Letter of Support
Professor Nelson Hilton, Dept. of English, University of Georgia
I differ from some theorists in that I do not see hypertext as a new technology or medium. While I agree with commentators like George Landow and J. David Bolter that the development of digital technologies have begun a "paradigm shift" in the history of communication technology (Landow, Hypertext 2; Bolter 2), I would suggest that the "new" hypertext paradigm has, in fact, always been available and has been exploited sporadically throughout the history of writing. I want to distinguish the conceptual paradigm of hypertext (text seen as a network of nodes and links) from specific technologies by which this paradigm can be presented. Similarly, I would distinguish the linear paradigm, in opposition to which hypertext often defines itself, from specific technologies like printing or handwriting. However much a given technology may encourage a particular paradigm of textuality, the diversity of textual production shows that this relationship is not determinate.
In many ways, I follow Ted Nelson's assertion that "hypertext is fundamentally traditional and in the mainstream of literature" (1/17). There have always been alternatives and contrary impulses to the linearity of writing. It is only because "nothing else has been practical" that linear textuality has persisted as long as it has (Nelson 1/16). Even a cursory examination of the print tradition reveals numerous mechanisms, some quite conventional and established, that have developed to facilitate nonsequential approaches within that sequential medium. The table of contents or index of a printed book enables, albeit clumsily, nonsequential access to the work and can therefore be thought of as a hypertextual device. Similarly, cross-references, bibliographies, sidebars and other common features of printed texts are all more or less hypertextual. Whole genres of texts -- dictionaries, encyclopedias, and reference manuals -- are ill suited to sequential, printed presentation and, unsurprisingly, have been among the first texts to be translated to electronic, hypertextual format. Finally, as Landow reminds us, scholarly footnotes are essentially hypertextual, providing alternative paths within the "main" text, which may in turn lead to secondary material quite outside the original text (Hypertext 5).
Beyond these individual devices, the very notion of "literature" can be seen as hypertextual. Nelson states: "Literature is an ongoing series of interconnecting documents. In any ongoing literature, there is perpetual interpretation and reinterpretation, and links between documents help us follow these connections" (2/10). Literary allusions, quotations, borrowings and imitations can all be seen as implicit "links" to other documents in the larger body of literature. It is only because these links have been rendered invisible by writing technologies that the idea of hypertext linking seems so novel. One contribution of hypertext theory to literary studies is to re-present literary productions as complex networks situated within even larger webs of association, what Nelson calls "the grand cat's-cradle" of links that surrounds all documents (2/12).
Even within such a broad definition of hypertext, however, the work of Ezra Pound stands out as particularly exemplifying hypertextual features. He had the advantage of being remarkably engaged with the publishing institutions of his day, giving him a particular awareness of the social and technological forces mediating literary production (Kenner 37-59; Naenny). In his critical prose, for example, Pound searches for a new vocabulary to describe a textuality that did not fit the paradigms of his time, displaying the sensibility of what Bolter calls "the late age of print" (2): an increasing awareness of the limitations of print and a groping forward for new possibilities for expression in an obsolescing technology.
I have argued elsewhere for the similarity of Pound's poetic theories to the terminology of hypertext theory and for the applicability of that terminology to the later Cantos. More important, however, than these surface affinities is a deeper one that may show Pound as not just anticipating hypertext theory, but as an ancestor of it. The "ideogrammic method," which comes to dominate both Pound's critical and his poetic style, can be considered a theory of knowledge, one in which the reader an active participant in the construction of meaning (Dickie 106-47; Perloff 155-99; Yee 242-56). In the Cantos in particular, Pound provides the material and points out the existence of links, but the actual connection of them is left to the reader. This method assumes a certain model of cognition, one that also underlies hypertext theory. The primacy of the link in hypertext theory was introduced by Bush and Nelson, who drew their own inspiration from a belief in the associative qualities of human thought. Another of the objective of my dissertation is to explore the genealogy of this belief, tracing it back through Pound to his sources. This exploration should provide much-needed context for a belief that has often been accepted as axiomatic in hypertext theory.
The question remains, however: how do we read hypertextually? Answering this question is the most important objective of my dissertation. While many critics have been quick to proclaim that hypertextual literacy requires us to give up the habits we have learned from print, few have offered concrete guidelines for such reading. The troubled reception history of the Cantos is illustrative of the importance of this question. Foiling traditional expectations of unity, sequence, and closure, the Cantos have baffled and frustrated readers, resulting in persistent charges of formlessness and incoherence. Even sympathetic readers have had difficulties, resorting to metaphors from the visual or musical arts, which provide only approximations of the paradigm governing Pound's poetry. What has been lacking is the necessary literacy, and I would argue that the literacy needed to read the Cantos is hypertextual literacy.
In attempting to define the skills of hypertextual literacy I will proceed empirically, using Pound's later Cantos -- Section: Rock-Drill (1956), Thrones (1959), and Drafts and Fragments (1968) -- as my laboratory. While the problem of literacy exists for all of the Cantos, it is most pronounced among these later sections, which have drawn some of the harshest criticisms and have perplexed even the most sympathetic readers. Thus they should prove to be a sufficiently rigorous test of the validity and usefulness of my methods.
At this stage in my research, I do not know what my conclusions about hypertextual literacy will be. Certainly such literacy cannot take as its goal the production of a definitive or "final" interpretation of the text. Landow reminds us that hypertextual reading will always be incomplete: "Quantity removes mastery and authority, for one can only sample, not master a text" ("What's a Critic to Do?" 35). Instead of pursuing the chimera of mastery, hypertextual reading must be exploratory. As Bolter discusses at length, the hypertext paradigm lends itself to spatial or "topographical" representations of the text, with reading being a form of travel or "navigation" among the connected nodes (10-11, 16-19). This image seems particularly appropriate for a poem whose central figure is Odysseus and which begins by setting "forth on the godly sea" (Canto 1/3). To read the Cantos, even sequentially, is to undertake a journey. One "moves" from source to source or era to era. Following the sequence of the printed text is rather like following a charted course; the choices have been made for one. However, the Cantos offer other possibilities, opportunities for the reader to make other choices and follow different paths than the linear sequence of the printed pages. For these other possibilities, I find the metaphor of "surfing" most apt.
Popularized in the phrase "surfing the web," surfing can serve as a useful metaphor for a general theory of hypertext reading. The term points to a fusion of freedom and constraint that I find inherent in the act of hypertextual reading. The surfer must follow lines of force already present in the waves, but with skill he or she can move with great freedom within and across those lines. So, too, with the hypertext reader. Nodes and links set up certain lines of force; the reader as surfer rides those lines through the work. Each "run" will be different. They can be longer or shorter, yield more or less interesting results. One might even push the metaphor and discuss the possibility of "wiping out" or becoming becalmed in such reading. In surfing the Cantos, I will not attempt to master them into a comprehensive trope or plot. Rather, I hope to find interesting lines of force and ride them to find the exhilaration and the pleasure of the text.
I cannot predict precisely where these explorations will finally lead, but I do expect them to contribute to the fields of both Pound scholarship and hypertext theory. As regards Pound, I hope to finally remove the unnecessary and obstructive print-bound expectations of unity, closure, and sequence that continue to hinder the reading of the Cantos. By replacing these inappropriate expectations with the idea of a reader-determined, creative, exploratory reading, I believe the Cantos will generate the appreciation and the enjoyment that they deserve. As far as by providing a practical test of hypertextual reading, I hope to remedy a conspicuous absence in hypertext theory. While there is already much commentary on what hypertext is not -- its difference from and subversion of other textual paradigms -- there is far less consensus on what it is, on what hypertextual reading can possibly offer in terms of positive meaning. A hypertextual reading of the Cantos should provide a starting point for serious discussion of the skills of hypertextual literacy. As digital media, computers and the World Wide Web continue their meteoric rise within the communication scene, such a discussion seems all the more urgent.
Kenner, Hugh. The Mechanic Muse. New York: Oxford University Press, 1987.
Landow, George P. Hypertext: The Convergence of Contemporary Critical Theory and Technology. Parallax: Re-Visions of Culture and Society. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1992.
_____. "What's a Critic to Do?: Critical Theory in the Age of Hypertext." Hyper/Text/Theory. Ed. George P. Landow. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1994. 1-48.
Naenny, Max. Ezra Pound: Poetics for an Electric Age. Bern: Francke Verlag, 1973.
Nelson, Theodor Holm. Literary Machines 93.1. Sausalito, CA: Mindful Press, 1992.
Perloff, Marjorie. The Poetics of Indeterminacy: Rimbaud to Cage. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1981.
Pound, Ezra. The Cantos of Ezra Pound. Tenth Printing. New York: New Directions, 1970.
Yee, Cordell D. K. "Discourse on Ideogrammic Method: Epistemology and Pound's Poetics." American Literature 59 (1987), 242-56.
These interests in modernist literature and textual studies converged during my doctoral studies to draw me into the field of hypertext, largely thanks to the support of Professor Nelson Hilton, who has been instrumental in promoting the study of electronic textuality in the English Department at the University of Georgia. During the 1994-95 academic year, I worked as a research assistant to Prof. Hilton to create an electronic archive of images for William Blake's Songs of Innocence and of Experience as well as an electronic text of Blake's complete poetry and prose. (Both projects are now available on the WWW at virtual.park.uga.edu/~nhilton.) Also under the direction of Prof. Hilton, I became the first student in the department to propose Hypertext Theory and Practice as a special area of concentration for the doctoral comprehensive examination. I was admitted to candidacy in November 1996.
Besides my theoretical interest in the intersections of hypertext theory and traditional literary studies, I have been actively engaged in the use of electronic media in the classroom. In 1996-97, I served on a committee of teaching assistants experimenting with lab-based groupware systems (Daedalus and Norton Connect) in composition classes. On my own, I have used the WWW to support a survey course on American Literature to 1865 (http://parallel.park.uga.edu/~wccole/eng233/). Currently, I am teaching an on-line English Composition class under the auspices of the Georgia On-line Teaching Initiative (http://parallel.park.uga.edu/distance/goti.html). This course uses a combination of Internet resources -- email, the WWW, and an educational MOO -- to teach composition in an exclusively virtual environment (http://parallel.park.uga.edu/~wccole/eng101/w98/).
"Pound's Web: Hypertext and the Rock-Drill Cantos," Paideuma 26 (Fall-Winter 1997): 137-150.
"'The newly-crowned Monarch of all the Goats there are': Ernest Hemingway's Heinie Zim," Indiana State University Third Annual Conference on Baseball in Literature and Culture, April 18, 1997, Terre Haute, Indiana.
"Pound's Web: Hypertext in the Rock-Drill Cantos," National Poetry Foundation Conference on American Poetry of the 50's, June 18-23, 1996, Orono, Maine.
The revolutionary potential of the hypertext/hypermedia field is unquestionable. Because the hypertext paradigm is so well fitted to emerging communication technologies, it promises to supersede the linear paradigms of writing and print as the dominant mode of communication, forcing a reconceptualization of the roles of reader, writer, and text. The increasing mainstream presence of hypertext structures, notably the remarkable success of the WWW, suggest that this revolution is already very much upon us.
For this reason, it is all the more imperative that hypertext/hypermedia scholars continue their work of understanding, exploring, and contextualizing this form of textuality. The most important of these tasks is the development of hypertext literacy. While it has been amply pointed out by scholars that the habits of literacy appropriate to print are ill-suited to the paradigm of hypertext, much lass has been done in the way of describing and understanding the skills of hypertext literacy. Without a commensurate development of such skills, technological advances will be at best misunderstood and at worst downright dangerous.
A second critical point for the future of hypertext/hypermedia is the abandonment of the prevailing antagonism between print and electronic cultures. While the proselytizing tone of early theorists may have been necessary in order to draw needed attention to the field, the air of superiority which they often display is now unnecessary and, indeed, counterproductive. The hypertext field must begin to develop a more comprehensive view of media and to place itself within a continuum of communications technologies, all of which have strength and valid applications. One of the lessons of this period of technological transition is that dominant media become transparent, blinding their users to their status as media and presenting their inherent biases as inevitable virtues. As hypertext and electronic media continue their rise, we must be careful to avoid the critical blind spots that have been characterized the ascendancy of past paradigms.