Reading Hypertext

The future of serious writing will lie on the screen. We will read, for reading is indispensable, but we will be less closely tied to the book, to paper and ink. The chief innovation of electronic writing is the link the connection between pages that makes the Web possible and that has already transformed the way we read. For twenty years, fine writers have worked to explore the possibilities of the link, to come to grips with the most important new punctuation since the comma. Many of our finest critics have studied hypertext, especially such classics as Michael Joyce s afternoon and Shelley Jackson's Patchwork Girl.

In Reading Hypertext, Mark Bernstein and Diane Greco have selected the best and most important studies of hypertext reading and criticism, drawn from disciplines ranging from philosophy and classical philology to film theory and technocriticism. These indispensable studies reveal how much we now understand about the reading hypertext, and point the way for important new work.

Table Of Contents

1. Into The Weeds
Mark Bernstein

2. Why Are We Still Talking Like This?
Diane Greco

3. La Maison Hypertext
Charles A. Perfetti

4. Piecing Together And Tearing Apart: Finding The Story In Afternoon
Jill Walker

5. A Cognitive Model
N. J. Lowe

6. How Do I Stop This Thing? Closure And Indeterminacy In Interactive Narrative
J. Yellowlees Douglas

7. Reconfiguring Writing
George P. Landow

8. The Lyrical Quality Of Links
Susana Pajares Tosca

9. A Pragmatics Of Links
Susana Pajares Tosca

10. Stitching Together Narrative, Sexuality, Self: Shelley Jackson s Patchwork Girl
George P. Landow

11. These Waves Of Bugs
Anja Rau

12. Cinematic Paradigms For Hypertext
Adrian Miles

13. Nonce Upon Some Times: Rereading Hypertext Fiction
Michael Joyce

14. Returning In Twilight: Joyce s Twilight, A Symphony
Dave Ciccoricco

15. Hypertext Structure Under Pressure
David Kolb

16. Reading Spatial Hypertext
Catherine C. Marshall

17. Hypertext Teaching
Adrian Miles

18. Hypertext With Consequences: Recovering A Politics Of Hypertext
Diane Greco

19. What The Geeks Know: Hypertext And The Problem Of Literacy
Stuart Moulthrop