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Was: Annales Nomadique: A Novel Of Internet
A post-cyber “Pilgrim’s Progress.
Was is half-poem, half-narrative, a nomadic history whose main character is the fleetingness of information itself. The novel’s title figure, the word was, marks that instant of utterance outside the present; neither past nor future but rather the interstitial space of any telling. Like Ariel in flight, Was takes place before you can say ‘come’ and ‘go,'" slipping away before you can "breath twice and cry ‘so, so."
The nomadic lovers here, as any lovers, attempt to linger in the afterglow of what was, but it slips away like mist. Story begets story as if without author, events gathering into one another, as much memory as dream, their locales literally moving across the face of the globe. Continent to continent, from hemisphere to hemisphere, synaptic episodes strobe across the earth’s surface like thunderstorms seen from a satellite. Yet in these brief flashes a memorable and deeply moving procession of characters passes in lovers and children, parents and refugees, sailors, missionaries, clowns, mourners, forlorn warriors, sweet singers.
Was is a brilliant new work by the author of afternoon, a story which the New York Times calls "the granddaddy of hypertext fictions"and the Toronto Globe and Mail describes as being "to the hypertext interactive novel what the Gutenberg bible is to publishing."
Was is half-poem, half-narrative, a nomadic history whose main character is the fleetingness of information itself. The novel’s title figure, the word was, marks that instant of utterance outside the present; neither past nor future but rather the interstitial space of any telling. Like Ariel in flight, Was takes place before you can say ‘come’ and ‘go,'" slipping away before you can "breath twice and cry ‘so, so."
The nomadic lovers here, as any lovers, attempt to linger in the afterglow of what was, but it slips away like mist. Story begets story as if without author, events gathering into one another, as much memory as dream, their locales literally moving across the face of the globe. Continent to continent, from hemisphere to hemisphere, synaptic episodes strobe across the earth’s surface like thunderstorms seen from a satellite. Yet in these brief flashes a memorable and deeply moving procession of characters passes in lovers and children, parents and refugees, sailors, missionaries, clowns, mourners, forlorn warriors, sweet singers.
Was is a brilliant new work by the author of afternoon, a story which the New York Times calls "the granddaddy of hypertext fictions"and the Toronto Globe and Mail describes as being "to the hypertext interactive novel what the Gutenberg bible is to publishing."
152 pages, Paperback
First published March 1, 2007
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
October 16, 2013
A startling notion for a novel—the ebb of flow of information as protagonist, anonymously weaved together in stand-alone paragraphs to form a sort of sense of theme, plot, character, tone and all those other novelly aspects. Joyce’s novel of internet sculpts this idea into something better than a purposeless jumble of cut-and-pasted sentences, connecting (not unlike Markson) his little fragments thru shared languages (over ten languages are used here—did someone evoke a Rose?) and small filterings of similar material (some create mini-plots and stories, others are baffling but impressive). Like most FC2 experiments, the idea is not exhausted to the point most readers might toss in the cat—150pp of this seems a sensible quitting time—and so as a novel this succeeds and leaves one provoked in the cerebrum and filled with notions about what is possible for the future of the novel in the point-and-click age. Splendid. (Love the artwork too).
July 29, 2009
Of course, Michael Joyce was right ...
And to look to his evolutions is to foresee evolutions in process, and yet to come. Joyce is so attuned, his prose so refined, he is oracular.
And to look to his evolutions is to foresee evolutions in process, and yet to come. Joyce is so attuned, his prose so refined, he is oracular.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews