In Writing Machines, N. Katherine Hayles writes lovingly about the “*.fects” of digital literature (including hypertext works, cybertext works, and first and second generation electronic literature). She attempts to explain the experience of confronting such works—of running a mouse over certain bits of text to reveal links, associated words, images, pathways, etc. She puts a lot of emphasis on materiality, and goes as far as to say that the “computer has often been proclaimed the ultimate medium because it can incorporate every other medium within itself.” (112) She shows examples of this by reprinting pages from the print books House of Leaves and A Humument, which, as with House of Leaves, have been rendered on a computer before becoming objects of print. But she does not discuss the effects of this print-computer-print method on the books themselves. She does not address the fact that the incorporation of print texts into the computerized world may cause change in the texts themselves, in how they are perceived, encountered, and enjoyed.

“The physical form of the literary artifact always affects what the words (and other semiotic components) mean.” (25) When discussing the electronic hypertext novel Califia, which uses a vast variety of inscription surfaces, including road maps, letters, star maps, and other print documents including journals, Hayles does not address what becomes of the materiality of a print medium that is incorporated into the digital. Is reading a transcribed print map on a computer the same experience as reading it in its native, printed tangibility? Does it retain its map-essence, or does it become something else, no longer print or digital but some amalgamation in between? When handwriting is rendered digitally, can it still be called hand-written? These seem like questions (at least in spirit) that should have been addressed in Hayles love-letter to the electronic literate. As one that so values reading in the bathtub, Hayles certainly seems to neglect discussing the medium of paper.

-Rae