Back to First Person...

When it comes to First Person, I think it’s interesting to discuss the structure of the book, even more so than the content... although in both structure and content, it’s unlike any piece of literature I’ve ever read before. (Yeah, you can argue that House of Leaves is hypertextual in the same way, but that was fiction, and this is theory...) I’ve never seen an anthology in which another theorist responds to each individual essay, then the author of the original essay responds back, etc. As a result it feels more like a Web forum (albeit one full of extremely smart people) than a piece of literature, which is really cool (especially considering the subject matter). But even though I liked that aspect of the book’s format, I sometimes found the juxtaposition of all these different opinions and information a little distracting... I don’t think I have an undiagnosed case of ADD or anything like that, but my mind definitely felt overloaded at times while I was looking at this book (as it did with House of Leaves... and sometimes when I'm on the Internet...). I just wanted to jump around the text and could never settle on what I wanted to read first. Something about simultaneous narratives (can you call it that, in this case? simultaneous essays perhaps?) just sets me out of whack... I want to read it all at once but can’t, so I get frustrated and read bits and pieces of both, and it often ends up making me confused. (Because of that, Mark Danielewski’s new book would probably drive me crazy... or maybe it would be a good challenge... who knows?) Anyway, for a book on new media, this does seem like an appropriate structure. It feels hypertextual, innovative, and for lack of a better word, new. For the same reason, it's great that First Person can also be accessed online. (Man, I wish I’d realized that before I bought the book!)