It’s November, which means it’s time for NaNoGenMo (https://nanogenmo.github.io). Short for National Novel Generation Month, NaNoGenMo is a project coined by Darius Kazemi (https://tinysubversions.com), inspired by NaNoWriMo, the National Novel Writing Month (https://nanowrimo.org). Similar to NaNoWriMo, the goal in this project is to come up with a 50K word novel in 30 days during the month of November. The participants of NaNoGenMo, however, write code that generates a 50K word novel, sharing the novel and the code in the end.

For the final project, I will be generating a novel in the spirit of NaNoGenMo, novel hacking, Oulipo, and game/play. Using (hacking) novels available in the Project Gutenberg archive and NLTK, I will extract characters, their actions and words to generate a novel where the characters interact with each other (highly possibly absurdly). The actions of the characters will be based on a backgammon game I will play, thus introducing a structured constraint in the spirit of Oulipo (Ouvroir de Litterature Potentielle translated as Workshop of Potential Literature), and an element of chance because there is dice involved. This may bring to mind John Cage’s work Reunion, a performance where the moves of the chess players (in this case John Cage and Marcel Duchamp) triggered sensors on the board that activated sound-generating systems prepared by David Tudor, Gordon Mumma, David Behrman, and Lowell Cross (Cross, 1999).

I have not come up with the specifics of the code, but depending on how I integrate the backgammon rules, the project may become a playable text/a textual instrument as explicated by Wardrip-Fruin (2005), as others may be able to input their own backgammon play in the relevant cells of the Jupyter notebook, and come up with their own novel. 

Either way, the result will be an event-novel, rather than a novel as an event (Robles, 2010); a novel that is performed, rather than one that has “performativity” and one that potentially completely lacks “rhetorical complexity” (Robles, p.2). It will, however, not lack any sentimental value as I will dedicate it to my cousin who taught me how to play backgammon, and who passed away this week due to complications from Covid-19.

Immediately after reading Rubery’s Play It Again, Sam Weller, I watched an episode of Doctor Who in which the Doctor travelled in time to meet Charles Dickens. In his introductory scene Dickens was performing A Christmas Carol in front of a live audience. I took this coincidence as a sign and decided that my final project would be on the history of the oral performances of novels. I am most interested in looking at Dickens and other historical and contemporary examples of literary work being read/performed in similar ways. With Rubery’s article as a starting point (mainly harvesting the bibliography of the article), I want to examine similar literary performances across time and space. 

Through this historical research, I want to investigate the element of performance, specifically when the author is performing and dramatizing his or her own work, and how it interacts with the text and the reading experience of the audience. How do these performances reflect the audience of a particular time and place? 

Andrews, Malcolm. Charles Dickens and His Performing Selves : Dickens and the Public Readings. Oxford University Press, 2006.

Yamagata, Naoko. “Plato, Memory, and Performance.” Oral Tradition, vol. 20 no. 1, 2005, p. 111-129. Project MUSE, doi:10.1353/ort.2005.0013.

Standish, Isolde. “Mediators of Modernity: “Photo-interpreters” in Japanese Silent Cinema.” Oral Tradition, vol. 20 no. 1, 2005, p. 93-110. Project MUSE, doi:10.1353/ort.2005.0017.

Chirico, Miriam. “Performed Authenticity: Narrating the Self in the Comic Monologues of David Sedaris, John Leguizamo, and Spalding Gray.” Studies in American Humor, vol. 2, no. 1, American Humor Studies Association, Apr. 2016, pp. 22–46, doi:10.5325/studamerhumor.2.1.0022.

For my final project, I would like to compile and rethink DH projects done on James Joyce and specifically on his 1923 modernist novel Ulysses. Known for being filled with hundreds, if not thousands, of textual riddles, this novel is a great example of, and a perfect candidate for digital humanities projects which try to help with decoding of these hidden meanings. (James Joyce famously said that it would take scholars all their lives to find answers to the questions left throughout the novel.)

Challenged and inspired by Elyse Graham’s piece “Joyce and the Graveyard of Digital Empires,” I would like to delve into a realm of digital projects dedicated to decoding the Joyce novel. I will be looking for the earliest existing DH platforms related to the novel—if they’re gone for good, I will attempt to find information related to the goals of these projects. (It’s also interesting to see what survived on the web from the early 2000s). I will also prepare a list of platforms related to the novel that were created and maintained recently. This comparative approach will help us, among other things, to observe the trajectory of how researchers and DH people treated online world and online platforms so they could use those to better explain the novel. 

I will link the projects I found to my platform (I hope I will be able, in the end, to come up with one; this is the largest obstacle for him at this point). I will be doing screenshots highlighting what these projects concentrated on. Information regarding the approaches these projects took will be added. In my introductory piece, I am thinking of telling a brief history of DH projects related to Joyce’s Ulysses and showcasing the main similarities and differences the selected projects have and share. Also, I will pay attention to the fact what happened to those first DH-related projects initiated in the early 2000s and why exactly they did not succeed and/or were lost. 

A lot of the writing that has influenced my own craft takes the form of collections or serials, usually in the form of vignettes or other short snippets of writing. Some that come to mind include Sandra Cisneros’ The House on Mango Street, Maggie Nelson’s Bluets, and Humiliation by CUNY’s own Wayne Koestenbaum. On a somewhat different note, the collaborative web serial, SCP Foundation has managed to hold my attention for roughly an entire decade. As a massive fan of the work of Guiles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, I cannot deny that I’m interested in not only the way a work connects to other works, but also the internal connections that make up a work. That is, the way one navigates a text is a key, but often overlooked aspect of experiencing that text.

While I’ve written pieces inspired by the style of some of these authors, making use of structures akin to Kostenbaum’s “fugues,” Nelson’s “propositions,” or even more traditional vignettes akin to Cisneros’ writing, I’ve never stopped and thought about exactly what compelled me to do so, or why myself and others are attracted to this sort of work in the first place. However, after this semester, I’ve become much more acquainted with hypertext as a distinct, proper concept. If Ulysses can be called a “proto” hypertext, what is stopping The House on Mango Street from being one too?

Based on my background knowledge, a hypertext can have a start point – a website’s homepage, for instance. If one takes this for granted, it immediately proves the possibility of a physical hypertext. Take for instance, a choose-your-own-adventure book; such a piece has a clear start point, but is read in a non-linear fashion otherwise, with multiple end points and many intertwined paths. However, a classic choose-your-own-adventure book feature a single overarching narrative across what amounts to a single, albeit segmented piece of prose. And so, my research question: can a collection of traditional short fiction manifest as a proper hypertext?

Many traditional written works that are often considered hypertexts themselves or at least hypertext-related, such as Jorge Luis Borges’s Garden of Forking Paths, manifest in ways similar to choose-your-own-adventure books. For this assignment, I’m going to be taking inspiration from some of the pieces I mentioned as well as works by Italo Calivino such as Cosmicomics, Invisible Cities, and The Castle of Crossed Destinies.My plan with this project is to write a collection of short pieces of prose that complete several main goals: establishing a character across multiple linked narratives, akin to Calvino’s Qfwfq, designing a multi-layered narrative that is conveyed both in content and in more “meta” ways, such as in format, and most importantly, creating a work where the transitions between its sections or fragments are something appealing in and of themselves.

My current plan for creating the product involves first using Microsoft Word to write the text of the piece. From there, I have two options. I could move to Twine or similar software, arranging the piece in a manner that resembles a “typical” hypertext. However, I could also stick with Microsoft Word or switch to another word processor, and try to develop a hypertext that could be printed and published. A third possibility would be to set up headings in Microsoft Word to allow the reader to jump around the piece as they wish, but I feel like this would be clunky and unwieldy at best. At the moment, I’m feeling most inclined to create a complete collection of pieces in Microsoft Word so that I have them in one place, and then transfer them to Twine, eventually making the Twine and Microsoft Word versions of the project both available based on what a reader would prefer.

For my final project, I’m interested in exploring Genius as a literary annotation practice that exceeds the academic context in both its ability to serve as a collaborative (yet hierarchical) platform, and its use and connection to other social media platforms. I’m interested in exploring Genius’ social dimension not only theoretically—drawing connections between the platform and the works we read throughout this course—but also historically, through its inception as Rap Genius, and as a node in the broader history of hip-hop. I’m interested in how hip-hop has served throughout its history as a mode of public formation, through practices such as rap battles, song collaborations, diss tracks, sampling, etc., and how this history is reflected in how Genius is designed/used.

As such, my overall research questions are: How have practices in hip-hop traveled temporally and spatially into the digital dimension, and how is that reflected in how Genius is used and understood today? What does this say about digital annotation practices as part of not only a (largely white) book history, but as part of a history of Black cultural production? In turn, how has Genius, as a digital annotation platform, affected the way hip-hop is practiced today? By asking these questions, I’m hoping to produce an alternative historiography of contemporary digital annotation practices, through illustrating Genius, social media, and hip-hop music as co-productive entities.

Considering these questions, I’m planning to organize this paper in three main sections: First, a brief history of rap music as a social practice; second, a close reading of Genius as an annotation platform; and lastly, articulating entanglements between the two as affected by hip-hop artists and social media alike. Throughout the piece, I’m looking weave in the theoretical investments of our class readings. Specifically, I’m interested in (re)thinking through Price’s What We Talk About When We Talk About Books, Liu’s “From Reading to Social Computing,” “Community Reading and Social Imagination,” Benjamin’s “The Storyteller,” Barthes’ “From Work to Text,” and Schacht’s “Annotations.” Additionally, I’m also interested in diving deeper into other scholarly material I’ve found, such as “The network of collaboration among rappers and its community structure” by Reginald D. Smith, “The Mad Science of Hip-hop: History, Technology, and Poetics of Hip-hop’s Music, 1975-1991” by Patrick Rivers, and “Rhythms of Relation: Black Popular Music and Mobile Technologies” by Alexander Weheliye.

Format: Paper

My paper will look back on the history of children’s audiobooks and consider its previous formats to determine what the future of children’s audiobooks will include. I will begin with the benefits of children’s audiobooks and then discuss its evolution over time. Edison’s recording of ‘Mary Had a Little Lamb’ on a wax cylinder could be considered the first step towards children’s audiobooks, followed by The Bubble Book series of the early 20th century on records. The audiobook kept up with the times, moving towards cassette tape and is now offered in a digital format available on mobile devices. I will touch on each of these new versions of the audiobook, including what features made it different from the previous version and from adult audiobooks. For example, when sounds and music were introduced to books on vinyl records by Disney and the addition of a friend/caregiver in the case of Teddy Ruxpin. Along with the history of children’s audiobooks, I will offer my thoughts on the present version of audiobooks including works that include digital copies of the text. 

I conclude with the argument that children’s audiobooks will continue to gain popularity since we rely heavily on our mobile devices and because of COVID-19. More children were introduced to audiobooks during the pandemic [UK’s National Literacy Trust Report] and retailers like Audible made hundreds of audiobooks (for all ages) free to the public in March. Libraries also had to limit the number of loans in order to meet their patrons’ requests for materials. I think that publishers took note of this trend and will produce more audiobooks. But what new features will they include in production, or will they return to previous versions? In 2017 a new version of Teddy Ruxpin was released, with LED eyes and stories available through an app instead of a cassette tape. Is this the future of children’s audiobooks?

Sources: 

Best, E., Clark, C. and Picton, I. (2020). Children, young people and audiobooks before and during lockdown. London: National Literacy Trust.

Burkey, Mary. Audiobooks for Youth: a Practical Guide to Sound Literature. 1st ed. Chicago: American Library Association, 2013. Print.

Cahill, Moore. “A Sound History: Audiobooks Are Music to Children’s Ears.” Children & libraries 15.1 (2017): 22–. Web.

Carey, Bridget. “The life, death and resurrection of Teddy Ruxpin.” c|net .September 21, 2017. https://www.cnet.com/features/teddy-ruxpin-history-disney-atari-2017-return/

Larson, Lotta C. “E-Books and Audiobooks.” The Reading Teacher., vol. 69, no. 2, International Reading Association,, pp. 169–77, doi:info:doi/.

Rubery, Matthew. The Untold Story of the Talking Book. Cambridge, Massachusetts ;: Harvard University Press, 2017. Print.

**I reached out to NYPL, Brooklyn and Queens Public Libraries for loan statistics, annual reports or just to talk to someone. Will reach out to Amazon/Audible to see if any data on their end is available.

Inspired by the Murder Mystery Puzzle: Cain’s Jawbone

Cain’s Jawbone, written in 1934 and republished in 2019 is a murder mystery written in prose and spaced out between 100 unorganized pages which the reader/gamer would have to structure correctly to identify the killer. It was recently solved for the third time in its 100 years of history. 

Also inspired by the “computer novel” Portal I thought about how the physical media of fiction can be “interactive”. Cain’s Jawbone strikes me as closer to a puzzle than a book like House of Leaves because the pages are unbound, and the reader/gamer is given control over how they approach the solution or win-state. House of Leaves might leave the reader flipping back though pages, but this is similar to the method of elucidation that one might encounter in traditional novels when returning to a passage that clarifies something, nore is there an actual puzzle to solve. My project is not an “interactive drama” which games like Façade and The Sims are. My project also differs from Cain’s Jawbone in that identifying the formal elements of are important, much like a jigsaw puzzle. In Cain’s Jawbone laying out the narrative events correctly in relation to each other is the puzzle.It will be accompanied by a 3-4 page essay trying to sort out the theory behind it, using resources from class assignments. 

This quote from Wardrip-Fruin’s article gives me a proper starting point when offering up a piece of fiction with a “correct” way to play/read:

‘ “The payoff for “correct” play [is] usually to win; to play “incorrectly” is to lose. This is very much at odds with what one might loosely call goals of fiction: exploration, insight, and the renewal of the perceived world through alterneity. (Infocom 9)” ‘

There are individual elements that I would have to do more reading on in order to not use the terms loosely as I have done here: reader/user/gamer/ deserve more clarity.

Project:

14 Poems in heroic couplets to be printed out, based on 14 locations from the Map: The Skeld. In order to solve the puzzle, locations would have to be identified and physically placed near (diagonally, above, next, etc…) to each other. There are formal qualities of the poems which when correctly arranged reveal who the Imposter is.

There are clues in the text which give away the location. Here is one which should be identified as Arsenal.

Location ____________

I pounced upon my task with clanging gears,
The swinging disk spun between blurry tears.
Poor Blue was found in Admin all severed,
And I, not far, was to duty tethered.
A sound from below made me pause mid tweak,
It was perhaps a mouse who frantic, squeaked.
A gun stood out on a rack nearby when
I thought how soon we were reduced from ten.
To calm my nerves, a thought: don’t raise a fuss
But In my heart I felt that Red was suss.

I am offering up poems meant to be read out of order, but have an intended order if one wanted to solve a puzzle; and this puzzle is not narrative, but formal, much like a jigsaw puzzle. Why the use of Among Us as a narrative device? It gives a background, rationale, and scenery to the narrative. I suppose any old murder mystery setting (Clue, Knives Out) would work as well. Why heroic couplets? It works as a brief burst of text much like the rounds of the game.