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to develop new forms of writing, what John Tolva calls very appropriately the "age of
digital incunabula'w, readers and authors are still rooted in the convention of the old.
Postmodem thinkers have challenged our assumptions about writing and the book form.
Jacques Derrida's propositions, though not at all directly referring to computer writing,
can be read as premonitions of ideas picked up and elaborated in hypertext theory and
practice:
The end oflinear writing is indeed the end ofthe book, even if, even today, it is
within the form of the nook that the new writings - literary or theoretical - allow
themselves to be, for better or worse, encased. It is less a question of confiding new
writing to the envelope ofthe book than of finally reading what wrote itself between
the lines in the volumes. That is why, beginning to write withoutthe line, one begins
to reread past writing according to a different organisation of space. If today the
problem of reading occupies the forefront of science, it is because of this suspense
between two ages ofwriting. Because we are beginning to write, to write differently,
we must re-read differently."
The aim of this thesis is a re-reading of fictional texts, whose hypertextual elements
can only now, as the term has become defined, be recognised as a common underlying
principle. Its aim is, however, not only a one-way process ofre-reading the old. By placing
electronic fiction into a tradition, by bringing in the third element ofinfluence on the
early stages of hypertext and by approaching the shift from print to electronic medium as
an evolution rather than a revolution this thesis seeks to contribute to the understanding
of hypertext fiction and other experiments in computer writing, but also to point out
some of the shortcomings of the interpretation and implementation of postmodern
theories by hypertext fiction.
1.7: Brief OutlineoftheThesis
Computers do have thepotential to revolutionize our understanding ofliteracy, in the process
changing the three basic terms text, reader and writer. (Myron Tuman)f'
In the following chapters, I will look at each of these three terms, concentrating on
keywords of hypertext theory, its "grand narratives" (non-linearity and interactivity) in
49John Tolva, "The Heresy of Hypertext: Fear and Anxiety in the Late Age of Print", at:
http://sloop.abanet.it/-bellos/cafores.html fJo/8h996>. no page numbers
50 Jacques Derrida, OfGrammatology, quoted in Malmgren,p. 157·
61 Tuman, Myron, WordPerfect: Literacy in the Computer Age (Washington, D.C., London: Falmer Press,
1992), P.42. (see also his discussion ibid, PP 62-80).
Chapter I - page 2