Comments on LBernier at tribune.com

[still lookin 4 the face i had b4 the world was made]

On Tue, 29 Apr 1997, Jules Siegel wrote:
> Pynchon aside, "Lineland" is notable for the following:
> 
> [1] It may be the first book that has originated from e-mail correspondence.
> I will appreciate hearing about any others.
> 
> [2] It was produced entirely online, except for Dale's brief visit to
[...] 

I think every junior writing teacher/grad student in the English department
at the Univ. of Florida here in Gainesville is trying to do something of the
sort these days.  They are all falling over each other producing web pages,
MUDs, etc.  And the poor freshmen in their composition classes are learning
even less about how to write than before.

See my signature at the end of message for my opinion on the relationship
b/t the Internet and quality literature.

> [3] I not only wrote the text, but I also set it in type and designed the
> book in every aspect, from cover illustration to the back cover copy. Dale
> gave me 100% creative control. I'm sure you can appreciate how revolutionary
> this is.  You will perhaps remember that although I am known as a writer, I
> am also a graphic designer, a very unusual combination. Few authors have
> ever achieved 100% control for text, much less the entire production. Even

This actually strikes me as very old-fashioned...i.e., the sort of thing
that would have been done in the 17th/18th century, when a man could have
read widely in most of the learned fields of the day, built his own printing
press, and written and printed his own collection of works on philosophy,
natural history, religion, etc. 

It is of course becoming a reality again with "desktop publishing." 
However, the very existence of that term indicates that "Lineland" is not
the first (post-)modern book thus produced.  Actually, I used to have a
supervisor at work who was a Pentecostal preacher...she wrote, typeset,
printed, and published her own books on conducting exorcisms and other forms
of "spiritual warfare" (Pentecostals have abducted this term from early
Xtianity and given it a narrow, almost magical definition, apparently). 

So, join the club, Jules.  :)

> [4] It is one of the first (maybe only) books about the Internet culture
> that attempts to provide a kind of slice of Internet life, rather than
> extended technical and philosophical discussions about cyberspace. It is
> cyberspace set in type.

Seen it.  Done it.  My friends and I wrote an interactive "novel" on a BBS
a few years ago; the record of it (interspersed with the everyday chatter of
the bulletin boards) is at

http://www.afn.org/~vvc

> novel that began with Defoe's "A Journal of the Plague Years." I think that
> "Lineland" is the beginning of something new that has no name. I believe
> that I have invented a new kind of book, but we will have to wait for

Sorry if my mail seems to have an attitude, but this kind of statement
invites refutation and, well, mockery.  :)

Max

M a x i m u s  D a v i d  C l a r k e | There already are a million
         http://www.afn.org/~traveler | monkeys on a million typewriters
                "Surrealist-At-Large" | ...and Usenet is NOTHING like 
                     traveler at afn.org | Shakespeare... --Blair Houghton