Portal by Rob Swigart

This interactive novel is a mix between a computerized novel and an interactive game. There are four  different participants, which are mainly important for this work: the author Rob Swigart, the producer Brad Fregger, Activision the responsible publisher company, and Nexa Corporation who are responsible for the programming process.
     The player plays an unnamed astronaut protagonist which came back to the earth and sees that there are no more humans at all. The player gets assisted by a storytelling mainframe called Homer.
     Every done task leads to new unlocked data, which are links of information. And only with the help of these links, the player can find out what happened with the humans and reach the end/goal of the game.

     For more information about Rob Swigart and his works follow this link.

Swigart, Rob. Portal, A Computer Novel. Activision, 1986

K-R. Pekgüven

Night Film by Marisha Pessl

Night Film is a mystery thriller written by Marisha Pessl, who was born on October 26th, 1977. Before starting writing novels, Pessl worked as a financial consultant and only wrote in her free time. Nowadays she is known as an American writer and her debut novel was “Special Topics in Calamity Physics”, which was published in 2006.
     The novel is about the daughter of the legendary russian reclusive horror-film director Stanislas Cordova. Her name is Ashley Cordova and she is 24 years old. Ashley was found dead in an elevator in Manhattan. The elevator was not working. Supposingly she just commits suicide. Her father, Stanislav, who was not seen in public for a while, is despised from the peope, because of his movies.
The journalist Scott McGrath thinks, that Stanislas Cordova had something to do with the death of his daughter. So he and two others are interviewing several people to crack the case. They interview people who do know both of the Cordovas. At the end they discover that truth of the mystery could have some beyond natural, scientific reasons.
     The author also uses newspaper articles and screenshots, which were printed in the book. This is a new and not very common structure of novels.
    The book leads the reader to interactivity, because there is an App which scans so called Easter-Eggs. Those Easter-Eggs are hidden all over the novel. When the reader finds an Easter-Egg and scans it with the App, he will get a lot of extra information, about the story. Those added information gives the reader a whole new view about what he just read. 

K-R. Pekgüven

Three Views On Hypertext

1: Hypertext and the Changing Roles of Readers (Nancy G. Patterson)
     Summary, assess and reflection:
Patterson analyses the use of hypertext and digital literature at schools or as a tool for students, giving even various games. Further she reflects on the role of the author in digital and print media and the attitude brought towards literature in both cases. She puts print and digital media in contrast and focuses on the accessibility. But she also discusses the negative arguments of digital media. She cites several authors and their opinion on hypertext and how they are killing literacy. In the last passage Patterson talks about the “naturalness” of Hypertext and how literature has emerged throughout time.
     This article might be interesting for students researching the topic of digital media and hypertext because it sums up all the aspects of digital literature. The author discusses the history of hypertext, the roles of readers, compares print to digital literature and looks close onto the negative aspects around the topic. What could be seen as really helpful is the focus on school and students and how hypertext and digital literature could be used as a tool at school or at the university.
     In my opinion it is a useful source because it doesn’t chose sides and the author talks value-neutral of the pros and cons of digital literature.

2: On Generalizing the Concept of Hypertext (Michael P. Bieber, Steven O. Kimbrough)
     Summary, assess and reflection:
The article describes how a hypertext is build and what a hypertext is all about in general. It talks on the system level and the core ideas of hypertext. It focuses not on the texts itself or its content and provides a deeper view into the making of a hypertext. It shows how to build a hypertext and what is important to know about. It gives a discussion and conclusion on hypertext and how it can be used as a method for reducing the human operating costs. It shows the core of a text and its efforts needed to create such digital literature.
     In contrast to my first source this text is more useful to technical interested students. If you really want to research on hypertext, you could say that it is useful to know how they are made and which technical knowledge is needed to create such a text. The article tries to explain the different kinds of hypertext and puts them in contrast. I found it very interesting to see what it takes to build something “very easy” at first sight and that not only the story of a text can be difficult but the system of it too.


3: Digital Texts and the New Literacies (Allen Webb)

     Summary, assess and reflection:
Allen Webb focuses in his article on the use of digital literature instead of classic print media at college. His use of digital media should help his students focusing on reading carefully and closely. Students should be enhanced to find their way around the internet to find poetry and literature. His article puts a light on how big the world of literature is on the internet in contrast to print media. Students are connected to living poetry and living poets and to a lot of additional information a single textbook couldn’t provide. Webb argues that the internet allows students to work with poetry and literature free and to even be able to change poetry. Another of Webb’s arguments is the possibility to access additional information or simply additional texts in seconds. Online archives provide in Webb’s opinion a lot more information at once than a single bibliography could provide.
     Regarding to my other two sources, this article focuses on how students can work with digital literature and which possibilities can be found working with them. If a student is researching on digital literature, this article could provide additional information focusing on traditional digital literature and in times of technology at school, such articles can be useful to broaden a becoming teachers mind. A Webb state that today’s students are used to the medium and therefor can work with it more freely what is in my opinion very true. Researching digital literature shouldn’t only focus on hypertext and advanced literature, it should take a deeper look on its beginning and its roots lying in texts provided on the internet.

Works Cited:

Patterson, Nancy G. "Hypertext and the Changing Roles of Readers." The English Journal 90.2 (2000)

Bieber, Michael P., and Steven O. Kimbrough. "On Generalizing the Concept of Hypertext." MIS Quarterly 16.1 (1992)

Webb, Allen. "Digital Texts and the New Literacies." English Journal 97.1 (2007)

K. Freeman

George P. Landow - HYPER / TEXT / THEORY

Landow, George P. (Ed). Hyper / Text / Theory. Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press, 1994.

Hyper / Text / Theory, edited by George P. Landow, is a collection of several essays from different authors. These essays deal with the superordinate topic of hypertexts. Furthermore is this book divided into three subtopics: Nonlinearity, The Politics of Hypertext and The New Writing.
     At the outset, the editor himself, George P. Landow, gives an introduction to hypertexts, its structure and he gives umpteen different examples. Landow goes into the importance of the feature of the electronic links. Subsequent, he states that hypertexts offer possibilities as well as problems and that they can also be seen crucial. The following essays are going to have a detailed look at these problems and possibilities.
     The chapter Nonlinearity deals with the narrative of hypertexts. This chapter contains five essays. Espen J. Aarseth writes about nonlinear texts and this essay is not primarily concerned with hypertext; she rather looks at the repertoire of textual forms. Nonlinear texts are objects of verbal communication, which are not fixed sequence of letters, words or sentences. These texts rather differ in their words or sequences of words from reading to reading because of the shape, conventions or mechanisms of the text. In the essay of J. Yellowlees Douglas, he writes about the closure of a story. Thereby he compares the narrative and especially about indeterminacy of print books and interactive narratives and how essential a closure to our readings of narrative is.
     The second chapter The Politics of Hypertext contains three essays and deals in the foreground with the impact these hypertexts, interactive narratives have on the society and the politics. Charles Ess for example discusses the issue if the new technologies like hypertexts democratize communication and society appears as a central justification. Stuart Moulthrop afterwards writes about the change and increase of technologies and its impact on the society and the culture.
     The last chapter The New Writing has two essays. In these essays, the authors establish ties of hypertext with philosophy. It discusses question like: can we use philosophy using hypertext? What kind of work might a philosophical hypertext do?
     This book is of avail if someone wants to research in detail about hypertexts. It offers a detailed introduction to hypertexts and its different variations and delivers further insight into its structure/ narrative and influence on society. Furthermore, this book has a look on this topic in a crucial way and does not just depict facts. 

S. Lamouchi

Night Film by Marisha Pessl

Marisha Pessl (*October 26, 1977) is an American novelist, who started working as a financial consultant and just wrote in her free time. Her first novel “Special Topics in Calamity Physics”, published in 2006, almost exclusively got good reviews and criticism (especially in US-American literature criticism). Her second novel “Night Film” (2013) features some interesting structural peculiarities.
     The novel is a mystery thriller and as well as her first novel, a New York Times bestseller. It is about the young Ashley Cordover (24), who was found dead in a not working elevator in Manhattan warehouse. Her dead was ruled a suicide. Her father is the cult-horror-film director Stanislas Cordova, who hasn’t been seen in public for 30 years. He is a mysterious man who is despised by many people because of his harrowing movies. The Journalist Scott McGrath wants to investigate the death of Ashley Cordova with the help of two acquaintances of Ashley, Nora and Hopper, because he beliefs that there is lying more behind her death and Stanislas Cordova. McGrath’s life took a turn for the worse during his first researches about Cordova, this time he could lose his mind.
     The structural peculiarities of this book are its connections to the material McGrath is researching in and its interactivity with the reader. On one hand this book offers next to the normal text some experts and details of the things the figures in the book are looking at. These are excerpts of telephone books, letters, text message-chats, photos or magazines. By these little images, the reader can have a look at the material by his- or herself. Moreover, Pessl included some screenshots of author created web pages. There are many pages of this book which just contain web pages, belonging to the story (for example online blogs or a web page of Cordova votaries), which Pessl invented all by herself. On the other hand, Pessl published an app, the “Night Film Decoder” app belonging to this book  On some pages the reader can find an image of a bird, which Pessl calls Ester eggs. If the reader scans these images with the Night Film Decoder app, it unlocks additional texts, PDFs, videos and audio files by which the reader can get deeper insights into the story.
     Some reviews of the connection of this book and the app claim the interactivity as a distraction. They state that the reading experience would be interrupted too often and that the app and the technical device, the mobile telephone, lead the reader to lacking of concentration. Supporter however state that the huge amount of information keeps the reader interested, that the search of these Easter eggs is entertaining and that this interactivity intensifies the reading experience instead of distracting it. Pessl explained, that she mentioned the app at the end of the novel, because she wants the reader to read though the novel without getting interrupted and use the app afterwards to have a closer look at some details. 

S. Lamouchi

Further Reading to 'A Visit From the Goon Squad' and 'Black Box'

Ewald, Morgan. "Dirtied Hands: A Look at Time and Change in A Visit From the Goon Squad." (2013).
     In this article Ewald investigates the time and change in the novel ‚A Visit From the Goon Squad‘ by Jennifer Egan. The author aims to outline how the passing of time is depicted in the work of Egan and how this connects to the changes in the American society. The paper focuses on the meaning of technology in the novel and how the characters view the advancing of technology. The article is useful to gain further insights into the many connections of Egan’s novel to the ongoing changes concerning time and technology that have happened in America during the recent years and those that might be still to come.

Kedaitis, Kirstyn. "Somewhere Over the Rainbow: The Significance of Color in A Visit From the Goon Squad." Performance. millikin. edu.
     In her article Kedaitis outlines the meaning and importance of the color yellow in Jennifer Egan’s novel ‘Visit From a Goon Squad”. According to the author Egan uses colors to document the maturity of her characters. The paper suggests that yellow represents youth and nostalgia and darker colors symbolize the accepting of the past and moving on. Additionally, Kedaitis proposes the idea that some of the characters are indirectly characterized by their hair color. The article offers new ways of reading and interpreting certain descriptions and encourages the reader to read between the lines for a deeper meaning.

Bao-yu, N. I. E. "Exploring image culture through narrative: A study on Jennifer Egan’s Twitter fiction black box." Journal of Literature and Art Studies 5.10 (2015): 820-829.
     This article discusses the possibilities of the narrative in Jennifer Egan’s Twitter novel ‘Black Box’. The author classifies the novel as a serial “new media narrative”. However, he points out that Egan did not compose ‘Black Box’ as a real time Twitter narrative. Bao-yo stresses that the novel achieves an immediate reading experience by allowing the reader to sense the same feelings as the protagonist. In the article the different functions and possibilities of Twitter are laid out in detail what enables the reader an in depth understanding of the novel ‘Black Box’.

J. Ost

Adam Hammond - Literature in the Digital Age: an Introduction

Hammond, Adam. Literature in the Digital Age: an Introduction. New York, NY: Cambridge U Press, 2016.

Adam Hammonds Literature in the Digital Age is, as the title of the work already states, an introduction to the topic of digital literature. Beginning with a discussion of Marshall McLuhan’s argument that the medium is the message as well as Nicholas Carr’s Atlantic cover story Is Google Making Us Stupid?, the book provides the reader with two arguments which provide a good basis for discussion. McLuhan argues that the way in which something is presented is more important than the actual information being delivered, indicating that an e-book carries a very different message to a print book. Carr uses this statement as a basis for his article, arguing that the digital medium is distracting us from reading itself. He indicates that text presented in a digital format can often be distracting and is influencing the concentration we have on texts, to a negative standard. This chapter is a great example of digital reading itself as Hammond presents a continuous string of information without ever fully analysing one thought. He moves from McLuhan, to Carr and then quickly moves onto Clay Shirky, a reader of the Atlantic who disagrees with Carr’s arguments. Through this the reader is subjected to a large range of initial arguments and thoughts while indirectly being presented with what Carr refers to as superficial reading. 

     The second part of the book, titled Digitalization, continues thoughts from Part I, talking about the shift from print medium to digital literature and the advantages as well as disadvantages that come with it. Hammond argues that while the transfer from print to digital makes the text lose all the physical properties of a book, such as the feel of the pages or the smell of paper, turning a book into a digital medium means greater availability, as the text can be spread more easily and more cheaply than it could be in a physical format. Adding to this he lists a big social issue that arises with the print medium, stating that the physical book or text is always limited to certain social groups. Where a digital text can be accessed by nearly anyone for free, a library will often be limited to certain groups of people such as university students or members.

     The reader is then introduced to one of the issues that come with the transfer of text to the digital medium with the discussion of the digital libraries Project Gutenberg, JSTOR and Google Books.  Legal issues arose due to the copyright laws in certain countries, as these often would not allow the digitalization and free publication of texts. Once again this allows the reader to see both arguments for and against the digital text. Hammond then gives further tools for analysis introducing elements such as the “Type-Token Ration” which is the number of unique words in a text divided by the total number of words. This is used in order to measure lexical diversity and is presented here as one of the tools used in order to better understand texts, the way they appeal to the reader and possibly even in order to indicate their complexity.

     The final part of the book, Born Digital, returns to social analysis as well as discussing the impact digital literature and hypertexts have on the print medium and the way literature is understood. This final chapter serves as a springboard for the reader as Hammond introduces the reader to a large amount of ideas or discussion points which are extremely useful when digital literature is analysed. For example, a large discussion on video games is featured, including presentations of The Stanley Parable or Gone Home and a discussion if video games can be considered as literature. While Hammond provides his own conclusion, stating that while carrying literary elements, video games still have large differences to other forms of literature, he is very brief, allowing the readers to form their own thoughts and come up with their own conclusion. In summary Literature in the Digital Age is essential when studying digital literature and hypertexts as it provides not only an introduction to the subject but presents the reader with food for thought, giving inspiration and asking important questions which are left partially open in order for the reader to be able to answer for themselves. 

J. Petri