Computers, Writing, Rhetoric and Literature

Introduction

History has sadly not recorded for us the responses of the first monks to encounter one of Gutenberg's Bibles. Did they regard it as the devil's work? Did they shake their wrists in relief? Unlike modern academics, medieval monks didn't worry about tenure, and those with no more manuscripts to illuminate most likely were fruitfully employed elsewhere. A hand that was deft with the quill could surely peel a few potatoes or give a wine press a good turn.

Yet it is doubtful whether contemporary scholars would welcome a transfer to the custodial or cafeteria staff. So it is no wonder we look upon the emerging technologies of computers, the Internet, and electronic learning environments with a bit of apprehension. Just when we thought it was safe to declare that the author wasn't dead after all, but just taking a bit of a nap, here comes the proclamation of the death, not only of the author, but also of the book, the publishing house, the reader, and print itself. With nothing left to study but, it seems, ourselves, can the death of the scholar be far behind?

As John Slatin points out,[1] the MLA seems to think so. One can imagine the committee assigned to pen the "Statement on the Significance of Original Materials" in a cold drafty room, illuminated only by candlelight (avaunt! ye demon electricity!), a gilt-edged copy of The Gutenberg Elegies -- Sven Birkert's neo-luddite bible -- clutched reverently over their breasts, drafting their resolution in hopes of protecting the last vestiges of honor of the printed text.

Alas, the book is a whore. She'll sleep with anyone who can coax a reading out of her, in any form, and was doing so long before electronic suitors started knocking on her door. Still, some of the MLA's fears are certainly grounded. In the 1960s and 1970s, libraries welcomed the advent of microfilm, which allowed them to clear their basements of all those old moldy newspapers and magazines. Who would have thought that a couple of years later, someone might actually want to study an original Krazy Kat Sunday panel, or research the historical point when Santa's suit became Coca-Cola red?

Of course, no advocate of hypermedia is suggesting we set the torch to even the 23rd paperback prating of The Bridges of Madison County, at least not for reasons related to electronic scholarship. But even the most technophobic of scholars are today at ease calling books "texts." It does not seem so far a stretch, then, to suggest that the textual world be expanded to include electronic texts, and electronic responses to and reconstructions of those texts. Yet, as Slatin notes, "efforts to computerize key aspects of literary scholarship have so far worked to inhibit the transformation of material from print to electronic form, freezing the text in an image of unitary wholeness even while blowing it to smithereens." [2]

Why is this so? It is partly, as Slatin suggests, the newness of the medium. And, as he suggests, we certainly need many more electronic texts. But the failures of the medium are partly our own fault (I say "our" because, if you are reading this journal, you are probably one of the converted already). We often think of the value of the work we do in electronic environments as self-evident, forgetting that there are many for whom our goals and methods are obscure. This apparent smugness on our part is not helped by the celebration of any hypertextual work, no matter how useful or pointless it is. For a good idea of the current state of affairs, simply look at the apparently defunct Joyce Hypermedia Studies site -- not updated since 1995! -- and Jorn Barger's excellent defunct critique of that very site. Besides, when even outstanding scholarly print editions get praised and not used--the side-by-side facsimile edition of the folio and quarto of King Lear being a notable example--hypermedia scholars carry an extra burden: they must demonstrate the value of their work.

Nor should we, in our attempts to bring the cyborg to life, forget the value of even the most simple of electronic editions. It is true, as Slatin notes, that a simple ASCII file does not even begin to test the possibilities of hypertextualization. It would be wrong, however, to dismiss the uses of a plain old ASCII file, especially since this is probably the means by which most scholars are first introduced to electronic texts. Certainly, an ASCII file allows for ways into the text which would be, if not impossible with a print version, certainly tedious and staggeringly time consuming. Within a few seconds you can find that passage in the Commedia where Dante complains about the taste of bread in exile; within a minutes, you can compile a mini-concordance of the color references in Heart of Darkness; within a few hours you can verify that Melville's word count per sentence and use of subordinate clauses in Moby Dick went up after reading Hawthorne. [3] Instead of paging back and forth through a printed text for a half-remembered phrase, you can quickly search an e-text.

A true hypertext, of course, does not merely duplicate the text of the text, nor digitally represent the text as a three-dimensional object, nor even provide those all-important links to extra-textual elements (though these are certainly important), but adds a new level of textuality. For hypertext to be truly useful to scholars and not merely a toy for theorists or even a new medium for fiction writers, we must, as Slatin notes, "develop a new scheme for encoding the information about texts that scholars deem or might come to deem important." [4]

We don't know yet what we can do in cyberspace. This is good, because we don't know yet what we can do in print. Note the controversy surrounding the Gabler edition of Ulysses. Think how problematic the creation of definitive hypertext will be, since technology allows us to include in full all the variations that Gabler could only hint at by cipher, in addition to all the variations a hyper-reader might be able to construct. What and where is the text of Ulysses then? Heady stuff, to be sure. Which is why I, for one, welcome the neo-luddites among us, and hope attrition doesn't decimate their ranks too soon. They keep us honest.

This paper is intended, then, as a bridge between both camps. The first two sections consider possible advantages that hypertextual editions offer for scholarship and address technological, social, and aesthetic concerns and limitations that must be addressed in creating hypertexts. Section three takes a critical look at some current scholarly hypermedia sites to see how they make use of the medium's advantages and limitations. Sections four and five take a narrower approach, addressing issues in the hypertextualization of everyone's favorite "hypertext," Ulysses. While I do not offer grand solutions, I hope skeptics will come away with some respect for the possibilities and promises (if as of yet unfulfilled) of hypertext, and proponents will come away with an awareness of how far we have yet to go, as well as some practical tips to keep in mind when creating hypertext documents.

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Notes

[1] John Slatin,"La Zambinella Meets the Cyborg: Barthes, S/Z, and Print-Based Literary Studies."(http://www.cwrl.utexas.edu/~cwrl/v3n1/zambinella/). CWRL Electronic Journal. 3.1.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Andrew Cline, "Counting on E-texts for Rhetorical Analysis: The Case of Hawthorne's Influence on the Composition of Moby-Dick." (http://www.cwrl.utexas.edu/~cwrl/v3n1/response1/index.html). CWRL Electronic Journal. 3.1.

[4] Slatin.