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Electronic Literature
ENGL 146EL - Winter 2006,  Rita Raley
Wed, 1/25 Cybertext

In this class we will begin to put digital textuality in dialogue with two moments of experimental writing: the 1920s (Dada, Tristan Tzara) and the 1960s (Oulipo, William S. Burroughs & Brion Gysin).

What is it about hypertext that makes it available to being read in terms of cut-ups, combinatorial writing, and writing under constraint? In what sense does the logic of these other moments and modes of experimental writing inform hypertext?

Oulipo's "literature machines" generate texts according to rules, codes, procedures. What is the "potential" of this mode of composition?

Some of the themes and issues we will address include the following: authorship (including collaborative writing between computer and user); writing as assemblage; writing as mixing (musical analogies).

  • Marcel Duchamp, "Fountain" (1917)
  • Tom Stoppard, Travesties: "It may be nonsense, but at least it's clever nonsense."


  • Burroughs on cut-ups

    "The cut-up method brings to writers the collage, which has been used by painters for seventy years. And used by the moving and still camera. In fact all street shots from movie or still cameras are by the unpredicatble factors of passersby and juxtapositon cut-ups. And photographers will tell you that often their best shots are accidents . . . writers will tell you the same. The best writings seems to be done almost by accident but writers until the cut-up method was made explicit--all writing is in fact cut-ups; I will return to this point--had no way to produce the accident of spontaneity. You cannot will spontaneity. But you can introduce the unpredictable spontaneous factor with a pair of scissors.

    "The method is simple. Here is one way to do it. Take a page. Like this page. Now cut down the middle. You have four sections: 1 2 3 4 . . . one two three four. Now rearrange the sections placing section four with section one and section two with section three. And you have a new page. Sometimes it says much the same thing. Sometimes something quite different-cutting up political speeches is an interesting excercise-in any case you will find that it says something and something quite definite. Take any poet or writer you fancy. Here, say, or poems you have read over many times. The words have lost meaning and life through years of repetition. Now take the poem and type out selected passages. Fill a page with excerpts. Now cut the page. You have a new poem. As many poems as you like. As many Shakespeare Rimbaud poems as you like. Tristan Tzara said: "Poetry is for everyone." And Andre Breton called him a cop and expelled him from the movement. Say it again: "Poetry is for everyone." Poetry is a place and it is free to all cut up Rimbaud and you are in Rimbaud's place. Here is a Rimbaud poem cut up.

    "Visit of memories. Only your dance and your voice house. On the suburban air improbable desertions . . . all harmonic pine for strife.
    "The great skies are open. Candor of vapor and tent spitting blood laugh and drunken penance.
    "Promenade of wine perfume opens slow bottle.
    "The great skies are open. Supreme bugle burning flesh children to mist."

    "Cut-ups are for everyone. Anybody can make cut-ups. It is experimental in the sense of being something to do. Right here write now. Not something to talk and argue about. Greek philosophers assumed logically that an object twice as heavy as another object would fall twice as fast. It did not occur to them to push the two objects off the table and see how they fall. Shakespeare Rimbaud live in their words. Cut the word lines and you will hear their voices. Cut-ups often come through as code messages with special meaning for the cutter. Table tapping? Perhaps. Certainly an improvement on the usual deplorable performances of contacted poets through a medium. Rimbaud announces himself, to be followed by some excruciatingly bad poetry. Cut Rimbaud's words and you are assured of good poetry at least if not personal appearance.

    "All writing is in fact cut-ups. A collage of words read heard overheard. What else? Use of scissors renders the process explicit and subject to extension and variation. Clear classical prose can be composed entirely of rearranged cut-ups. Cutting and rearranging a page of written words introduces a new dimension into writing enabling the writer to turn images in cinematic variation. Images shift sense under the scissors smell images to sound sight to sound sound to kinesthetic. This is where Rimbaud was going with his color of vowels. And his "systematic derangement of the senses." The place of mescaline hallucination: seeing colors tasting sounds smelling forms.

    "The cut-ups can be applied to other fields than writing. Dr Neumann in his Theory of Games and Economic behavior introduces the cut-up method of random action into game and military strategy: assume that the worst has happened and act accordingly. If your strategy is at some point determined . . . by random factor your opponent will gain no advantage from knowing your strategy since he cannot predict the move. The cut-up method could be used to advantage in processing scientific data. How many discoveries have been made by accident? We cannot produce accidents to order. The cut-ups could add new dimension to films. Cut gambling scene in with a thousand gambling scenes all times and places. Cut back. Cut streets of the world. Cut and rearrange the word and image in films. There is no reason to accept a second-rate product when you can have the best. And the best is there for all. Poetry is for everyone . . ."


    "Pages of text are cut and rearranged to form new combinations of word and image-In writing my last two novels, Nova Express and The Ticket That Exploded, I have used an extension of the cut up method I call "the fold in method"--A page of text-my own or some one else's--is folded down the middle and placed on another page- The composite text is then read across half one text and half the other--The fold in method extends to writing the flash back used in films, enabling the writer to move backwards and forwards on his time track-For example I take page one and fold it into page one hundred-I insert the resulting composite as page ten-When the reader reads page ten he is flashing forwards in time to page one hundred and back in time to page one-The deja vu phenomena can so be produced to order-(This method is of course used in music where we are continually moved backwards and forward on the time track by repetition and rearrangement of musical themes- In using the fold in method I edit delete and rearrange as in any other method of composition-I have frequently had the experience of writing some pages of straight narrative text which were then folded in with other pages and found that the fold ins were clearer and more comprehensible than the original texts-Perfectly clear narrative prose can be produced using the fold in method-Best results are usually obtained by placing pages dealing with similar subjects in juxtaposition."



    I felt a Cleaving in my mind
    As if my Brain had split-
    I tried to match it - Seam by Seam -
    But could not make them Fit.

    The thought behind I strove to join
    Unto the thought before
    But Sequence ravelled out of Sound
    Like Balls - upon a floor.


    - Emily Dickinson


     



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