[-empyre-] digital cane kanuns

[Alan Sondheim]

Sorry - I'll be brief; I agree we've talked too much here. I agree with 
Davin more or less and our differences of course are clear. One last 
point, re: Juan's comment -

"Even though there are countless instances of electronic literatures, we
cannot overlook the fact that not all electronic text is literary
(search Hayle's talk in MITH-ELO 2007). Having letters in an artistic
setting does not automatically create a literary object. Likewise, some
videogames have very complex narratives, but in most cases they are
fillers the serve the purpose of relaxing players from the shooting,
driving, fighting, etc. and they could hardly be classified as
electronic literature."

Here's part of the problem for me in a nutshell - for me videogames etc. 
are all examples of digital literature, literary objects. They may or may 
not be complex or function as "fillers" - but that's not the issue. And I 
do think we're back with canonic restrictions - I have no idea why fillers 
designed for relaxing wouldn't be literary, (by the way my saz just fell 
over - not many people can say that!), why letters in an "artistic 
setting" (not sure the reference here - to the SL materials? they're as 
literary certainly as Kolar or Emmett Williams at least!) wouldn't be 
literary. We're not talking about quality - which opens up all sorts of 
critical strategies, games, and so forth - just about the ontology of the 
literary - and for me, again, this is wide open, anarchic, and wildly 
inclusive - and anything else restricts and impoverishes us.

Recommend the book Twisty Little Passages by the way, which I think is 
relevant here.

- Alan