| E-publishing topics run the gamut Whether e-book or print formats, the word still the main focus 08/05/2001 By JOSEPH MILAZZO / The Dallas Morning News
It remains to be seen whether digital technologies will lead to a new
aesthetic medium, but the program for May's 4th Annual Digital Arts and
Culture Conference (
www.stg.brown.edu/conferences/DAC/program.html) is instructive. A set of
readings titled "A Night at the Cybertexts" shared equal time with
papers on the narrative structure of video games, proceedings on the
community dynamics of virtual realities, and real-time, fully
interactive audio/visual installations. But even with so much activity
on the margins of the print industry, most of these experiments still
rely on one of the oldest human inventions: the word.
Digitopia: The Look of the New Digital You
Richard DeGrandpre
(Random House, available in both print and e-book formats,
www.randomhouse.com/atrandom/categories/ebook/ $9.95; $15 paperback)
For some, the rhetoric surrounding the World Wide Web is just an
irritation, but for psychologist DeGrandpre, it raises serious issues of
individual and social well being. In a world of rampant consumerism, the
author says, "once people are wired for a virtual world, the present
world grows dim." Central to Dr. DeGrandpre's critique is his reading of
the Internet as a tool corporations envision as a means to colonize the
last frontiers of individual imagination and privacy. Far more than just
another alarmist neo-Luddite tract.
The Unknown
Dirk Stratton, William Gillespie, Scott Rettburg and Frank Marquadt
(
www.unknownhypertext.com/)
Hypertext fiction, with its avant-garde cachet and hip academic
standing, is a prime target for satire. The Unknown is partly
that – painful and amusing in about equal measure. In the main
narrative, the four authors – almost interchangeable, flatly inflected
narrative voices who are, nevertheless, contentious about their turf –
are criss-crossing the nation to promote a literary "monsterpiece,"
The Unknown. Like Spinal Tap or Ken Kesey's Merry Pranksters,
absurdity arises in their meetings with Denise Levertov, Thomas Pynchon,
Noam Chomsky and the staff of Wired Magazine. The Unknown,
then, is a road story. Vast in scale and freely mixing fact and
invention, real people and imaginative composites, surreal situations
and almost numbingly explicit detail, defiantly heterogeneous in format
and style, excessive in its hyperlinking and embracing of confusion –
The Unknown parodies the very meaning of "literary" and the modes of
production that govern the creation of literature.
The Jube Dog Never Lies
Ramin Zahed
(
www.iuniverse.com/marketplace/ bookstore/ $15.95)
Set in Iran in 1979 as the shah is deposed and the Ayatollah Kohmeni
assumes power, The Jube Dog Never Lies (sponsored by the Writer
Digest's Writer's Showcase initiative) is told from the point of view of
a 12-year-old boy, with interludes for reflections by the boy's
surrogate grandfather, one Dr. Cosmo. Some will be attracted to this
novel by its exotic locale and magical realism: the talking dogs of the
title and even a "jin" or djinni. But this story of a family pulled
between West (American television, brand-name products) and East
(Islamic theocracy) is told strongly enough and populated with enough
rich, real characters to engage as well as to sustain interest.
The Civil War on the Web
William G. Thomas and Alice E. Carter
(Scholarly Resources Books.
www.scholarly.com. $18.95 paperback)
What historians Mr. Thomas and Ms. Carter have assembled here is far
more than the simple bibliographic directory implied by their work's
prosaic title. For many Americans, the Civil War is an interest pursued
with both academic rigor and a hobbyist's enthusiasm. This guide is an
attempt to impart scholarly shape and intellectual balance to the vast
amount of information available via the Internet on this subject.
Topically arranged (e.g., "Battles and Campaigns," "Life of the
Soldier," "Slavery and Emancipation"), the 95 "best" sites identified
here are examined with impressive depth. Moreover, special attention is
paid not only to the sites' content but to their organization and
general accessibility. But most helpfully, the guide is accompanied by a
CD-ROM with the full text (in Adobe Acrobat format) of the print
original, with all URLs active as imbedded hyperlinks. Though not
comprehensive, The Civil War on the Web offers a friendly,
genuinely informative alternative to the average Internet search engine.
Joseph Milazzo writes about electronic publishing for The Dallas
Morning News.
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