Cognitive Fictions

Spent some time over at the Iowa Review Web this evening, reading a cluster of material by and about Joe Tabbi, who I think of as one of the best critics around these days. I first got to know Joe by writing for his electronic book review, which has since evolved into pretty much the most interesting space on the Web for critical discussion of new media and electronic literature. His new book, on systems theory and postmodern writing, is called Cognitive Fictions. No one I know of is more widely versed in fiction, science, music, and the twentieth century avant garde. If a bright undergraduate told me she wanted to study contemporary literature, I wouldn't hesitate to send her to UIC to work with Joe.

Tabbi says:

Until the institutions, technologies, codes, and constraints can be forgotten, however, as the conventions supporting print were forgotten with the book's naturalization, narrative's emergence is unlikely in new media environments. Designwriting, codework, the hypertextual embedding of texts within texts still require, of readers, cautious collaborations with systems designed to keep 'us' out. It's the achievement of first-generation Web fictions to show us the extent of that exclusion, the paucity of a life lived with files. These are embodied fictions, to be sure, but such an embodiment ravages consciousness by bringing its material supports to the surface.

When the only sign of embodiment is the wrinkled brow, that's when we'll have Web literature worthy of the name.

I don't entirely agree with that--it seems to slip too comfortably back into media transparency--but taken in context (it's the conclusion of the "Overwriting" piece) it's easily of the most eloquent and historically aware things I've read in a while.