A Visit From the Digital Medium
One thing that surprised me about taking ENGL342 was the discussions regarding written text. Upon taking this paper, I kind of expected us to look at websites and video games and completely ignore books and novels. How could written texts possibly be digital?
Along with this paper I also took ENGL222, Contemporary American Literature, in which we read books from America. Being the poor student I am, I may have illegally downloaded each of my books for that class and read them all as PDFs on my laptop. This, of course, does not make them digital literatures. They were simply typed up or photocopied texts originally printed in book form. However, upon reading the final book on the course, A Visit from The Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan, I was very surprised to find elements of digital literature. I didn’t know anything about the text before I had read it, and upon reaching chapter 12 I was surprised to find a link on the PDF, telling me that the “material in this chapter cannot be formatted for your reading as originally intended by the author”. This threw me through a loop and my reading experience was entirely disrupted. For a moment, I even wondered if I was reading the correct text.
The chapter that follows is a PowerPoint presentation created by the character, Lulu, as she attempts to show her autistic brother’s love of rock and roll pauses. I wondered why the author didn’t simply portray these ideas in her various writing styles shown throughout the text already. Of course, I followed this link to see what it could possibly add to the chapter, which was PowerPoint slides printed on the pages. I immediately felt as though I was reading something for ENGL342 instead, the link leading me to Egan’s own website where music would play and pause as you read through the different PowerPoint slides. This was an effective use of the digital medium in relation to what the book was trying to portray, as Lulu told the reader about the pauses the music would do just that: pause.
Of course, this is not meant to be written as a review for the text. My point here is how surprised I was to find a text making use of the digital medium that was outside ENGL342. It is unfortunate to say that my first experience with digital media used in printed text was through ENGL342 with networked texts such as Dictionary of the Khazars and, if I’m to be honest, I did not really expect to see any books like that outside of the class. I did not know any other books that would make use of the medium or why they would. This is why I was so shocked to have found a text in another class using digital elements. And, to be honest, it completely improved the narrative for this chapter. If I had simply read it as it was printed, as PowerPoint slides, it would have still been a form of digital medium. However, the writer’s intention was to have music. This music could not be possible outside of the digital medium and it transforms the reading entirely. Because of the skills gained throughout ENGL342, I can now appreciate texts that make use of the digital medium.
