21st Century Literature- Essay 1

By Lucy

Harrington

The term technotext takes its name from Katherine Hayles book
Writing Machine and is defined as when a literary work interrogates the
inscription technology that produces it, it mobilizes reflexive loops between its
imaginative world and the material apparatus embodying that creation as a
physical presence1. This essay will be referring to various McSweeney editions in
order to highlight the physical presence and the reflective loops that Hayle is
referring to.
As Hayles perfectly puts it herself:
As the vibrant new field of electronic textuality flexes its muscle, it is
becoming overwhelmingly clear that we can no longer afford to ignore the
material basis of literary production. Materiality of the artefact can no
longer be positioned as a subspecialty within literary studies; it must be
central, for without it we have little hope of forging a robust and nuanced
account of how literature is changing under the impact of information
technologies.2
Books are in decline and libraries are closing and one of the biggest reasons for
this is due to being able to read books online and the introduction of the e-book.
As Hayles so clearly puts in this day and age a book cannot afford to just be a
book and this is where the McSweeney comes in as they present a reader with a
3D package creating a new genre of not just reading a text but also experiencing
it. Although the McSweeney maintains its print foundation in the form of essays
and pamphlets it at the same time seems to come away from the technical
structure of writing and is more about the end package that is presented to the
1 Katherine Hayles Chapter 2. Material Metaphors, Technotexts, and Media
Specific Analysis, Writing Machines,(Cambridge MA 2002)p 26
2 Hayles, p19

consumer. Print books follow an academic hierarchy and do not have as much
freedom as the technotext because the form is downgraded as the value of the
print book is generally agreed to be within writing. Technotexts aim to change
this relationship and instigates the movement of print books from a two
dimension state to a more 3D based structure. They move away from thinking of
texts as pure information and produce the reader with a material reality that
structures the way the text works. As the McSweeney website boasts each issue
of the quarterly is completely redesigned there has been and covers and
paperbacks, an issue with two spines, an issue with a magnetic binding, an issue
that looked like a bundle of junk mail and an issue that looks like a sweaty
human head.3 There have been 43 issues to date and it has won a number of
awards including The Best American Magazine Writing and two National
Magazine Awards fir fiction.

As the paragraph highlights both the package and text foreground one another
and they fuse together to create a truly innovative physical artefact. The
importance of creating an artefact is strengthened when we look at the first
chapter of Greenbergs debut essay [Avant Garde and Kitsch, (1939) The
Partisan Review] which states:
The Avant Garde poet or artist tries in effect to imitate God by creating
something valid solely on its own terms, in the way nature itself is valid, in
the way a landscape -- not its picture -- is aesthetically valid; something
given, increate, independent of meanings, similar or originals. Content is
to be dissolved so completely into form that the work of art or literature
cannot be reduced in whole or in part to anything not itself. 4

3McSweeneys website.<[www.mcsweenys.net> [accessed 13th December 2013]

4 Clemet Greeenberg,Avant Garde and Kitsch, The Partisan Review 6, (1939),
p4

Artifact as posed to an object retains an element of sentimentality (constructed

from their links to the individual and period of time). This in turn can be
interpreted and accessed on a subconscious level, creating a sense of reownership. McSweeney issue 29 is the best example of this as it presents the
reader with what looks like a cigar box filled with old trinkets and pamphlets. It
represents an old fashioned way to store memories and old fashioned pieces of
writing stored in a book and it is up to the reader to piece the story together.
This is idea is also reinforced by Hayles herself who writes:
We are not generally accustomed to think of a book as a material
metaphor, but in fact it is an artefact whose physical properties and
historical usages structure our interactions with it in ways obvious and
subtle. In addition to defining the page as a unit of reading, and binding
pages sequentially to indicate an order of reading, are less obvious
conventions such the opacity of paper, a physical property that defines the
page as having two sides whose relationship is linear and sequential
rather than interpenetrating and simultaneous. To change the physical
form of the artifact is not merely to change the act of reading (although
that too has consequences the importance of which we are only beginning
to recognize) but profoundly to transform the metaphoric network
structuring the relation of word to world. 5

While some editions seem to create a feeling of cohesion others seem to do the
opposite and we see this with Issue 16 or also famously known as the comb
edition. Although the issue contains other interesting elements like a full pack of
cards it is the comb that is the most hotly debated item. Hayles claims that the
physical form of the literary artefact always affects what the words mean 6 but
when we look at the comb this turns this idea on its head. The meaning of the
comb has gained a symbolic power and many read it as representing a fine tooth
comb that the reader should use to read the texts with edition. Also the comb
has the name Timothy on it which furthers the readers need of attaching
5 Hayles,, p22-23
6 Hayles, p23

meaning to it but a later quote from the creators of McSweeney hints towards
the idea that it was used because it was a flat and cheap. Read in this way could
be highlighting the point that we are attaching meaning to the comb and it could
just be a comb. This edition is not the only edition like this and having looked at
a few it is easy to see that this randomness is part of the McSweeneys quirky
style that it is well known and loved for. On another level this element of random
objects amongst essays and stories represents the internet where nothing is
connected but are the same time intertwined in one another just like when you
are reading something on the web and then jump to another page or a pop up
screen comes up.

Overall this is the beauty of the McSweeney editions as they are very clear
examples of technotexts but at the same time they still maintain their print
foundation. In her book Writing Machines Hayle pays more attention to electronic
versions of a technotext and while these are the most obvious examples the Mc
Sweeney can be seen as a true example as it is turning the idea of the book
being dead on its head.
1159
Words

Bibliography

Greeenberg,
(1939)
Hayles,

Clemet Avant Garde and Kitsch, The Partisan Review 6,

Katherine, Chapter 2. Material Metaphors, Technotexts, and Media
Specific Analysis, Writing Machines,(Cambridge MA 2002)