If one want to talk about
literature meeting the web, one would be well-advised to
start with literature which misses the web. That does not
mean talking about books. It means starting with literature
which is on the web, not for aesthetic reasons, but rather
to bypass the challenge of evaluation by a publisher. What
one mostly see on the net are stories, poems, even novels
written in the traditional way. The only difference is that
those pieces are presented in digital form and not between
the covers of a book or in a printed magazine. The aim
behind this is to distribute literature without facing the
restrictions of the book trade. The disadvantage of doing so
is distributing literature without the pleasure of the book
trade, that is, getting some money out of your
work.
Now, I do not object to the
idea of avoiding the constraints of the traditional book
trade, its rules, or, to echo Michel Foucault, the "police
of discourse". Considering that the press is owned and ruled
by a very few people and that the book trade first of all
follows the taste and demand of the consumers, that is,
considering the actual circumstances of cultural production,
I have great sympathy for every attempt to break out.
However, this is a different story, and one title of a
lecture covering it might be: "The Press Monopoly and the
Drudge-Report: When David Meets Goliath on the Web".
Such a lecture would take a
more social approach to literature on the web. I intend
instead to talk about a revolution that is taking place in
the realm of aesthetics. The focus here will be on
literature that addresses many assumptions that traditional
literature, be it on the web or on paper, takes for granted.
Some of these assumptions are:
- Literature consists of
words and nothing but words.
- Literature is something
supplied by an author to readers.
- The reading process lies
in the hands of the reader.
- A story can be set up in
a nonsequential way but is still to be read in a certain
order indicated mainly by numbers at the bottom of the
page.
- Words can move one and
are often meant to do so but are not themselves supposed
to move through the text.
The literature I am going to
talk about is different. Our first example comes from the
opening of a German piece that has the strange title "Time
for the bomb" by Susanne Berkenheger which won a German
competition for internet literature in 1997.
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