"THE
END OF BOOKS -
- OR BOOKS WITHOUT END"
- OR BOOKS WITHOUT END"
Of all developments surrounding hypermedia, none has been as hotly as
frequently debated as the conjunction of fiction and digital technology.
Jane Douglas, in this book, confronts questions that are at the center
of the current debate:
- Does an interactive story demand too mucho from readers?
- Does the concept of readerly choice destroy the author's vision?
- Does interactivity turn reading fiction from "play" into "work"?
- Will hypertext fiction overtake the novel as a form of art or entertainment?
- What might future interactive books look like?
This book is compelling; she writes persuavely on all the major issues that pre-occupypeople who read and write interactive narratives. Concentrating primaritly on hypertext fiction, she argues that hyperfiction writers are natural heirs to the great modernist writers of the last century whose own work strained against the confines of the linear novel (Joyce and Woolf are favourite examples). Her tone is often charmingly bad-tempered; she makes plain her frustration that hyperficion works and their writers are still not considered part of the canon.
By surveying twentieth century critics and thinkers who write about the phenomenology of reading, such as Umberto Eco and Wolfang Iser, Douglas grapples with the notion that readers of hypertext fiction need to learn to read differently. Print ficction has had several centuries to evolve to its current highly refined state: when we read a book we do not "see" the technology behind its production, and, if the writing is good, we don't even "see" the words on the page but a continous stream of images and scenes conjured by the writer. Hypertext fiction is much more process-oriented than print fiction; the reader navigates their way around and through a text, often creating their own story. Jane Douglas argues that it is this creative interactivity an the way it challenges the traditional Author-Text-Reader relationship that makes hypertext fiction an innovation for narrative forms.
Douglas goes as far as to assert that, in many cases, the hypertext reading experience (whith its frequent interruptions as the reader conseders where to go next, its uncovering of layers, its repetitiones and dead-ends) is superior to that of the print fiction reading experience. "Readers enjoy the trance-like spell, immersiveness, and ability to screen out the buzzing world around them that are the hallmarks of ludic reading only when they are reading books that are undermaking, immersiveness existing in inverse proportion to the complexity of the characters and prose".
On the other way, Douglas argues that one of the exemplary things about a large-scale hyperfiction ( she uses the example of afternoon ) is that it can take much longer to read, navigate than a novel. "Hypertext, of course, do not have pages, and, in any case, a mere tally of how many places afternoon or Victory Garden contains tell us little about how long any one reader might spend with it... In any case, the lenght of time you or I might spend reading anything in print is a poor measure of the time required to read print narratives".
However, Douglas is arguing that, in a sense, a hipertext can be the ultimate desert island read, the book that changes every time you look at it, the book that never has to end.
But for me is the concept of "books without end" that is problematic. All stories need endings, in fact, the point of any good story is the ending. There can be ambiguity in that ending, and the suggestion of future possibilites but, as readers, we require endings.
And Jane's conclusion "a plausible version of versions of the story among its multitudinous possibilities will suffice equally well", is not convincing, because, do we really want "books without end"?
In this book Douglas argues that hypertext fiction needs to supplant the print novel as a superior, more experimental form. As she herself acknowledges, it is difficult to predict how technology will change the way we read. But Douglas's book is full of enthusiasm for this new literary form, and thoroughly demonstrate the possibilites for hypertext fiction.
CRITICISMS
"A classic of hypertext theory and criticism."
Jay David Bolter
"Written in a lively, personable style, The End of Books is essential reading for anyone interested in literature as it is practiced in the New Media"
M. Katherine Hayles
"There's a lot here one could learn about how to make a written work interesting - Douglas is that good a writer"
Alfred Barten
"Douglas also does a much better job than the earlier authors of distinguishing among the various forms of electronic text, writing, and authoring (...), but exploring the nuts and bolts of each and building her aesthetic and ideological observations on that."
Don Challenger
- Does an interactive story demand too mucho from readers?
- Does the concept of readerly choice destroy the author's vision?
- Does interactivity turn reading fiction from "play" into "work"?
- Will hypertext fiction overtake the novel as a form of art or entertainment?
- What might future interactive books look like?
This book is compelling; she writes persuavely on all the major issues that pre-occupypeople who read and write interactive narratives. Concentrating primaritly on hypertext fiction, she argues that hyperfiction writers are natural heirs to the great modernist writers of the last century whose own work strained against the confines of the linear novel (Joyce and Woolf are favourite examples). Her tone is often charmingly bad-tempered; she makes plain her frustration that hyperficion works and their writers are still not considered part of the canon.
By surveying twentieth century critics and thinkers who write about the phenomenology of reading, such as Umberto Eco and Wolfang Iser, Douglas grapples with the notion that readers of hypertext fiction need to learn to read differently. Print ficction has had several centuries to evolve to its current highly refined state: when we read a book we do not "see" the technology behind its production, and, if the writing is good, we don't even "see" the words on the page but a continous stream of images and scenes conjured by the writer. Hypertext fiction is much more process-oriented than print fiction; the reader navigates their way around and through a text, often creating their own story. Jane Douglas argues that it is this creative interactivity an the way it challenges the traditional Author-Text-Reader relationship that makes hypertext fiction an innovation for narrative forms.
Douglas goes as far as to assert that, in many cases, the hypertext reading experience (whith its frequent interruptions as the reader conseders where to go next, its uncovering of layers, its repetitiones and dead-ends) is superior to that of the print fiction reading experience. "Readers enjoy the trance-like spell, immersiveness, and ability to screen out the buzzing world around them that are the hallmarks of ludic reading only when they are reading books that are undermaking, immersiveness existing in inverse proportion to the complexity of the characters and prose".
On the other way, Douglas argues that one of the exemplary things about a large-scale hyperfiction ( she uses the example of afternoon ) is that it can take much longer to read, navigate than a novel. "Hypertext, of course, do not have pages, and, in any case, a mere tally of how many places afternoon or Victory Garden contains tell us little about how long any one reader might spend with it... In any case, the lenght of time you or I might spend reading anything in print is a poor measure of the time required to read print narratives".
However, Douglas is arguing that, in a sense, a hipertext can be the ultimate desert island read, the book that changes every time you look at it, the book that never has to end.
But for me is the concept of "books without end" that is problematic. All stories need endings, in fact, the point of any good story is the ending. There can be ambiguity in that ending, and the suggestion of future possibilites but, as readers, we require endings.
And Jane's conclusion "a plausible version of versions of the story among its multitudinous possibilities will suffice equally well", is not convincing, because, do we really want "books without end"?
In this book Douglas argues that hypertext fiction needs to supplant the print novel as a superior, more experimental form. As she herself acknowledges, it is difficult to predict how technology will change the way we read. But Douglas's book is full of enthusiasm for this new literary form, and thoroughly demonstrate the possibilites for hypertext fiction.
CRITICISMS
"A classic of hypertext theory and criticism."
Jay David Bolter
"Written in a lively, personable style, The End of Books is essential reading for anyone interested in literature as it is practiced in the New Media"
M. Katherine Hayles
"There's a lot here one could learn about how to make a written work interesting - Douglas is that good a writer"
Alfred Barten
"Douglas also does a much better job than the earlier authors of distinguishing among the various forms of electronic text, writing, and authoring (...), but exploring the nuts and bolts of each and building her aesthetic and ideological observations on that."
Don Challenger