The Phoenix Network:
 
 
About  |  Advertise
 
News Features  |  Talking Politics  |  This Just In
Best2012Vote-1000x50

Four questions for a hypertext pioneer

Links
By DANIEL MCGOWAN  |  December 8, 2010

TJI_shelley-jackson_main
NONLINEAR Jackson.
As both an author and illustrator, Shelley Jackson has looked beyond the limitations of singular genres or techniques to create a novel style of work. Perhaps best known for her 1995 creation, Patchwork Girl, Jackson is considered a pioneer of hypertext fiction, an interactive, nonlinear form replete with links. Jackson was at Brown University this week to read a piece from her latest project, which she calls newspaper collaging, and the Phoenix caught up with her for a Q+A.

YOU'VE FOLLOWED AN UNCONVENTIONAL PATH TO SUCCESS SINCE YOUR TIME AS A BROWN MFA STUDENT. Well, Brown encourages experimental work, so it's not like I was having to buck the system at Brown. [The school] is unusually welcoming in that way and it was at Brown that I encountered hypertext and kind of played around with it. Partly it's just temperamental, due to the fact that from an early age I always was really interested both in writing and in art and I resisted the idea that I would ever have to choose between them. I always insisted that I could do both and other things too. It seemed more interesting to go in all different directions and that's just always how I've worked.

PATCHWORK GIRL IS CONSIDERED A GROUNDBREAKING WORK OF ELECTRONIC LITERATURE, OR HYPERTEXT FICTION. IN MANY WAYS, YOU HELPED CREATE THE GENRE. WHAT WERE YOU HOPING TO ACCOMPLISH WHEN YOU STARTED THE PROJECT? In the beginning, I realized that it provided a way to explore things I was already interested in exploring in print in a way that was a lot more natural. I'm not a particularly linear thinker in any case and that's not what most interests me in writing. So in a way, my goal even in print was to find ways to slow down that propulsive drive toward an end . . . and set things in parallel — not just a line with a beginning, middle, and end. Hypertext provided a way to really literalize that because you could start at one window and go in multiple directions from there. To me, it felt like moving around in a physical space and it made it easy to see that I could incorporate visual art or sound or any number of other things in a way that is really hard to do with a printed book.

YOU ALSO CREATED THE SKIN PROJECT, WHICH TOLD AN ENTIRE STORY BASED ON TATTOOS ON THE BODIES OF VOLUNTEERS. HOW DID YOU COME UP WITH THAT IDEA? My ambition increasingly has been to push the boundaries of what writing is, what it can be, and resist defining it more narrowly. It seems to me that even a book is a more multifaceted object than we credit it with being. Every time we read, we're also engaging with this sculptural object; we're using our hands to move it, to manipulate it. It's a kind of performance; it only comes to life in our reading of it and in the particular experiences we bring to it and so each performance is unique. So it seems to me the text already leaks off the page in all directions and engages human bodies in interesting and complicated ways. A lot of my work is thinking about the body as it relates to text, so I thought I'd push that and make it more literal and the obvious way to do that seems to be this way we already publish on our skin.

1  |  2  |   next >
Related: Fall Books Preview: Reading list, 20 Astoundingly Bad Romance Novel Covers, The man in the yellow fur coat, More more >
  Topics: This Just In , Books, New York Times, Brown University,  More more >
| More

 Friends' Activity   Popular   Most Viewed 
[ 02/07 ]   69˚S [The Shackleton Project]  @ Paramount Theatre
[ 02/07 ]   The Addams Family  @ Shubert Theatre
[ 02/07 ]   "Aphrodite and the Gods of Love"  @ Museum of Fine Arts
ARTICLES BY DANIEL MCGOWAN
Share this entry with Delicious
  •   HERE'S THE ESSENCE OF RHODE ISLAND  |  January 24, 2012
    Long after you've left the state in search of greener pastures and cheaper taxes, there will come a time when you have to explain to a child, lover, friend, or therapist why you chose to attend school in Rhode Island.
  •   GAMING: THE NEXT LEVEL  |  November 16, 2011
    Remember the days when being a video game champion meant having the high score on Pac-Man at your local arcade?
  •   WE THE PEOPLE DON'T LIKE WASHINGTON  |  September 07, 2011
    If you can't quite figure out where Brian Crowley and his buddies stand on the issues, neither can they. All they know is that they love America, the First Amendment, and public access television.
  •   THE OLD TIMER’S TAP, ONCE A DEALMAKER’S DEN, LOOKS FOR A BUYER  |  August 17, 2011
    Tucked away in the most forgotten neighborhood in Providence, a little piece of the city's colorful political history sits on its last legs.
  •   HOW A REMBRANDT WOUND UP ON A PIG FARM  |  August 10, 2011
    The next time you're bored on a Friday night and considering a caper at the RISD Museum, Anthony Amore wants you to consider this: you're more likely to make a few bucks begging the high school crowd on Thayer Street.

 See all articles by: DANIEL MCGOWAN

MOST POPULAR
RSS Feed of for the most popular articles
 Most Viewed   Most Emailed