ELO President Joseph Tabbi writes about his experiences reading electronic literature in his most recent post to the On the Human forum. This post raises several good points that I've been articulating, poorly, to myself over the past year or so.
Point 1: Rereading is critical to understanding electronic literature. I add to this thought that sporadic or selective"rereading," in the sense that we engage in with print literature, is often nearly impossible with many new media works that offer no way to "mark" a page, to return to a specific section of the piece, or even to find the same lexia within a piece that one may have luckily stumbled upon in a prior reading.
Point 2: Tabbi writes, "What is hard is finding the works worth preserving, defining their literary qualities, and establishing incentives for readers to go back, for more." I couldn't agree more. Electronic literature, many would say, is not exactly a huge field in the grand scheme of things. But consider that within that field there is little referring; any work that can be posted to a website is fair game. The field becomes overwhelming quickly. Add to that the distinction between openly accessible work and for-profit ones, and the dynamics of sifting through these pieces, with little aid from those who might establish a "new media cannon," and it is no surprise that the casual reader might become quickly discouraged.
Point 3: Tabbi also comments, "Only rarely have I applied the keywords, “Postmodern,” “Experimental,” “Fiction,” “Poem,” and even “Narrative” to electronic literature post-Web 1.0." At the close of his post, Tabbi raises the point that I run into again and again in my dissertation research: how to categorize these different works. Keywords are helpful, yes. But the categories that exist are often more exclusionary than these multi-modal pieces can usefully allow. To even find "narrative" pieces one must consistently define and redefine what narrative means, or how it can be usefully applied.
I think that Tabbi's piece is a useful (and relatively short) read. You should head over if you get some free time in the midst of your summer shenanigans.
