseudo-autobiographical narrative with a theorization of contemporary literature in media-specific terms, Hayles examines the ways in which literary texts in every genre and period mutate as they are reconceived and rewritten for electronic formats. As electronic documents become more pervasive, print appears not as the sea in which we swim, transparent because we are so accustomed to its conventions, but rather as a medium with its own assumptions, specificities, and inscription practices. Hayles explores works that focus on the very inscription technologies that produce them, examining three writing machines in depth: Talan Memmott's groundbreaking electronic work Lexia to Perplexia, Mark Z. Danielewski's cult postprint novel House of Leaves, and Tom Phillips's artist's book A Humument. Hayles concludes by speculating on how technotexts affect the development of contemporary subjectivity.Writing Machines is the second volume in the Mediawork Pamphlets series.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Hayles's book is one of the most exciting examples of technological anti-determinism I have ever read." Jan Baetens Image [&] Narrative

"N. Katherine Hayle's Writing Machines is a beautiful little book." Davin Heckman Reconstruction.ws

"...one of the most exciting examples of technological anti-determinism I have ever read." Jan Baetens Image [&] Narrative

"Without a doubt, Writing Machines is an important book...." Dene Grigar Leonardo Digital Reviews

"In the age of the immaterial, Writing Machines compellingly argues that all forms of literature are inescapably material. Through Burdick's melding of graphic evidence and Hayles' weaving of critical and biographical perspectives, Writing Machines deftly embodies its subject while disrupting our expectations about academic publishing."--Andrew Blauvelt, Design Director, Walker Art Center

About the Author

Anne Burdick is the design editor of ebr -- The Electronic Book Review.

Product Details

• Paperback: 224 pages
• Publisher: The MIT Press (November 15, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0262582155
• ISBN-13: 978-0262582155
• Product Dimensions: 7 x 6.1 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #121,606 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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18 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Katherine in Wonderland, January 2, 2003

By 

komninos zervos (labrador, queensland Australia) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Writing Machines (Mediaworks Pamphlets) (Paperback)

This 'pamphlet' surprises you immediately, it is a black-covered hardback with a lovely feel and design that says this book is different from other books. Pages of shiny paper (you can't write on them) and blocks of text that zoom out at you, or that are printed right up to the page edges, secret inscriptions, screen shots and new terminology introduced as underlined CAPITALS. The outside of the book reflects what the inside of the book is saying, before you even read a word. Hayles contends that the materiality of the work is important to the experience of it and that works in different media require their own media specific analysis (MSA).

The 'I' that writes is never the 'I' that is written and so N Katherine Hayles chooses a character 'Kaye' to tell of her journey of discovery from childhood to the present. However in doing so it was more than a little reminiscent of Alice in Wonderland as the naïve young Kaye skipped through science and art and arrived at electronic textuality. And when she arrived at this wonderland she found that all she had thought of her world had been turned upside down.

"Lulled into somnolence by five hundred years of print, literary studies have been slow to wake up to the importance of MSA. Literary criticism and theory are shot through with unrecognized assumptions specific to print. Only now, as the new medium of electronic textuality vibrantly asserts its presence, are these assumptions clearly coming into view." (pp 29-30)

But I am not convinced about the importance Hayles' places on the materiality of works of literature. I think Hayles, and nearly every other student of literature over the last fifty years received a very narrow education as to what constitutes a literary work, a very rigid print-centric view. Digital texts have made her realize that a work can have other representations. Young Kaye skips backwards to see what in the past she overlooked, and sees that the materiality of print all along. She concludes that a media specific analysis of works is required, so that the inscription technology is taken into account in the interpretation of the work.

In a past persona of 'komninos the professional spoken word performance poet', I was fully aware of the prejudice that exists within the academy which privileges print over all other material actualizations of poetry. Personally I think if a work gives me a poetic experience then it is a poem irrespective of the presentation/distribution medium. For me poetry is an immaterial thing, a virtual thing (virtual in the Deleuzian sense) an unsolvable problematic with many actualizations in many different media.

Anyway this is a good introduction for print-centric lovers of literature to the possibilities of books beyond what we traditionally think of as books. It is also a great way of introducing computer-phobes and sceptics to the mixed semiotic systems that constitute the literary experience in media other than in print. N Katherine Hayles has been one of the earliest and most active supporters of digital literatures or 'technotexts' as she calls them, and in sharing her discoveries through a fantasy and honestly through her persona Kaye, she makes the transition a little easier for others who want to understand.

"Lastly, she pictured to herself how this same little sister of hers would, in the after-time, be herself a grown woman; and how she would keep, through all her riper years, the simple and loving heart of her childhood: and how she would gather about her other little children, and make their eyes bright and eager with many a strange tale, perhaps even with the dream of Wonderland of long ago: and how she would feel with all their simple sorrows, and find a pleasure in all their simple joys, remembering her own child-life, and the happy summer days." Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.

Komninos Zervos
Lecturer,
Convenor CyberStudies Major,

School of Arts
Griffith University, Gold Coast Campus
Queensland, Australia