Writing Machines

Tracing a journey from the 1950s through the 1990s, N. Katherine Hayles uses theautobiographical persona of Kaye to explore how literature has transformed itself from inscriptionsrendered as the flat durable marks of print to the dynamic images of CRT screens, from verbal textsto the diverse sensory modalities of multimedia works, from books to technotexts.Weaving togetherKaye's pseudo-autobiographical narrative with a theorization of contemporary literature inmedia-specific terms, Hayles examines the ways in which literary texts in every genre and periodmutate as they are reconceived and rewritten for electronic formats. As electronic documents becomemore pervasive, print appears not as the sea in which we swim, transparent because we are soaccustomed to its conventions, but rather as a medium with its own assumptions, specificities, andinscription practices. Hayles explores works that focus on the very inscription technologies thatproduce them, examining three writing machines in depth: Talan Memmott's groundbreaking electronicwork Lexia to Perplexia, Mark Z. Danielewski's cult postprint novel House of Leaves, and TomPhillips's artist's book A Humument. Hayles concludes by speculating on how technotexts affect thedevelopment of contemporary subjectivity.Writing Machines is the second volume in the MediaworkPamphlets series.