When I approached this week’s reading, I felt just as apprehensive as Kaye does in the book. I am still having difficulty with doing away of the printed page. Having been educated by the canon of the “dead white men” and having taught some of this very same canon to high-schoolers, I have trouble grappling with the idea of hypertext and cybertext. The computer has always been a place for emailing, “googling” and writing text. I have never encountered text that is created by the hardware itself. I struggled with understanding what Hayles is presenting in the beginning of this text. Looking at some of the “texts” she discusses, I found it even more frustrating. I perused some of Michael Joyce’s work, specifically The Sonatas of Saint Francis and Sister Stories and found the multiple links and hypertexts to be very wearisome. This did not look promising to me.
The structure of this book alleviated some of these obstacles by moving away from straight theory based discourse. I enjoyed the “autobiographical” story of Kaye’s exposure and understanding of this new form of literature. Her initial anxiety and confusion matched mine. While she has fully embraced and understands this new medium, I am still perplexed by some of the language and abstract ideas. Hayles writes “that electronic literature operate[s] in fundamentally different ways than print and require[s] new critical frameworks to assess its reading and writing practices” (37). These new frameworks help in addressing such works as The House of Leaves, A Humument, and Lexia to Perplexia, but do not make it clear to me how this new form of literature will be incorporated for a larger audience.

Kayles’ approach to House of Leaves brings up the interesting and usually problematic topic of authorship and interpretation. This idea of a story being told through so many filters (film, journals, notes, etc.) creates this mystification of what “really” occurred. We are drawn to the faith that the documentary style of the film would be the truth but then are thrown into disarray when we realize this film doesn’t actually exist.
This filtering process brought back the experience of reading “the good parts version” of The Princess Bride by William Goldman. The premise that the original was so horribly boring that Goldman’s father had to edit it while reading to his son creates this problem of authority again. To go along with Goldman’s deception means we accept the editorial aspects of Goldman, Sr. To question this editing brings up this question of who is actually writing and whose ideas are being put on paper. This, as in the case for Johnny Truant, does not take away from the overall experience. It rather enhances the inquisitive nature of the reader.

Kayle presents this new information in a very approachable way, but I still struggle with getting away from literature not printed on the page and bound. Is this because I have not reached the “spiritual” reading that Kermode wants?

-Dave