Talan Memmott Presentation: Any Suggestions

hiya magoo. The Lexia to Perplexia left me sufficiently... how shall I say?... perplexed that I'm pretty interested in what you plan to present next week.

Other than maybe some background on what Memmott was trying to do (besides the obvious perplexing bit), one thing that I'd like to talk about is the whole "lexia" thing--i.e. the language component. Memmott seems to go out of his way to mis-/re-/inventively-spell a lot of words, chopping up sentences into fragments, reordering things or even unordering things as his heart desires. I don't know where exactly you should go from there, but it's something that I was struggling with/interested in. The piece would somehow be a lot less effective if he didn't try and turn everything into technical jargon...

That being said, I rambled on a bit more about this to begin with, before deciding that it really merited it's own post , so if you want to read some random, semi-related wanderings, check that out.

I look forward to seeing what you come up with on Monday!

Hi magoo. I'm glad you're doing a presentation on this because I was thorougly perplexed by Memmott and so a presentation would help concretize what exactly is going on in Lexia to Perplexia.

I'm trying to figure out if there's a "point"? I was confused when reading his explanation in his "about Lexia to Perplexia" section. He says, "Though remnants of this scholarly intent may remain within the piece, I believe that what is present in the final work is more fictive than critical, and more an example than a critique." So, he's saying his purpose is to create fiction more than it is to critique an established form? He does, however, say that his project originally started out as a critique of authorship and user/reader relations in relation to electronic literature. Why, then, did he change it from critique to straight fiction? Isn't it inherently critical just by its existence as a non-traditional form of text and literature? Can it even be called literature?

Also, another question that I had, and I'm not sure if you know the answer, is that there are a lot of empty links on the page. On many pages, when you put your cursor over a picture or a word, the hand appears which usually tells you that it's a link, but when you click on it, nothing happens. I'm not sure why Memmott does this. Is he making a statement? Trying to once again perplex us by going against tradition, making links unlinkable? Deconstructing our idea of what a link should be? Or is it simply unfinished, and is that a statement in itself?

You don't have to answer all these questions, but those were just my thoughts after reading/looking at the piece.

This isn't as in depth a request as the other two posted so far, but I would consider it really helpful if you can actually get Lexia To Perplexia on the screen in the classroom during our discussion. It might end up being a little distracting, what with all the flashing symbols and whatnot, but this is something that needs to be seen and interacted with to discuss properly, I think. I would just assume it would be up if not for the problem we had getting Afternoon up on the screen, which unfortunately seemed to inhibit our discussion of the story and its intentions.