hypertext is also a “library of babble,” especially one created in this disparate fashion. Alinear; temporally problematic. We started writing it because we had decided to publish a book of criticism about each others’ (mostly unpublished) work. But then we decided that we might as well publish the anthology of the work that we would be writing about. Besides, we had already written all of that stuff. But there was one crucial missing ingredient: publicity. And also, “What to do now?” It was a weekend in Cincinnati. We didn’t want to spend it not writing. Obviously, we didn’t have all our work right there, so it seemed a little premature to get started without the necessary texts. We’d batted around the idea of writing a movie together (we were all broke and we needed to pay our student loans off soon and Boards of Trustees everywhere were making it evermore difficult to get a paying gig as a university teacher). But the idea for the movie seemed kind of lame and unexciting just then. So we decided that in order to create publicity for the anthology and the book of criticism, we should do a hypertext novel. We sat down and started writing. We talked about it, we stayed up all night writing, writing, writing. Little did we know then that it would become our whole summer. And it would be fun. And it was good.

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