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Pif Magazine
ISSN: 1094-2726
Published by:
Pif, LLC
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Swiveling My Hips through the Interbunk : Page 1, 2, 3
Nostalgia for the Book and Oil of Olay
There have been few influential critiques of hypertext and new media, and those that have appeared are disappointing in their lack of sustained involvement with the very media they wish to critique. The most notable salvos have been launched by Sven Birkerts and William Gass, whose criticisms evince a surprisingly powerful nostalgia for the days before the Information Superhighway. Evidently this nostalgia has left both critics without the bandwidth to engage forms birthed, however monstrously, from new media on their own, non-nostalgic terms. Even Gass, whose pioneering, proto-hypertextual writing – particularly the fragmented brilliance of "In the Heart of the Heart of the Country" – has provided an important point of reference for many hypertext writers, disparages new media forms as a kind of pernicious child’s play appropriate only for kids who’re busy "swiveling their hips through the interbunk."
Everybody knows that the quarrel of ancients and moderns is far more ancient than modern. The voice of authority – ah, these pundits – has always opposed whatever may be fastened upon as trendy, or fashionable, or new, as long as it has already garnered enough share of the public’s attention to threaten the sovereignty of said authorities. And books, of course, are a significant material link in the otherwise largely symbolic economy of authority and cultural capital, which circulates like specie but doesn’t always play by the same rules. Perceived as threats to the stability of this economy, hypertext and hypermedia have occasioned much bewailing of "the end of books" and "the end of print." (The real culprits – media conglomerates who eat up small presses and spit out so-called unmarketable literary fiction – are never indicted; then again, it was Random House that brought out The Gutenberg Elegies.) Seen in this light, that Gass’ and Birkerts’ criticisms should be so charged with nostalgia (and, perhaps, envy) is hardly surprising. Times change. And nostalgia, of course, masks anger that the future didn’t turned out quite the way one expected. So even if the much-ballyhooed "death of the author" and "end of print" only refer to the perennial necessity of passing the torch, there are those who won’t grow old gracefully but, to paraphrase the hawkers of immortality in the form of Oil of Olay, intend to fight it, every step of the way.
an instance of hypertext, a hypertext of instances:
Sunshine ‘69
For hypertext and hypermedia to become more than mere late 20th century curios, the unanchored criticism of Gass and Birkerts must be countered with close readings, with discussions of real, extant works of hypertext and hypermedia. There is a growing body of precisely this sort of literature, but unfortunately much of it is pitched more to other academics than to everyday folk, making it hard to find (and occasionally difficult to decode). The news media is not helpful either, for it has covered these works in a piecemeal and rapid-fire way, as befits journalism, which must make do with the soundbite and the column inch. Accessible and sustained engagement with even a single work is astonishingly hard to find. Hence, my encounter, over the course of several weeks, with Robert Arellano’s Sunshine ‘69.
Sunshine ‘69 is not the first successful hypertext. Other innovative writers, most famously Michael Joyce, Mark Amerika, Stuart Moulthrop, and Shelley Jackson, have produced exceptional works in this medium for online and offline distribution. But Arellano's Sunshine ‘69 is of special interest for three reasons. First, although not unique in this regard, it’s available for free on-line, a publishing model which, if adopted on a large scale, promises to throw an intriguing monkey wrench into the usual, and usually dismal, economics of literary publishing. Second, the work is highly collaborative in nature, incorporating the talents of several artists and programmers in addition to Arellano, so the resulting work includes images, design, audio, and some programming. (It is also collaborative in an additional, and temporally quite expansive sense, for readers are invited to add their own stories to a bulletin board, thereby extending the process of textual creation, and making Sunshine ‘69 a perpetually unfinished work, open in Umberto Eco’s sense.) Finally, and perhaps above all, there is the way that the narrative structure of Sunshine ‘69 warps received ideas of cause and effect – that doubled, uncanny hobgoblin of both history and storytelling. The topic is worthy of several dissertations; what I have to say is impressionistic and brief, and may be summed up by the work’s own splash screen: "History," the work begins, "takes a wicked twist when you plunge into SUNSHINE69."
A wicked twist, indeed: Sunshine ‘69 consists not of a single story, but of a series of story fragments, akin to cinematic scenes, each from the point of view of a different character. (The cast is manageable at nine, but includes Mick Jagger and a deliciously neurotic Lucifer, mostly referred to as S’tan.) History has provided the climactic moment – Meredith Hunter’s death at the Rolling Stone’s Altamont concert – but Arellano begins where history leaves off, at the near-ineffable level at which everyday tragedies so often begin: with a string of bad decisions, with personal idiosyncrasy, misfortune and contingency. In brief: Mick Jagger has made a deal with devil – immortality in return for the Devil’s own heart’s desires: a moment onstage, a song about him. When Jagger defaults, Lucifer calls in his henchmen (none other than the Hell’s Angels), and one thing leads to another.
