Pre-web Digital Publishing and the Lore of Electronic Literature

Description

This Element examines a watershed moment in the recent history of digital publishing through a case study of the pre-web, serious hypertext periodical, the Eastgate Quarterly Review of Hypertext (1994-1995). Early hypertext writing relied on standalone, mainframe computers and specialized authoring software. With the Web launching as a mass distribution platform, EQRH faced a fast-evolving technological landscape, paired with an emergent gift and open access economy. Its non-linear writing experiments afford key insights into historical, medium-specific authoring practices. Access constraints have left EQRH under-researched and threatened by obsolescence. To address this challenge, this study offers platform-specific analyses of all the EQRH's cross-media materials, including works that have hitherto escaped scholarly attention. It deploys a form of conceptually oral ethno-historiography: the lore of electronic literature. The Element deepens our understanding of the North American publishing industry's history and contributes to the overdue preservation of early digital writing. Cover Title page Copyright page Pre-web Digital Publishing and the Lore of Electronic Literature Contents 1 Introduction 1.1 Conceptual Framework and Terminology 1.2 Digital Modernism and Social Materialism 1.3 Methodology 2 Between Paradigms 2.1 Publishing at the Turn of the Millennium 2.2 Digi-modernist Little Magazine 2.3 Product Concept and Business Model 2.4 Material Forms and Processes 2.5 Copyright, Contracts, and Royalties 2.6 Building a Community 2.7 Between a Rock and a Hard Place 3 The Works 3.1 Poetry 3.1.1 Jim Rosenberg: Folding Visual Language Space 3.1.2 “Into an Alien Ocean”: Kathy Mac’s “Unnatural Habitats” 3.1.3 “The Shattered Eye Sees Deeper”: Rob Swigart’s “Directions” 3.1.4 “What’s in Here out There”: Edward Falco’s Sea Island 3.1.5 “Iron Weights Swinging from Their Pricks”: Richard Gess’s “Mahasukha Halo” 3.1.6 “Seasoned Heart” and “Love’s Deserts”: Robert Kendall’s“ A Life Set for Two” 3.2 Short Fiction 3.2.1 “Longing for Morning”: Mary-Kim Arnold’s “Lust” 3.2.2 “That’s All She Wrote”: J. Yellowlees Douglas’s “I Have Said Nothing” 3.2.3 “Obsessive Fragmentation”: Kathryn Cramer’s “In Small & Large Pieces” 3.2.4 “[I]t Doesn’t Matter because It’s Me”: Judith Kerman’s“ Mothering” 3.2.5 Dodging the Storyspace Bug: Deena Larsen’s “Century Cross” 3.2.6 A “Scotomic Episode”: Michael van Mantgem’s “Completing the Circle” 3.2.7 “The Path of Madness”: Richard Smyth’s “Genetis: A Rhizography” 3.3 Nonfiction 3.4 Print Paratexts 4 Conclusion Appendix Technical Details of Individual Eastgate Quarterly Review of Hypertext Works Glossary References Acknowledgments