Drafts

Dan Green poses interesting questions on the recent news over Vladamir Nabakov. Some context:

In the Nabokov case, a manuscript the author felt should not be available will either be destroyed or be published against the author’s wishes. Whereas Carver agreed to the publication of the impure versions of his work (thus effectively claiming them as his own), here the author wanted the impure version of his work-in-progress (impure because not completed) to be withheld from publication. If we are finally able to read The Original of Laura, we would be reading something the author had not yet claimed as his own (worthy of being attributed to “Vladimir Nabokov” on the cover), something that, to Nabokov’s way of thinking, did not yet constitute a text that could be read at all in any meaningful sense. It was the finished work that Nabokov would share with his audience; the work done on the way to that finished form should not concern them.

I don’t think the manuscript should be published. It could be housed in a library and studied as a draft perhaps, if the author’s wishes go ignored. What complicates this is that there’s no draft comparison, no flow to show decision-making. Can we measure the loss of the manuscript if it is destroyed? I’d say no.

If Nabokov wanted the daft destroyed it should be put into a fireplace.

Same with Kafka. If Kafka had wanted his novels destroyed, Brod should’ve destroyed the manuscripts. If the argument back is “but then would we wouldn’t have The Trial” then my answer is “You’re right.” Can you lose something you never had?

But what were Kafka’s “interests” after his death?

Should I follow an instruction given by a deceased relative? What if this request goes against my interests?

Nelson’s First Law

Mark Bernstein’s comment in a previous post reminds me of something I forgot to come back to. One of the reasons I’m tracking certain aspects of the Brimmer hypertext is to explore questions of aesthetics in the art form of hypertext fiction. Certain editing and creative problems arise in the crafting of hypertext that apply only to a story crafted to be read via mediation by computer and will not arise when crafted to be read in a paper medium. Yet, both creative works will share whatever traditional elements apply to story telling, such as scene and dramatic tension.

This goes to the context of the term “e-book,” which I’ve commented on in a post entitled ebooks and the new media paradigm some years back. A work written as literary hypertext (or any genre for that matter) is created within the context of forces, limitations, modes, and computational frameworks of the surface environment. This is either an elaboration on or exposition of a stipulated Nelson’s First Law of Hypertext: a text built to be read on the computer.

If a hypertext is reproduced on paper, it’s no longer a hypertext.

Specific Detail

As I’d written about earlier, the imagery must be compressed.

So, let’s say you were weighted down under a stone on the floor of a sea. Could happen.

He opened his eyes to a dead fire. He blew coughs out of his lungs. He rose to his feet with the grit of seasalt on his tongue.

Hypertext and Time

For Brimmer, who has the gift of long life, time is an interesting phenomenon. In this section of the story, things are about to move in a different direction:

Brimmer never figured that a miscalculation in arch width would lead to the incineration of Max Splunt. He hadn’t suspected Max for a man likely to kill thousands in one desperate act of spite.

Management called Brimmer in. “Brimmer,” they said, “you’re a miracle worker, although it is a mystery, a great mystery. That millimeter mistake of yours saved ten thousand people from being crushed and burned.”

“He’s with me now, Brimmer,” Death said. “And boy is he sorry he tried to sabotage the whole business just to ruin you.”

“I never took him for an evil man,” Brimmer responded to Death. “Horrible craftsman, yes. He didn’t become you.”

The space is comprised of four paragraphs and three links to separate paths that will all meet at a common space where the story will proceed. The reader wont need to follow all three paths to find continuity or context because each path, while offering different takes on Max Splunt’s sabotage and death, covers enough information, yet each path colors the experience of the narrative in different ways.

Management is a collective noun here. It speaks in one royal voice. It doesn’t matter where they called him in and what was on the office walls. And what is the relation between Managements and Death’s conversations? What are the times? Are they sequentially related? This shouldn’t matter. Both conversations happened and are intrinsically important not important because they follow one another. In this way, they become like objects or images in Brimmer’s experience: memories.

Entertaining Ourselves to Death Redux

I just walked by a commercial for an electric pepper grinder. I can think of a few cases where this might be a necessity, say someone with sever arthritis.

But it was also advertised with a hundred dollar grinder. Now that no one needs.

Theme: Americans are entertaining themselves to zero. Hm, that may be hyperbolic, but I suspect not.

Today’s Hartford Courant has an article by David Fink titled An Old Feeble Future which explores a subject often talked about here: young people fleeing the state and the current population burdened by inappropriate living spaces. Fink in the piece argues that housing costs is the problem. I disagree. Part of the issue has to do with affordable housing but limiting the problem to this one variable clouds reality. The larger issue is spatial: Connecticut doesn’t seem to be able to do anything about the notion that to live in a place one should be able to afford everything about it: so it’s not just housing; it’s energy, it’s scales of competition, it’s travel, it’s career opportunity, it’s relevant education, it’s the livability of cities and towns, and it’s people-centered politics.

An electric pepper grinder will not solve this, Connecticut’s most pressing concern: its livability.

Appropriateness in Hypertext

In a note to this post on hypertext and effects Juan writes:

It can be argued that most pieces of electronic literature could be reproduced in paper, thus the question about essential innovation seems valid. What cannot be reproduced on paper is the processing capacity of a computer. Storyspace offers some basic processing. Literatronic offers a sophisticated IA engine for processing.

I’d like to clarify one issue. In my view, Storyspace, to pursue the path of aesthetics, allows for the writing of hypertexts appropriate to its environment. In all honesty, I don’t think enough hypertexts have been written in the software to provide fuller analysis of the possibilities: I’d suggest a thousand (how many books are published every year?) In this sense, appropriateness (a criteria I take from urban design), is a key factor. This is a subtle but important point.

In Brimmer and Death, for example, I’m not worried about links or the relationship between one window and the next. Rather, I’m fussing over regions of the writing space: top and bottom, primarily, for reasons of closure. This will put into motion a new editing stage: given the top of a writing space, how should I fuss over the bottom of its origin. I’ll be looking at this very issue as I experience a show of hands.

Hypertext Aesthetics

A force driving Brimmer and Death is an aesthetic that has to do with Storyspace writing spaces. I call this an aesthetic because the force has to do with effects to the reader. I’ll get into more detail in a second.

But are Storyspace writing spaces all that different from any other space in which a hypertext would be constructed: another sort of editor, for example, say Flash, Fireworks, Literatronica, or something else. Does anybody really ask about how MS Word or another word processor influences a story published in Storyquarterly? The machine, in these cases, is assumed or forgotten. It’s a hidden arbiter.

Since Storyspace generates a self-contained work, then the editor must be be considered as integral to a fiction written in Storyspace. Hypertext fiction, in this context, seems a little generic in my view. Fiction in hypertext: doesn’t this carry a little different meaning?

Aesthetics to come.