Simon Rowberry

Abstract: Literary hypertext theory has petered out in the last decade, giving way to studies on narrative in computer games, and narrative generation through social media outlets. With the current mass digitalization of texts into proprietary databases such as Google Books, ECCO, and EEBO, it is time to reconsider what it means for a text to be hypertextual, in order to turn digitization into something useful above being a representation of paper on screen. This paper will explore a new methodology for approaching hypertext and how this can facilitate our understanding of literary texts.

Simon Rowberry. ”What is Hypertext?: A Literary Perspective.” Research Student Symposium. June 2011. University of Winchester

Abstract: Vladimir Nabokov’s Pale Fire (1962) [3] is often seen as the gold standard to which all other print-based literary hypertexts are compared [see 1 and 2 for two examples of the admiration of Pale Fire from the literary hypertext community]. It was also a point of inspiration for Ted Nelson while developing his early hypertext systems. Although frequently referenced, the underlying network has never successfully been mapped or explored beyond a surface level. This poster posits a single model for representing the connections made throughout the novel, color-coded, so one can see which parts represent the poem, commentary and index (figure 1).

http://www.ht2011.org/demos_posters/ht2011_submission_137.pdf

Abstract: In the mid-sixties, Ted Nelson worked at Brown University on an early hypertext system. In 1969, IBM wanted to show the system at a conference, and Nelson gained permission to use Vladimir Nabokov’s highly unconventional and hypertextual novel, Pale Fire (1962) as a technical demonstration of hypertext’s potential. Unfortunately, the idea was dismissed in favor of a more technical-looking presentation, and thus was never demonstrated publicly. This paper re-considers Pale Fire’s position in hypertext history, and posits that if it was used in this early hypertext demonstration, it would have been the ‘father of all hypertext demonstrations’ to complement Douglas Engelbart’s ‘Mother of All Demos’ in 1968. In order to demonstrate the significance of Pale Fire’s hypertextuality and Nelson’s ambitions to use it, this paper will explore its hypertextual structure, the implication thereof for the novel and evaluate its success as a hypertext compared to electronic systems.

Simon Rowberry (2011), “Vladimir Nabokov’s Pale Fire: the lost ’father of all hypertext demos’?” in Proceedings of the 22nd ACM conference on Hypertext and hypermedia., 319-324. HT ’11. New York, NY, USA: ACM, 2011.
http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1995966.1996008

Abstract: In a rare essay, Thomas Pynchon, the famously reclusive author, talks about the ‘do-it-yourself hypertextualist’, who fits into his discourse on paranoia. This paper will start to explore the questions of paranoia in both literary criticism and hypertext theory. It will focus on the paranoia inherent within one-to-one links from both general, authoritative systems, and the network of personal reader response using examples from literature including Thomas Pynchon and Vladimir Nabokov.

Simon Rowberry (2011), ”Literary Criticism and Hypertext or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Paranoia?” in Proceedings of the Narrative and Hypertext Workship ACM Hypertext 2011. http://nht.ecs.soton.ac.uk/2011/papers/7-srowberry.pdf

Abstract: In the mid-sixties, Ted Nelson worked at Brown University on an early hypertext system. In 1969, IBM wanted to show the system at a conference, and Nelson gained permission to use Vladimir Nabokov’s highly unconventional and hypertextual novel, Pale Fire (1962) as a technical demonstration of hypertext’s potential. Unfortunately, the idea was dismissedin favor of a more technical-looking presentation, and thus was never demonstrated publicly. This paper re-considers Pale Fire’s position in hypertext history, and posits that if it was used in this early hypertext demonstration, it would have been the ‘father of all hypertext demonstrations’ to complement Douglas Engelbart’s ‘Mother of All Demos’ in 1968. In order to demonstrate the significance of Pale Fire’s hypertextuality and Nelson’s ambitions to use it, this paper will explore its hypertextual structure, the implication thereof for the novel and evaluate its success as a hypertext compared to electronic systems.

Simon Rowberry. ”Vladimir Nabokov’s Pale Fire: The Lost ’Father of all hypertext demos’?” ACM Hypertext 2011. June 2011. Technical University/Eindhoven, Netherlands