Flex the book one way the reader see “writing.” Flex the book the other way the reader sees “machines.” Writing… Machines… Writing…Machines. It is the same with the narration. Flex it one way the reader gets Kaye/autobiography, flex it the other and the reader gets a fictional narrative but unlike the cover, the continuous flexing of the narration produces many different types of literary styles within the text. So, why does Hayles constantly switch through these different literary styles?

It seems that Hayles in doing this in order to help illustrate the point of the book, that literature has changed and the way a reader encounters this literature is changing as well. The narration allows the reader to slowly grasp and follow along the journey of literature from words on a page to images on a screen. The different literary styles guide the reader through the text and help him/her to understand Hayles media-specific analysis, which she describes as:

Complementing the foundational concepts of material metaphors, inscription technologies and techno texts is a kind of criticism that pays attention to the material apparatus producing the literary work as physical artifact. Although material criticism is highly developed in specialized fields such as bibliographic criticism and textual studies, I think its value is much more general and widespread. Accordingly, I want to call it media-specific analysis (MSA), as a way to invite theorists and critics to think more broadly about the connections between strands of criticism that have not yet made common cause with one another. (29)

Hayles attempt at illustrating media-specific analysis and the change in literature from print to media through her narration provides a unique experience for the reader. Whether the experience was good or bad is difficult to say. For this reader, the “special effects” of the book, such as the enlargement of certain portions of the texts, became tedious to read. Maybe Hayles has over done it a bit in order to get her point across. This seems plausible considering that media can be over done as well. But over all the Writing Machines experience was an enlightening one.

-Lule