RF:
I believe I have already answered this question in my
preceding answer. Personally, I see little difference
between Surfiction and Hyperfiction -- only a minor
difference in technique. Mark Amerika has often acknowledged
the influence of my work on his work and on his thinking.
GRAMMATRON uses different technical means to arrive
basically at the same result as SURFICTION. But let me take
this opportunity to clarify what a manifesto means to
me.
At its most endearing, a
manifesto has madness in it. It is peculiar, sometime angry,
quirky, or downright crazed. A manifesto is always opposed
to something -- explicitly or implicitly. It usually starts
out as a credo, but then gradually develops a persuasive
argument to convince the reader to join in.
Unlike an essay, a manifesto
is by nature a loud genre. It calls for capital letters,
loves bigness, demands attention, even indulges in
contradictions. It makes an art of excess. This is how it
differs from rational standard self-congratulatory ars
poetica. A manifesto is an act of d'emesure that
goes past what is considered to be proper, sane, rational,
and literary. It demands extravagant self-assurance. One
cannot argue against a manifesto. One accepts it or rejects
it totally.
A manifesto draws the reader
into the belief of the writer, by hook or by crook. The
present tense always suits the manifesto. My Surfiction
Manifesto of 1973 goes even beyond the present tense. It is
written in the future tense. It projects itself forward into
the future of fiction, or what Maurice Blanchot calls Le
Livre à venir. The 1996 manifesto is also turned
towards the future as it demands a reconsideration of what
literature can do to survive in the world where spectacle
has taken over.
A manifesto is generally, by
mode and form, an exhortation to a whole way of thinking and
being rather than a simple command or definition. In a way,
it is a poem in heightened prose.
I am giving this definition
of what I believe a manifesto is so that my so-called
manifestoes can be read for what they are. Somewhat
preposterous positions which, over the past three decades,
have been the occasion of heated discussions and
controversies in the literary world.
RS:
In your manifesto you say that the kind of literature we
need now is the kind that will systematically erode and
dissipate the setting of the Spectacle, frustrate the
expectation of its positive beginning, middle, and end, and
cheap resolution. This perfectly fits with what hyperfiction
is supposed to do. Now, for the sake of argument let me play
the devil's advocate and ask whether hyperfiction doesn't
actually support the setting of the Spectacle.
Doesn't the concept of autonomous hypertextual lexia and the
click gesture rather lead to sitcom aesthetics and
'clickativity', a kind of digital MTV, than to
self-referential, deconstructive text? Not to mention the
multimedialisation we were talking about
before.
RF: You have answered
your own question in a way. Yes the problem with
hyperfiction as it is now developed on the internet is
merely imitating the great spectacles offered by the
internet, all the publicity that flashes at us is better
than any of the hyperfiction I have looked at. Or even
better. The porno site on the internet are so far ahead in
terms of complexity and narrative structure than any
hyperfiction I have seen. The problem with the
hyperfictionists now working is that they have not done
their apprenticeship with the writers of the 50's (le
nouveau roman in France, Robbe-Grillet, Beckett, Butor,
Pinget, and so many more), of the 60's (with Calvino, Barth,
Vonnegut, Hawkes, Burroughs, Marquez and so many more), of
the 70's (with Sukenick, Coover, Gass, Katz, Abish,
Chambers, Federman and so many more).
The technicians who are
trying to create hyperfiction need to explore the fiction
written back then when writing fiction was starting all over
again to enjoy what it was doing. The problem with
hyperfiction: it takes itself too seriously, it whines, it's
sad, it's not funny, and worse it does not know how to be
self-reflexive.
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