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AN EXHIBITIONIST’S PARADISE: DIGITAL TRANSFORMATIONS OF THE

AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL IMPULSE

RONALD JEROME TULLEY

Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements

for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy

Dissertation Advisor: Dr. William Siebenschuh

Department of English

CASE WESTERN RESERVE UNIVERSITY

January, 2010

CASE WESTERN RESERVE UNIVERSITY

SCHOOL OF GRADUATE STUDIES

We hereby approve the dissertation of

RONALD JEROME TULLEY

candidate for the Ph.D. degree *.

(signed) William R. Siebenschuh

Kimberly Emmons

Thomas K. Fountain

Todd Oakley

(date) November 3, 2009

*We also certify that written approval has been obtained for any proprietary material contained therein.

DEDICATION

For Southsiders everywhere.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

List of Figures………………………………………………………………………....4

Acknowledgments.………………………………………………………………...... 6

Abstract………………………………………………………………………………..9

Chapter One: Defining Western Autobiography ……………………………………..11

Chapter Two: Setting the Stage: St. Augustine and the Origins of Dialogical Self- Representation in Contemporary Autobiography…………………………………...... 35

Chapter Three: Technological Transformations of the Text ………………………....72

Chapter Four: Cyberpioneer: Justin Allyn Hall and the Beginnings of Online Autobiography………………………………………………………………………...102

Chapter Five: Establishing A Web Template for Self Presentation—Miles Hochstein’s “Documented Life” and Beyond……………………………………………………...127

Epilogue: Social Networking: Self Presentation in Communal Hypertext Environments…………………………………………………………………………156

Notes………………………………………………………………………………….169

Appendix A—Email Correspondence with Justin Allyn Hall………………………..180

Appendix B—Email Correspondence with Miles Hochstein………………………...185

Bibliography………………………………………………………………………….190

LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 1: Axial versus network structure in hypertext.…………………………………..81

Figure 2: Christian Classics Ethereal Library: St. Augustine's Confessions homepage…93

Figure 3: New Advent: The Confessions (Book I)………………………………………97

Figure 4: Justin Allyn Hall, ca 2008……………………………………………………104

Figure 5: “Justin Links...autobio” homepage…………………………………………..108

Figure 6: Zilpha Keatley Snyder “Autobiography” (July 2007)……………………….110

Figure 7: Justin Hall’s father—Wesley Gibson Hall…………………………………..114

Figure 8: Wesley Gibson Hall’s handwritten suicide note…………………………….115

Figure 9: Arrest identification card……………………………………………………118

Figure 10: “Publish Yo’ Self”…………………………………………………………121

Figure 11: “Documented Life” homepage (July 2009)………………………………..131

Figure 12: “Documented Life” homepage—initial version (2001)…………………...136

Figure 13: “biophilia” (2009)…………………………………………………………138

Figure 14: Leora and Miles Hochstein, December 2006………………………………146

Figure 15: Hochstein Family Pictures, 2006………………………………………….148

Figure 16: Ron Tulley’s facebook “home” (a.k.a., the “news feed”) (August 2009)....160

Figure 17: Ron Tulley’s facebook “profile” (August 2009)…………………………..162

Figure 18: 314’s MySpace profile (August 2009)…………………………………….164

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Throughout the course of my doctoral studies at Case Western Reserve

University, so many people have offered me their unconditional support. To those whom

I do not directly mention here, thank you for all of your efforts on my behalf. I could not have completed this journey without you.

I wish to express my deepest gratitude to Dr. William Siebenschuh (Bill). It is

difficult to summarize all the ways Bill has helped me during my arduous scholarly

journey at CWRU. Bill has been a mentor, advisor, father-figure, confidant, empathizer,

and most importantly, a true friend. Whatever successes I have had at Case, I owe to his

skillful leadership and guidance. He is a true asset to the profession and to the Case

community.

To Dr. Todd Oakley, a sincere thank you for guiding me through my preliminary

exams and continuing to assist me as I completed my dissertation. Todd’s insightful

comments helped me revise my first published scholarly essay (in 2003). His

encouragement kept me going through one of the toughest moments in my life.

To Dr. Kimberly Emmons (Kim)—thank you for pushing me and challenging me

to see the “forest for the trees.” Kim’s supervision of my early research projects helped

me to refocus and refine my methodology. Her editorial suggestions in the late stages of

this project were crucial.

To Dr. T. Kenny Fountain (Kenny), I offer my heartfelt appreciation for agreeing

to serve on my committee after my dissertation prospectus had been approved, and I had

begun to write. I could not have moved forward without Kenny’s encouragement,

direction and guidance.

I would also like to express my gratitude to Justin Allyn Hall and Miles Hochstein

for their willingness to converse with me via email on many occasions. They graciously

allowed me to include their email correspondence in this dissertation (see Appendix A

and Appendix B). Their online autobiographies inspired me to write this dissertation.

To all the Tulleys, Serritellas, and Sauers who have kept me sane and supported

me, especially Hugh and Liz Sauer (“Dad” and “Mom”) whose gracious hospitality was

integral to my early doctoral studies.

To all of my friends at “DOES” (the Case Western Reserve University

Department of Occupational and Environmental Safety), especially Dr. David Sedwick

(Doc) and Shirley Mele—thank you for your support, for your collegiality, and for

providing me with a second home at Case.

To all the faculty members at The University of Findlay who shared similar struggles as fellow PhD students, especially, Dr. Cheri Hampton-Farmer, Dr. Erin

Laverick, Dr. Chris Denecker, Professor Nancy Munoz, Dr. Marie Louden-Hanes, Dr.

Diana Montague, Professor Mary Jo Geise, and Dr. Michael Anders. Your stories encouraged me and provided me with the strength to carry the dual burden of writing a

dissertation while teaching a “4/4” on the tenure track.

To the brothers of Pi Kappa Phi, Delta Sigma chapter, thank you for your

friendship. It is loyal and true beyond compare. OΥΔΕΝ ΔΙΑΣΠΑΣΕΙ ΗΜΑΣ.

To my beautiful daughter, Devon (Peanut), may you pursue your true dreams

unencumbered by the expectations of others. Let neither the envy nor the cynicism of

others impede your goals.

To my wife, Dr. Christine E. Tulley, thank you for keeping me centered and focused through a very long process. I owe you so many weekends. Your work ethic and positivity are infectious. You are a true scholar without a hint of pretension.

My deepest affection and love goes out to my mother, Deanna Tulley, who died on April 15, 2007, as I was preparing to defend my preliminary examinations. Her unwavering love, pride, and confidence in my abilities will always reassure and inspire me.

An Exhibitionist’s Paradise: Digital Transformations of the Autobiographical Impulse

Abstract

RONALD JEROME TULLEY

In this dissertation, I examine how hypertext self-life-writing approximates and simultaneously alters many conventional aspects of print autobiography. To accomplish this task, I trace Western autobiography from canonical texts including St. Augustine’s

Confessions to online (digital) versions of autobiography by early “cyber-pioneers” including Justin Allyn Hall (“autobio”) and Miles Hochstein (“Documented Life: An

Autodocumentary”). I conclude with a brief epilogue addressing autobiographical features present in social networking sites (e.g., facebook, MySpace, et al.). I contend that digital autobiography often reproduces the archetypal characteristics of autobiography including but not limited to a narrative structure, the inclusion of verifiable events in the subject’s life, a strong tendency towards a linear chronology, and the finite limits of what can be included within the printed text, i.e., an autobiography that ends before a subject’s life is complete. Digital self-life-writing also relies on many familiar models of identity formation witnessed in traditional autobiography: work, family, friends, personal achievement, cathartic events, etc. In this way, online versions of autobiography have

changed little from the textual construction of the self witnessed in traditional print

autobiographies.

Despite these similarities, the multimodal and interactive nature of hypertext has

the potential to alter traditional modes of self-presentation in autobiography by

introducing in several key effects and features including but not limited to the following:

disruption of traditional narrative patterns, incorporation of reified elements (i.e., digital

media including PDF documents, digital photos, audio files, streaming video, et al.) of a person(s) besides the author, introduction of divergent genres (e.g., journalistic works, media reviews, et al.), disruption of boundaries between the public and private realms of the subject, and elimination of the fixed and permanent nature of the printed text. These hypertext effects and features introduce a communal element to autobiography—a dialogue between an author and a reader that is both literal and reciprocal. As a result of the effects and features of hypertext, I contend that digital autobiography both mimics the

“self-in-process” that scholars of autobiography have claimed cannot be accurately recorded in print and establishes self-life-writing, historically conceived as an individual endeavor, as a recurrent public exercise.

CHAPTER ONE—DEFINING WESTERN AUTOBIOGRAPHY

The theory of autobiography has become very well trodden terrain. So much so, in fact, that there are now not only many theories of autobiography, but there is also a growing

number of theories of those theories.

Robert Smith, Derrida and Autobiography (1995)

In this chapter, I provide the reader with a brief historical background of the scholarly discourse on autobiography in the West and explain how the concept of autobiography has been, until recently, a particularly Western phenomenon. I also show how literary scholars have struggled to define autobiography as a genre. To address the problematic nature of defining autobiography, I propose using the concept of “family resemblances” developed by Ludwig Wittgenstein. I conclude Chapter One by asking a few questions about autobiography, focusing particularly on online hypertext manifestations of digital autobiographical texts. I provide responses to these questions in

Chapters Four and Five.

The autobiographical impulse is certainly not an exclusively Western phenomenon. From the writings of the court women of the Heian Period (794 -1192 AD) in Japan to historical works in Arabic prevalent in the Middle East (particularly Usāmah ibn-Munqidh’s Kitab al-I'tibar published in the 11th century), autobiographical works appear in nearly every culture with a writing system. For instance, in sub-Saharan Africa, autobiography has enjoyed a long oral tradition where whole communities gather to listen to the life stories of the village elders,1 and in China writers such as Wang Chieh and

Mao Ch’ i-ling flourished in the so-called “golden age” of Chinese autobiography before

Western influences reshaped China (Wu 251). Despite the presence of autobiographical works outside the West, the crux upon which self-life-writing rests, i.e., the notion of the 11

self as an individual unique among others, is deeply entrenched in the history of Western

thought. And while notable exceptions as described above can be found outside of the

West, the concept of the self that drives autobiography has a deep-rooted basis in

Western thought.

Autobiography is primarily a logocentric act and while it is necessary to

acknowledge that there are dangers in approaching autobiography as an exclusively

Western phenomenon, it is not my intention to claim that Western thought dictates a

normative status for all autobiography. I focus on defining Western “autobiography” as opposed to “autobiographical works” en masse for two reasons. First, the history of autobiography as a topic for scholarly investigation is relatively new. So new, that as recently as 1981, Albert Stone referred to autobiography as “an important new field for scholars and critics” (1). And though non-Western autobiographies are increasingly the subject of scholarly interest, the primary academic focus has been concentrated on autobiographies that have emerged from the Western tradition, e.g., St. Augustine’s

Confessions (397 A.D.), Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Confessions (1782), Benjamin

Franklin’s The Private Life of the Late Benjamin Franklin (1791), et al. Part of the reason for the scholarly attention to these archetypal Western texts is that these historical autobiographies all exhibit what George Landow refers to as a reflective self-conscious state necessary for a work to be classified as an autobiography: “autobiography must not only present a version, myth or metaphor of the self…it must be retrospective and hence it must self-consciously contrast[s] two selves, the writing “I” and the one located (or created) in the past” (“Autobiography, Autobiographicality, and Self-Representation”).

Most non-Western examples of autobiography prior to the late 19th century do not exhibit

this self-consciousness. Works including the previously mentioned Kitab al-I'tibar as

well as those written by the court women of the Heian Period in Japan are often written in

the third person with limited (if any) self-reflection.

Second, many works classified as “autobiographies” from the non-Western

traditions are perhaps better described as “autobiographical works.” These

autobiographical works lack much of what Philippe Lejeune termed “the

autobiographical pact” in Le pacte autobiographique (1975) (4). According to Lejeune,

the readers of self-life-writing expect at least three things from a work labeled

autobiography: 1) the autobiography presents a generally factual account of an individual

subject’s life (though the subjective presentation of the details surrounding the facts

(emphasis mine) is assumed), 2) the progression of time (the subject’s lifeline) in an

autobiography is usually linear and limited to the subject’s lifetime or a significant

portion thereof, and 3) the reader of autobiography expects a “story-structure” or

narrative framework to give order to the events described by the author (13-16). Using

these three criteria, the pact generally limits the genre primarily (but not exclusively) to

historical autobiographies from the Western tradition. Works including the previously

mentioned Chinese authors Wang Chieh and Mao Ch’i-ling contain elements that might

be loosely classified as autobiographical fragments, yet their writings do not exhibit a

strong narrative drive and exclude factual details about the author as the subject2 of the work. This is not to say these works are not factual—dates and events reported can indeed be verified. Yet, the narrative framework and subjective insights so commonly associated with le pact autobiographique are rarely found in non-Western works prior to the late 19th century once the influence of the European colonial powers was established.

For these two primary reasons, I will devote my efforts in this chapter to examining how

autobiography has been defined by scholars in the Western tradition. It is my hope that in

doing so I will establish a useful starting point from which to investigate current

developments in autobiography.

Simply defined from its Greek origins, autobiography is “self-life-writing” or auto

(self) + bios (life) + graphe (writing). The etymology of autobiography, however, tells us

little. While the history of autobiography in the West can be traced back to a few

archetypal texts (St. Augustine’s Confessions, et al.), it would be imprudent to conflate

the ability to track or categorize (e.g., Lejeune, et al.) the history of Western

autobiography with the ability to define Western autobiography. The problematic nature of defining autobiography is perhaps best categorized not by a scholar of autobiography, but rather by Supreme Court Justice Potter Brown. Writing about pornography in the plurality opinion of Jacobellis v. Ohio (1964), Justice Brown uttered his now famous words:

I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I

understand to be embraced within that shorthand description [hard-core

pornography]; and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so.

But I know it when I see it (emphasis mine)…. (Jacobellis v. Ohio)

Ironically, perhaps, James Olney emphasizes a similar dilemma affecting the classification of works as autobiography. Echoing Justice Brown’s frequently quoted words in his Autobiography: Essays Theoretical and Critical (1980), Olney notes,

“everyone knows what autobiography is, but no two observers, no matter how assured they may be are in agreement as to how to define it” (7). Just three years later in Figures

14 of Autobiography: The Language of Self-Writing (1983), prodigious scholar Avrom

Fleishman echoed the dilemma of attempting to define the term, "No one can tell what autobiography is, yet that has not dispelled a surge of recent efforts to define it" (53).

Herein lies the essence of a long-standing debate about autobiography: can any text be classified as an autobiography and if so what are the characteristics of such a classification?

One of the first scholars to tackle the question, “What is autobiography?,” and thus to analyze the boundaries of the genre, was Georges Gusdorf. In his 1956 essay,

“Conditions and Limits of Autobiography,” Gusdorf established parameters for the self portrayed in autobiographical texts. In order for autobiography to take place he argued, an individual must rely upon a separate or an "isolated" identity distinct from society.

The writer must possess a consciousness of her unique self as an “isolated being” (93).

Gusdorf’s theory posits that an “isolated” identity empowers the autobiographer to understand her life as exceptional and worth relating to others. Quite simply, Gusdorf claims that autobiography cannot exist when “the individual does not oppose himself

[sic] to all others…" (93). Once the autobiographical writer is removed from a limited identity as a member within a specific community, a self-conscious awareness develops that provides the necessary conditions for autobiography to exist.

Though not exclusively interested in autobiography, Northrop Frye ushered in a new approach to self-life-writing. Frye’s Anatomy of Criticism (1957) changed the conception of how a literary text was defined and thus, some say, introduced the world to the fundamental ideas behind postmodern theory. In the 1940s and 1950s, literary theory focused on the characteristics of autonomy and fictionality as defining elements of the

15 literary text. Frye claimed that this focus was too restrictive and that any “order of words” could be examined through the lens of literary analysis (3). Designating autobiography as a form of fiction (one of four such forms), Frye sought to integrate literature with autobiography. Building on the belief that the line between and fact and fiction, i.e., the line between non-fiction and literary works, was inherently tenuous, Frye liberated autobiography from its marginal literary status to a subject worth critical analysis.

Building upon Gusdorf’s description of autobiography as the work of an “isolated being” in “Conditions and Limits of Autobiography,” Roy Pascal attempted to establish autobiography as a genre by examining audience expectations. In his seminal work

Design and Truth in Autobiography (1960), Pascal also defined the term autobiography and compiled a catalogue of works of autobiography to support his definition. While the logistics of his definition were yet uncertain even to Pascal, there was little doubt in his mind that autobiography was indeed a genre:

There is an autobiographical form, and indeed a convention, which one

recognises [sic] and distinguishes from other literary modes; writers know

roughly what they expect to do if they write autobiographies, and critics

are in no great difficulty to define their subject-matter when they write

autobiographies. (2)

Pascal also noted that the reader of autobiography has many expectations of the author including a “coherent shaping of the past” and “the slow assimilation of experience and emergence of character” (162). Pascal emphasized, however, that the most troubling problem of autobiography was not the issue of defining the genre but rather answering the question: “[D]oes the author’s representation of himself [sic] as a personality

correspond to what we can get to know of him through other evidence?” (188). True

autobiographies, according to Pascal, contain “inner personality” and are written only by

those “pledged to their innermost selves” (194, 195). Pascal initiated a concern for

“truth” that has shadowed autobiography scholarship for years.

Less concerned with idea of truth in autobiography than Pascal, James Olney

approached the issue of genre in autobiography as “neither a formal nor as historical

matter” (3). In Metaphors of Self: The Meaning of Autobiography (1972), Olney examined texts by Montaigne, Jung, Darwin, Newman, and T.S. Eliot among others.

Noting the complexity of the “form” of autobiography, he contended autobiography is

more universal than it is localized. He also determined that there is no specific

autobiographical form to trace through the ages; instead of attempting to locate and

define a historical genre, Olney was specifically interested in how autobiography could

advance the reader’s understanding of the “moral” question: “‘How should I live?’” (viii,

xi, 3). Olney argued against rigidly defining autobiography claiming a definition would

either “include so much as to be no definition, or exclude so much as to deprive us of the

most relevant texts” and dismisses the topic as unworthy of further investigation,

“definition is not particularly desirable or significant” (38-39). He does, however, attempt

to address the problems of genre by broadly classifying autobiography in its ideal form as

a “metaphor and…in the reader’s experience that ideal psychic being and realized

self…we sometimes call this act autobiography, we other times call it poetry, but it

always art” (318). Channeling Plato, Olney notes specifically that these “metaphors of

self” are metaphors for the readers’ lives as well, not just “symbolic images…of symbolic

lives” (50). In spite of his claim that defining autobiography is “not desirable,” he

presents an approach to the genre, i.e., “metaphors of self,” that has influenced

autobiography theory for much of the last 35 years. Many contemporary scholars (cf.

Susanna Egan, Jill Kerr Conway, Judith Coullie, Sidonie Smith, et al.) in autobiography

look to Olney’s intentionally nebulous categorization of autobiography to establish a

framework for their own positions. Metaphors of Self… is enticing precisely because of

its broad applications, but isolating “ideal” forms makes practical applications of his

approach to the term “autobiography” difficult.

In contrast to Olney’s nod to Plato’s ideal forms, William Spengemann, in The

Forms of Autobiography: Episodes in the History of a Literary Genre (1980), asserts not

only that autobiography is a genre, but claims that the genre has evolved over time from a

specific archetype—St. Augustine’s Confessions. In Confessions, Spengemann notes that three methods of self-presentation are established: historical self-explanation, philosophical self-analysis, and poetic self-expression (xvi). He claims that the formal evolution of the genre reaches its conclusion in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet

Letter. In The Forms of…, Spengemann asserts, Hawthorne became consciously aware that his autobiography had actually created the “self” it supposedly set out to expose. In other words, Hawthorne felt that the “complete being was synonymous with, and contingent upon, the creation of a complete work of art” (137). The sheer number of works that might be classified as autobiography given a definition so broad in its scope complicates Spengemann’s rather straightforward approach to the genre of autobiography.3

While Spengemann approached genre in autobiography schematically with his

meticulously supported methods of self-presentation, American deconstructionist Paul de

Man attacked the notion of autobiography as a legitimate genre. In Autobiography as De- facement (1979), de Man states bluntly,

By making autobiography into a genre, one elevates it above the literary

status of mere reportage, chronicle, or memoir and gives it a place, albeit a

modest one, among the canonical hierarchies of the major literary genres.

This does not go without some embarrassment, since compared to tragedy,

or epic, or lyric poetry, autobiography always looks slightly disreputable

and self-indulgent in a way that may be symptomatic of its incompatibility

with the monumental dignity of aesthetic values…. Empirically as well as

theoretically, autobiography lends itself poorly to generic definition; each

specific instance seems to be an exception to the norm…. (919, 920)

Simply put, de Man views the subject of the autobiography as a textual production, not a form of referentiality—a necessarily fictive exercise that is rhetorical in nature, not historical. To him, autobiography is not a genre at all, but rather a “figure of reading or of understanding that occurs … in all texts” (921).

Inspired by de Man’s take on autobiography, Paul Jay addressed the idea of the genre of autobiography in Being in the Text (1984). Jay states succinctly, “I resist the idea that the works can be categorized as ‘autobiography’ in any coherent or helpful way”

(14). He notes that defining autobiography in the abstract is difficult enough in its own right, but that the real problem begins when trying to place actual texts under the umbrella of autobiography. Shunning the problematic generic label “autobiography” altogether, Jay uses the terms “self-reflexive works” and “literary self-representation”

(19, 21).

Contrary to de Man’s claim that autobiography is implicit “in all texts” and Jay’s

labeling of autobiography as “literary self-representation,” George Landow contends in

Approaches to Victorian Autobiography (1979) that autobiography cannot simply be any

act of “self-expression or self-representation” (1). Landow finds fault with generically

labeling the act of autobiography as self-representation:

[S]elf-representation is not autobiography…to qualify as autobiography a

work must not only present a version, myth, or metaphor of the self, but it

must also be retrospective and hence it must self-consciously contrast two

selves, the writing “I” and the one located (or created) in the past. (2)

In this passage, Landow is clearly responding to Olney’s “symbolic self” as well as de

Man and Jay’s contentions that autobiography is simply a “figure of reading.” In short,

Landow argues that without the “self-conscious” writer juxtaposing a present self

(writing “I”) with the past self, the reader is left not with autobiography but rather with a

state of “autobiographicality” (2).

Until the early 1980s, two primary topics dominated autobiography theory and

criticism: “truth” (i.e., how closely self-representation mirrored a verifiable truth about

the author/subject) and genre (i.e., the two fundamental questions: 1) could

autobiography be classified as a literary genre? and 2) if the answer is “yes” to question

1, how should autobiography be defined?). Beyond these two concerns, many scholars

continued to focus on close readings of selected works of autobiography prior to the early

1980s. Yet, the broader questions surrounding autobiography were largely trained upon

these two problems. Beginning in the 1980s, however, scholars began investigating a new concern: the voice(s) of the marginalized “Other” as articulated through autobiography.

One representative scholar who focused on marginalized voices (i.e., black South

Africans) in autobiography was Jane Watts. In Black Writers from South Africa: Towards

a Discourse of Liberation (1989), Watts noted a condition inherent in autobiography

from oppressed groups. She contended that in many cases, the individual voice in the autobiography acts as a surrogate for the larger oppressed community.

The use of personal history as an illustration of the troubles of an entire

community is what transforms these autobiographies and autobiographical

fragments into literature. It is here that the writer universalises [sic] his

[sic] experience, where the “I” of the memoir is transmuted into the

universal “I” of group identity; or even, as D.J. Enright suggests in his

memoirs, where ‘I’ bears the sense of “eye.” (125)

Watts’ claim of a “universalizing” experience renews an old critical problem, and she

avoids thorny distinctions between autobiography and autobiographical fragments.

Autobiographies from the canon of “dead white men” (e.g., St. Augustine’s Confessions,

Benjamin Franklin’s The Private Life of the Late Benjamin Franklin, et al.) were long

thought to have “universalizing” tendencies by well-known scholars including Saul

Padover, Karl Weintraub, and Roy Pascal. The community Watts speaks of, however, is

not truly universal but rather local as Olney claimed in Metaphors of Self: The Meaning

of Autobiography. The “I” being “transmuted” into the “universal ‘I’ of group identity” is

a particular oppressed group that finds a common experience not in the individual self-

representation of the author but it the author’s common experience of suffering (126).

One of Watts’ contemporaries, Judith Coullie also explored autobiographical

works in the black South African tradition. In “Not Quite Fiction: The Challenges of

Poststructuralism to the Reading of Contemporary Autobiography” (1991) as well as in

later works including “(Dis)Locating Selves: Izibongo and Narrative Autobiography in

South Africa” (1999), Coullie examined South African narratives and South African oral

“praise poetry.”4 Viewing the communal act of oral presentation as autobiography,

Coullie straddles the boundaries of several genres. She notes that black South African oral praise poetry is dissimilar from traditional western autobiography in that is not

created in a private and individual manner nor is it created for a social setting. Yet she

also provides many examples of black South African authors who move between or

combine both oral and written traditions. Coullie essentially confirms Lejeune’s le pact

autobiographique noting, “autobiography defines its own limits, as all concepts do,

relationally: like history… Autobiography usually expressly invokes a contractual

agreement with the reader (emphasis mine): the reader reads the references as true, and

the text undertakes to refer to people, places and events which had material existence.”

(226). Despite the introduction of a relatively a fresh corpus of autobiographical material

(oral praise poems) in an attempt to revitalize the discourse about autobiography, Coullie

largely reasserts past critical approaches to the genre.

Specifically concerned with addressing the representation of the feminine body in

autobiography, Shirley Neuman argues for a move away from traditional monological assumptions associated with self-presentation. In “‘An Appearance Walking in a Forest

the Sexes Burn’: Autobiography and the Construction of the Feminine Body” (1994),

Neuman contends that the Cartesian concept of dualism has greatly influenced criticism of autobiography creating a logocentric bias that must be acknowledged:

The histories of autobiography and of its criticism construe the self as

individuated and coherent rather than as the product of social construction

and as a subject-in-process. We can cite many reasons for this…among

them a…tradition that opposes the spiritual to the corporeal, and

then identifies “self” with the spiritual. The same opposition informs…the

Enlightenment definition of “man”…the corporeal functions

as the binary opposite by which the spiritual is understood. (293)

Neuman contends that the effects of this repression of the body upon women is to either suppress their self-life-writing completely or to force them “to invent a self that is female and noncorporeal, a self outside Western cultures” (294). In either scenario “true” self- representation is not possible.

Folkenflik also concerns himself with the location of autobiography and its subject arguing the earlier critical approaches to the issues of genre and truth were limiting (9). In the introduction to the edited collection, The Culture of Autobiography:

Constructions of Self-Representation (1993), he asks where the reader would find the locus of autobiography: “[I]s autobiography to be found in referentiality, textuality, or social construction? Is there a self in [the] text?” (12). Folkenflik argues, however, that broad definitions of the term miss the point. No genre is an absolute, but commonalities are always established. He contends autobiography and the autobiographical are indeed unique categories:

Some works are autobiographical despite being principally or officially

something else—Boswell’s Life of Johnson and Mark Harris’s Saul

Below, Drumlin Woodchuck (influenced by Boswell and ostensibly a

biography of Bellow) come to mind…[yet] the autobiographical and

autobiography are not the same…. (14)

He notes without irony that the writer of autobiography is always aware of the boundaries between the autobiographical and autobiography. The writer is keenly aware that “there is no such thing as a ‘life as lived’ to be referred to” (38). Yet, the autobiographer still views the text as “the certificate of a unique existence” and that the autobiographer “is on the side of the lay reader of autobiography, not of the theorist” (21-23).

In her recent work, Zarathustra’s Sisters: Women’s Autobiography and the

Shaping of Cultural History (2003), Susan Ingram renewed the problem of generic terms used to define self-life-writing. Concerned specifically with the narrow categories assigned to the autobiographies of women of historical importance, Ingram builds upon

Lejeune’s le pacte autobiographique when she distinguishes “life-writing” and autobiography from her choice of terminology—autobiographical writing (Ingram 6-7):

Autobiographical writing…is intended not to supplant life-writing but

rather to supplement it. It would be reserved for texts that involve

intervening with one’s surrounding culture and would be marked by being

based on ones’ own lived experience and its realization into writing.

...[A]utobiographical writing, as opposed to life-writing, would be

restricted to works that deliberately invoke Lejeune’s autobiographical

pact…[this] choice…is dictated by subject matter...the autobiographical

texts of these…women elude generic and periodic capture, they serve to

draw attention to the bases on which these categories are constructed.

(Ingram 6-9)

In short, Ingram is troubled by chronological and generic distinctions that “leave no room

for discussions of the texts”5 and that exist outside of “explicitly literary labels,” particularly women who did not “consider or construct” their autobiography as an aesthetic undertaking (9). Her analysis takes into account both the binary Neuman defines and Folkenflik’s concern that existing approaches to a “genre” limited any critical discussion of autobiography.

As I noted in the introduction of this chapter, the ability to track or categorize autobiography does not necessary yield a clear definition of autobiography. However, if we rely upon Justice Potter Brown’s loose, legal definition of pornography to similarly define autobiography (i.e., “I know it when I see it”), we will be presented with an infinite variety of self-representations recorded in text. The sheer volume and differentiation of these textual representations of the self would make any methodical inquiry into the digital transformations of the autobiographical impulse incongruous at best. Therefore, for the purposes of observing the transformation of autobiographical texts from print to digital media in this dissertation, I employ Lejeune’s le pacte autobiographique as a gauge by which I establish a “bare minimum” of what an autobiographical work must contain. By this I mean for a work to be categorized as autobiography, at least three aspects must be present: 1) a generally factual account of the subject’s life; 2) a linear chronological progression of time (the subject’s lifeline), and 3) a “story-structure” or narrative framework to give order to the events described by the author (13-16). In the following section, I illustrate how Lejeune’s le pacte autobiographique can be used in tandem with the concept of “family resemblances” developed by Ludwig Wittgenstein. Jointly, these two concepts may be used to

investigate the ways that the multimodal and interactive nature of hypertext has altered

(and sustained) historical features of self-presentation found in print autobiography.

Placing Autobiography on the Bookshelf: How Would the Reader Define Autobiography?

In “Autobiography in the Aftermath of Romanticism” (1982), Candace Lang

noted that “Autobiography is indeed everywhere one cares to find it” (6). Perhaps, Lang

was not being glib.6 She acknowledged the difficulty in defining autobiography as a genre using the tools of literary criticism. Writing as postmodernism criticism was rising to prominence in academia, she challenged the notion of cultural relativity as it applied to establishing a definition of the genre. When reviewing Olney’s Metaphors of Self: The

Meaning of Autobiography and Spengemann’s The Forms of Autobiography: Episodes in

The History of a Literary Genre (both relatively new texts at the time), she took exception with their unwillingness to narrow down the terms of their own obscure

“definitions:”

[O]ne might reasonably expect each critic to justify his own use of the

term, giving guidelines for inclusions of works in, or their exclusion from,

the category of autobiography. Both Olney and Spengemann, however, are

weak in respect to the latter: for if they do assume that some works are not

autobiographies (a likely supposition, after all), their vague notions of

“poetic” autobiography do not provide us with any rigorous criteria for

denying texts this classification. It would seem expedient to at least limit

the rubric “autobiography” to works in which a first-person narrator

explicitly declares his intention to recount a major portion of his

experiences and/or his reflections on those experiences (even though this

still leaves the question of the referential dimension- the “authenticity”- of

the autobiography to be dealt with in each individual case) and to settle for

the term “autobiographical” for other works which one may care to

propose as attempts at “self-inquiry,” “self-revelation,” “self-creation,”

and the like. (6)

Though defining autobiography is not necessarily the urgent critical concern it once was, establishing a generic definition that offers a clear distinction between the autobiographical and autobiography is still vital. Without some generic framework, boundaries become muddled and critical analysis and discourse become absurd propositions.

To address the problem of genre classification in autobiography, I propose using

Wittgenstein’s “family resemblances” as a guide. In his treatise, Philosophical

Investigations, Wittgenstein states,

I can think of no better expression… for the various resemblances

between members of a family: build, features, colour [sic] of eyes, gait,

temperament, etc. overlap and criss-cross in the same way…if

someone wished to say: “There is something common to all these

constructions—namely the disjunction of all their common properties”—I

should reply: Now you are only playing with words. One might as well

say: “Something runs through the whole thread—namely the continuous

overlapping of those fibres [sic]. (67).

In other words, there may not be one common feature to the entire family, yet they all

resemble (emphasis mine) one another. In short, the idea of family resemblances can be

applied to autobiography by asking a relatively simple question: while not all

autobiographies have all the elements used to categorize self-life writing, do not many of

them share certain similarities and relations with each other? If, for example, it were

possible to look at all autobiographies ever written rather than think about what an

autobiography should entail, we would notice that some autobiographies, but certainly

not all, follow a clear progression of time. We might also notice that some, but not all,

have a clear story-structure or narrative drive, or that some, but not all, present a

generally factual account of their lives. Most would likely attempt self-definition of some

form. Wittgenstein’s family resemblances can be useful when thinking about

autobiography precisely because of the scholarly complications associated with the

classification of autobiography.

If it is possible to distinguish autobiography from its close, yet very distinct

autobiographical cousins, i.e., autobiographical novels, autobiographical poems,

memoirs, diaries, letters, verse-narratives, journals, etc., it perhaps makes sense to look

carefully at how a reader might differentiate the family resemblances from among these

sources. For example, I suggest that in the mind of a typical reader of autobiography,

David Copperfield is a novel by Charles Dickens—not the literal self-representation of

Dickens.7 It may contain a few elements that are autobiographical, e.g., the protagonist

(subject), David, is a novelist who started out as a political reporter as did Dickens, yet these “truthful” elements can easily be juxtaposed with the larger fictive creation, e.g.,

David is a naïve, orphaned village boy, while Charles Dickens spent his childhood with his natural parents in the seaside towns of Portsmouth and Chatham (coastal towns),

which were comparatively cosmopolitan (Dickens 12). If David Copperfield were in fact

The Autobiography of Charles Dickens, the typical audience for autobiography would not

expect (nor appreciate) the author taking such liberties in the telling of his life.

Moreover, if given a copy of Song of Myself8 to peruse, the typical reader of

autobiography might quickly notice the title and the verse of the poem and focus

particularly on the repetitive use of the first person and specific information on Whitman,

e.g., “Walt Whitman, an American, one of the roughs…” (48). It would be, however,

nearly impossible for anyone to suggest that the expansive persona created by the poem, one that has arguably demolished conventional notions of the self, is the straightforward autobiography of Walt Whitman’s life. When Whitman’s persona notes that he is “not contained between my hat and boots” (31) and that he is “large…I contain multitudes,”

(85) the audience is aware that the “subject” portrayed in the Song of Myself goes far beyond Walt Whitman, printer’s devil, journeyman compositor, and editor of the

Brooklyn Eagle.

It is also important to consider what publishers classify as autobiography as determined by the public’s expectations. As publishing is primarily a business enterprise and not an intellectual one, publishers choose their selections carefully based upon demographic and marketing data which indicate which texts the public prefers. While large bookstore chains which carry the publishers’ catalogues would not place Song of

Myself or David Copperfield9 under the subject heading “Autobiography,” they might

place well-known autobiographies including St. Augustine’s Confessions, Gertrude

Stein’s The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, and Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the

Caged Bird Sings under the subject heading of “Autobiography” or under the subject

headings of “Religious,” “Literature/ Fiction,” and “African-American Literature” respectively. This seems to indicate that the publishers understand that certain characteristics of autobiography are clearly recognizable, yet these works are not completely defined by these characteristics.

Ultimately, the answer to the question, what makes a text an “autobiography?” may simply be to ask more questions:10 Is autobiography simply “A rose by any other

name”?11 Is not parsing over minutia in search of definitive characteristics of a genre (or

an anti-genre for that matter) of autobiography ultimately futile? What would a definitive genre tell us? If as Olney suggests, “all writing” is autobiographical in some sense

(Autobiography 4), and history itself can be seen as autobiography “writ large”

(Metaphors of Self 49) then why trouble about these distinctions at all? If we are indeed

“stuck” with Olney’s paraphrase of Justice Potter’s words as our best explanation of what an autobiography is, then perhaps an “elephant test”12 is indeed the best we can do.

How then, are we to define autobiography—an autobiography that the public not

only has so little trouble defining and separating from other literary genres, but also one

that some scholars have either eschewed as “lend[ing] itself poorly to generic definition”

and “disreputable and self-indulgent” (de Man 919, 920) or defined so broadly and

vaguely as to encompass nearly all forms and styles of self-expression?13 While this

question persists as historically troublesome, scholars have generally agreed that

autobiography is “self-life-writing” written as text by an individual author. What

happens, however, when even this historical “given” is challenged? What happens when

two of these three markers of autobiography (self and writing) are now in flux as is the

case in blogs, facebook pages, and even in Second Life? At this moment in history when

not just autobiography but the text itself is undergoing a radical transformation,

reconsidering the definition of autobiography seems an urgent task indeed. As Sidonie

Smith and Julia Watson note in Reading Autobiography (2001), “[N]o single generic

term has emerged as a critical concept to describe how the practices of a digitized

imaginary in cyberspace life writing will differ from the analogue writings of lines on a

page” (150). Perhaps this is because discussing hypertext autobiography using terms

typically applied to print autobiography is difficult for several significant reasons. For

example, among hypertext autobiographies, the written word varies tremendously in its

frequency of use and its importance to the narrative. The expanded corpus of materials

available in hypertext autobiography (external links, resumes, artifacts, photographs, audio, streaming video, etc.) complicates the interconnections between writer, reader and

medium (media) making the written word just one of a choice of devices to reveal the

self. The linear progression of the narrative, though not atypical, is not a given. Most

importantly, perhaps, hypertext autobiography is in a constant state of revision—some

are revised daily by both the author and others; therefore, no version of the text can be

said to be permanent. What I use as a sample today may tomorrow be eradicated. In

short, perhaps the analysis of these hypertext sites should, in some fundamental way, take

into account the fluid essence of the sites themselves.

Taking into consideration the proliferation of autobiographical websites,

particularly the fanatical popularity of “network” sites in the United States such as

MySpace and facebook,14 we may need to ask new and different questions about autobiography. And, it may be possible to use both past scholarship on autobiography

and the previously mentioned assumptions of the audience as a base from which to

31 formulate these questions. For example, in the emerging world of hypertext autobiography, how important is a linear chronology to understanding the life of the subject? In the desultory world of the web, how essential is a clear, successive narrative drive? For that matter, does the audience assume hypertext “self-life-writing” to be truthful in a literal sense with all the technological possibilities of rendering a fictive self? These questions, though admittedly still in an evolutionary phase, are a start at examining what role the medium of the Internet might play in modifying the definition of autobiography. In the following chapters, I provide responses to these unanswered questions.

No less than the great lexicographer himself, Samuel Johnson, warned his readers of the dangers inherent in defining anything:

It is one of the maxims of the civil law, that ‘definitions are hazardous.’

Definition is, indeed, not the province of man; every thing [sic] is set

above or below our faculties. The works and operations of nature are too

great in their extent, or too much diffused in their relations, and the

performances of art too inconstant and uncertain to be reduced to any

determinate idea. (Johnson 300)

The irony of Johnson’s claim is obvious. Why endeavor to define anything (let alone compile a dictionary) if all definitions are fraught with such unreliability? Johnson’s answer to this question is particularly relevant to the act of defining autobiography: “I have only failed in an attempt which no human powers have hitherto completed” (12).

With the limitations of any “true” definition in mind, this chapter serves only as a scratch at the surface in the quest to define Western autobiography. As is the case with most

traditional genres in print, the boundaries of autobiography are challenged both by the

intended and unintended influences of the new medium (in this case, hypertext). If we are

truly to define a “genre” of Western autobiography, we must include an exploration into

digital self-life-writing. To begin an investigation of digital autobiography, we must first be able to ascertain if there are certain “core” characteristics located in any text labeled as

an autobiography. To accomplish this task, I contend that it is useful to employ Lejeune’s le pacte autobiographique in tandem with the concept of “family resemblances” envisioned by Wittgenstein. The family resemblances I use in this dissertation to classify a work as an autobiography include the following features based upon Lejeune’s le pacte

autobiographique mentioned previously in this chapter: 1) a generally factual account of

the subject’s life; 2) a linear chronological progression of time (the subject’s lifeline), and

3) a “story-structure” or narrative framework to give order to the events described by the

author (13-16). Perhaps we will find that such a limited definition for categorizing

autobiography is not suitable for digital autobiographical “texts.”15 Yet, beginning this

inquiry looking for these core characteristics can serve as a useful starting point. From

this point, we may discover new insights about the effects of digital media upon the act

and product of self-presentation.

In chapter 2, I examine four historical print autobiographies, specifically, St.

Augustine’s The Confessions of Saint Augustine (397 A.D.), Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s

The Confessions of Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1782), Gertrude Stein’s The Autobiography

of Alice B. Toklas (1933) and Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969).

A close reading of each of these historical print texts serves to support my contention that

the autobiographical self has always been a product of social construction, i.e., a self that

33 is constructed in dialogue (literal and figurative) with others. I argue that the often subtle dialogue (between the author and his or her interlocutor) in print autobiography becomes considerably more conspicuous in hypertext media.

CHAPTER TWO—SETTING THE STAGE: ST. AUGUSTINE AND THE ORIGINS

OF SELF-REPRESENTATION IN CONTEMPORARY AUTOBIOGRAPHY

It is probably no mere historical accident that the word person, in its first

meaning, is a mask. It is rather a recognition of the fact that everyone is always and

everywhere, more or less consciously, playing a role. It is through these that we know

each other; it is in these roles that we know ourselves…For if the individual’s activity is

to become significant to others, he must mobilize his activity so that it will express during

the interaction what he wishes to convey.

Erving Goffman, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (1956)

In this chapter I argue that the process of self-representation that produces an

autobiography has always been one that is heavily influenced by social interaction—both

real and imagined. Though one individual’s name may be attributed to an autobiography, the product is the result of a complex series of virtual and imagined social interactions.

My intention in exposing the social influences upon the construction of the self evident in historical print autobiography is to illustrate how these influences have become considerably more literal and evident in digital media. To make this case, I employ the dramaturgical social theory outlined by Erving Goffman in his most important work, The

Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (1956). Goffman contended that human life shares

similarities with a theater. In short, individuals attempt to guide the impression others

have of them by changing their appearance, demeanor and/or setting to match their

perceptions of their audience’s expectations. As is the case in theatrical performance,

individuals engaged in social interactions meet their audiences on a “stage.” This stage

provides both a venue (front) to present an idealized self-image and a “curtain” that hides

private characteristics that conflict with the idealized self-image being presented. In this

sense, all speech acts (including writing one’s autobiography) should be viewed as

communal in nature.

It is perhaps, in some ways axiomatic to note that writing one’s autobiography is

a social process rather than an individual endeavor. As the Russian philosopher, literary

critic, and scholar, Mikhail Bakhtin notes, the process of communication through

language (written or oral) is necessarily social:

I am conscious of myself and become myself only while revealing myself

for another…To be means to communicate...To be means to be for

another, and through the other, for oneself. A person has no internal

sovereign territory, he is wholly and always on the boundary; looking

inside himself, he looks into the eyes of another or with the eyes of

another (Problems of Dostoevsky's Poetics 287).

Since all speech requires an utterance from a speaker and a response from an interlocutor

(imaginary or real), a discourse always takes place between the individual and his or her audience. However, the socially-constructed self manifested in print autobiographies is not mere tautology. If it were, the idea of the solitary author would not have had its privileged status in Western culture for much of the history of printed texts. The fixed and permanent nature of print makes the idea of an individual writing his or her story in relative isolation tenable. The autobiographical subject can be imagined by the reader to be reflecting upon events of the past without the mediating influence of an ongoing dialogue with others. And while the construction of the self using digital media (as I demonstrate in Chapter 3) destroys any illusion of a solitary author working alone with

36 his or her thoughts, the social influences upon the process of self-construction are apparent in all texts—digital and print. As evidence of the dialogical nature of historical print autobiographies, I examine excerpts from four canonical Western autobiographies.

In doing so, I illustrate that a figurative social process of self-construction is evident in traditional print autobiographies.

Throughout much of Western history, the self has been envisioned through the lens of Rene Descartes16 (i.e., the “Cartesian” notion of the self). Descartes’ famous quotation, “Cogito ergo sum” (I think therefore I am) illustrates his idea that thought is indicative of the existence of a “self.” All thought is embodied in the individual mind— the only place thought can exist. Descartes contends that knowledge comes not from perception but from deductive reasoning because the senses can be easily deceived.

Moreover, Descartes also believed that language and thought could be separated—a concept that has been challenged by many thinkers in the modern era. The Cartesian idea of the self is sometimes referred to as a dualistic concept (i.e., a binary opposition) with the self contrasted with the other or the social; hence, Descartes imagines the construction of a self as prior to the social or the communal, not as a process that evolves in conjunction with a community of others. For much of the last 400 years of Western history, Cartesian ideology has been the basis for establishing a framework that has driven our understanding of the self as separate and distinct from the community, and this framework provides a scaffold for much of the past scholarship in autobiography.

According to a Cartesian framework, when the autobiographer writes his/her life story, he/she does so divorced from the corruptive influences of outside voices—he/she follows only the linear precepts of an internal, individual voice, which is guided by primarily by

the solitary thoughts of the author.

One of preeminent twentieth-century scholars on the subject of autobiography,

James Olney, establishes a clear link between autobiography and Cartesian thought in

Metaphors of Self: The Meaning of Autobiography (1972):

Awareness of the nature of self-being is essential to the full

autobiographic art; this being so, Descartes’ “Cogito, ergo sum” is a

preautobiographic statement.… The act of autobiography and the act of

poetry, both as creation and as recreation, constitute a bringing to

consciousness of the nature of one’s own existence, transforming the mere

fact of existence into a realized quality and a possible meaning. In a

certain sense, autobiography and poetry are both definitions of the self at a

moment and in a place: and I do not mean, for autobiography, that it is a

definition of the writer’s self in the past, at the time of action, but in the

present, at the time of writing…. In the great autobiographers, whether it

be autobiography as such or poetry, consciousness of this continuing

creation of the self accompanies the creation, and, in the moment after,

becomes it…. (43-44)

Olney expands upon the original Cartesian concept to include the discursive idea of

“continuing creation” as the autobiographer composes his or her narrative (44). While he questions the possibility of a self that is all-knowing and self-sufficient, he does not argue

that social influences fully permeate the self-narrative or affect its construction.

If the “contained” self is sacred in the Cartesian mode of thinking, then history

tells us that print autobiography would be its medium bar none. From a Cartesian point of

view, the process of creating the autobiographical self has to be monological

(representing an individual voice). Yet as Shirley Neuman articulates in her previously

mentioned work, “‘An Appearance Walking in a Forest the Sexes Burn’: Autobiography

and the Construction of the Feminine Body” (1994), the Cartesian concept of dualism is

inherently flawed when it is applied to self-representation: “The histories of

autobiography and of its criticism construe the self as individuated and coherent rather

than as the product of social construction (emphasis mine) and as a subject-in-process”

(293). Autobiography, according to Neuman’s definition, is the agency of the subject in

self-representation. Her claim that autobiography is a social construct channels Bakhtin’s

concept of dialogism, i.e., “I…become myself only while revealing myself for another”

(Problems of Dostoevsky's Poetics 287). Bakhtin’s work concept of dialogism shares

commonalities with other theorists critical of egocentric approaches to the self. In order

to move beyond the boundaries of the individual self, it is necessary to turn to the work of

the Canadian sociologist and scholar, Erving Goffman.

Contrary to the Cartesian conception of the self called into being by individual

thought, Goffman contends that the self is a product of social performance—a reaction to

others, rather than a product of an isolated individual. When an individual enters into face-to-face interactions with others, he or she relies upon cues from the specific setting to create a contextualized self. For example, if I am scheduled to appear for an interview for a job that requires a certain level of formality, I adjust the presentation of myself to fit that setting. Superficially, this could mean that I wear my best suit and tie, I shave and a shower and I comb my hair carefully. I might also arrive early. I might also modify my non-verbal communicative traits to fit the context. For instance, I might shake hands

39 more firmly, smile more, maintain more eye contact, and sit in a more contrived, rigid position. On a deeper level, I might alter my personality traits, e.g., I might listen more than I speak, or I might answer questions in ways that reveal (or conceal) certain thought patterns. Of course, Goffman does not contend that individual thought does not exist in the absence of another person. Rather, he posits that the self becomes a “moving target”—a performance that can be enacted and re-enacted in multiple, divergent ways to address an ever-changing context.

Before we can apply Goffman’s theory of identity formation through contextual self-presentation to print autobiography, we must ask a basic question: how does the idea of contextual self-presentation apply when the face-to-face interaction is removed? If proximal objects, e.g., clothing, make-up, etc., are necessary components to self- construction and identity formation in Goffman’s mind, then what happens when these proximal objects are removed or at least minimized? An autobiography is an artifice—a physical product of an imagined self. The self constructed in an autobiography is based upon the recollection of interactions with others and upon anticipation of how others will read and interpret the constructed self. Dialogue with these “others” is recollected and imagined, and the recalled moments of face-to-face interaction with others are written to present not the self engaged in these past moments, but a new idealized self. Whether face-to-face or imagined, contextual social interaction motivates and informs the autobiographer to create a self in a print.

If the process of self-representation is a social construct, then I contend that autobiography in all of its forms, i.e., print, digital, etc., is essentially dialogical in nature.

By this I mean the process of autobiographical creation is inherently social in nature and

40 deeply influenced by the “other.” This intrinsic dialogical essence can be observed using evidence from several “generic” cases. To this end, in this chapter I engage in a brief, close reading of four historical print autobiographies, specifically, St. Augustine’s The

Confessions of Saint Augustine17 (397 A.D.), Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s The Confessions of Jean-Jacques Rousseau18 (1782), Gertrude Stein’s The Autobiography of Alice B.

Toklas (1933) and Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969). I have selected these texts as representative samples of the print autobiographical canon. To some degree, my motive for choosing these texts is axiomatic. Clearly, there is a need to have a diverse corpus of evidence to make a case for the dialogical process inherent in autobiography. Beyond this perfunctory motivation, it could be argued that each of the texts I have selected for examination introduces a benchmark to autobiography. For example, as the first definitive Western autobiography, St. Augustine’s Confessions seemed an appropriate place to begin an investigation. In fact, it would be difficult to have a discussion of autobiography in the West without including St. Augustine. Besides

Confessions’ obvious ramifications on the history of Christianity, the text provides a rare look at an unbroken transcript of an individual’s thoughts and actions over a particular period of time (i.e., 354-397 AD). Unlike similar earlier texts including Seneca’s Letters from a Stoic, St. Augustine offers deep introspection. His introspection provides one of the first examples in text that reveals the unique character of its subject—a defining characteristic of autobiography more typical of the Enlightenment than of the late Roman

Empire.

As for The Confessions of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, I chose this autobiography as a sample for inquiry because it was among the first to record the secular and personal

feelings and experiences of the author. Whereas St. Augustine always channels his

thoughts in Confessions through the perspective of a man in search of a closer

relationship with his god, Rousseau wrote to convince others that what he presented was

unique in the history of humankind: “My purpose is to display to my kind a portrait in

every way true to nature, and the man I shall portray will be myself” (3). With

Rousseau’s secularism and solipsism, self-life writing moves closer to the narcissistic

tomes more familiar to us at the dawn of the 21st century.

If Rousseau is credited with the first modern autobiography, then Gertrude Stein

could be credited with and early attempt to subvert the genre. By adopting the persona of

Alice B. Toklas, Stein is able to write about her own life in ways that mimic the voice of her companion, Alice B. Toklas. Obviously, Stein’s persona challenges the notion of presenting one’s own self through the conventions of autobiography such as those outlined in Lejeune’s le pact autobiographique. The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas is particularly relevant to my discussion in Chapter Five of using outside media and materials to create an online persona. In addition, the intimate details concerning the personal lives of artists and the general focus on gossip strongly resembles features (e.g., the “wall”) of social networking sites including facebook.

For my final choice, Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings offers a representative example from a historically underrepresented group (African-American women). It is important to this study because it marks a shift away from earlier African-

American memoirs (e.g., Ann Petry) that tended to mount defenses against the prevailing stereotypes of black women in America. Candid information on the private lives of these women might have compromised their mission.19 Angelou’s revelations made her

personal tribulations public in I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings and in doing so set a

precedent as a voice for others both within the African-American community and

throughout the larger public audience.

My hope is that a close reading of these four texts will demonstrate that print

autobiography, traditionally categorized through the specter of the Cartesian notion of an

individual self, has socially-influenced underpinnings.

Examining the Canon: A Brief Investigation of the Social Presentation of the Self in

Historical Print Autobiography

Some 20 have argued that with Confessions St. Augustine invented the modern conception of the autobiography. To be sure, Augustine did establish a pattern to be followed, as most autobiographers to this day are affected by his approach. However,

Confessions was not the first autobiography. Many classical works, for example,

Heraclitus’ writings, Marcus Aurelius’ What I Have Learned and Seneca’s Letters from a

Stoic (ca, 63-65 AD), can be argued to be precursors of Western autobiography as exemplified by Confessions. Nevertheless, his autobiography is generally considered to be the first “truly and completely subjective autobiography in Western civilization…”

(Padover xiv). Confessions, however, should not be considered a complete or entirely

“honest” telling of Augustine’s life. St. Augustine certainly leaves out key events that

may hold significance for the reader in understanding his life story. For example, his

father’s death is barely discussed, and many years of his life seem overlooked or at least

neglected. In fact, neither his mother nor his father, both of whom have enormous

significance in his life, are specifically named until the end of Book IX, which would

seem to disrupt the chronological order readers may expect (204). The form of

Confessions, moreover, probably seems a bit disjointed to the contemporary reader. The first nine books take us through most of Augustine’s life, yet Chapter X focuses on an examination of how his memory works which leads him to question the “self” that is evolving as he writes (222-223), and Chapters XI-XIII contain exposition that addresses the first chapter of the Book of Genesis.21 Despite these variances, Confessions allows us a glimpse of two versions of St. Augustine: one version is a young man grappling to find his “truth” and a sense of spirituality, and the second version is the older Augustine, the narrator, wiser and more humble, trying to illustrate how he finally came to his acceptance of Christianity as the one true faith.

Proceeding in a fairly ordered chronological manner, Augustine begins his autobiography in Book I by relaying details of his infancy and early childhood. Almost immediately, a pattern is established. Augustine carefully chooses events that describe his path to spiritual development while continually reiterating his love for God—all other details of his life are secondary. For example, Augustine focuses in the first five chapters of Book I on the glory of God and the nature of God—not on his birth, family and hometown (21-24). Speaking directly to God, he inquires:

Do heaven and earth, then, contain the whole of you, since you fill them?

Or, when once you have filled them, is some part of you left over because

they are too small to hold you? If this is so, when you have filled heaven

and earth, does that part of you which remains flow over into some other

place? (22)

On the surface this excerpt does not appear to tell us much about the specific details of his life. However, the philosophical and spiritual musings evident in this example

permeate the text, illustrating his acute power of observation and thought. Moreover, the

praise of God infused throughout his life story serves several additional purposes: 1) it

establishes a conversation between Augustine (I) and God (You)22 crucial to

understanding St. Augustine’s faith and the process of his redemption; 2) it allows the readers to reflect upon their own relationship with God; and 3) it establishes the primary audience of the text as God and the secondary audience as the general reader. His

“confession,” in this sense, is both a metaphorical confession to the reader, and a literal,

Catholic sacrament addressed to God. His decision to focus on his spiritual life reveals a

“truth” Augustine is attempting to establish in the mind of the reader—the story of

Augustine’s return to God.

In Book II, Augustine continues his chronological push forward when he reflects upon his adolescence. While he begins by describing his budding sexuality and sins born of it in Book II, Chapters 1-3, he quickly moves from the sins of lust into an anecdote that might seem trivial at first glance to the reader but holds great significance in the telling of his life story—a theft of pears (47). Augustine details his theft of pears from a vineyard with a few of his closest friends noting that his real purpose was not to eat them but rather to take pleasure “in doing something that was forbidden” (47). While the reader might insist that Augustine’s greater sins of promiscuity, adultery, pride, and vanity are not only more serious in the eyes of God but also more glaring in their effects on others, e.g., his mother (Monica), his concubine (unnamed), his “fatherless” son (Adeodatus), etc.,

Augustine makes the point that the sin committed just “do wrong for no purpose” (47) is quite different from sin committed to “live on the proceeds” (48) of the crime.

As is the case through much of Confessions, however, his reference to the stolen

pears is doing more than simply acknowledging to both God and reader that he

understands his sins on a relative level. He is establishing a metaphor, which is perhaps

obvious, yet is easily overlooked. Besides the obvious references to the Fall in the Garden

of Eden (Genesis 2–3), Augustine is foreshadowing his later conversion in Book VIII,

Chapter 12, when he hears the child’s voice saying, “Take it and read, take it and read”

(177) while sitting under a fig tree in the garden. In this scene, he is in the throes of frustration with his desperate quest for certainty in his spiritual life: “I probed the hidden

depths of my soul and wrung its pitiful secrets from it, and when I mustered them all

before the eyes of my heart, a great storm broke within me, bringing with it a great

deluge of tears” (177). He cannot yet let go of his sinful life until the precise moment of

clarity when the girl’s voice calls to him. Augustine then responds to her call and opens

the Bible and reads from Romans 13:13–14; the passage lays to rest his fears and doubts

about leaving his old self behind (177-179).23 Whether the catalyst (the young girl’s

voice) is “real” or not is irrelevant. By linking these “bookends” together, he connects his

youthful descent into sin to his eventual salvation. His own life story becomes an allegory through which he shows his readers that even the most sinful can achieve salvation if

they are open to faith beyond knowledge.

Throughout Confessions, Augustine makes his motivation24 for writing evident—

he clearly desires to explain himself to both God and the masses. He addresses God directly, letting Him know that he is telling his own story “so that I and all who read my

words may realize the depths from which we are to cry to you” (45). He also recognizes

the paradox of explaining himself to an omniscient God¸ i.e., “you are the God who

knows me…you have recognized me” (207) and thus he sets out to explain himself to

46 himself. In doing so, he sets forth a pattern of entrusting the audience to be the measure of the truth: “[I] cannot prove to them that my confessions are true…I shall be believed by those whose ears are opened to me by charity” (208). However, it is in Book X,

Chapter 5 that Augustine reveals the difficulty of telling his own story. In one of his most revealing moments, he acknowledges a problem that continues to plague autobiography to this date—the elusive nature of the self: “This much I know…at present

I am looking at a confused reflection in a mirror” (211). In other words, Augustine understands that the picture of the self that he attempts to capture for the reader is elusive and thus he again places his hopes in God to “not play us false” (211).

The self that Augustine presents through Confessions and that I describe briefly here represents a benchmark in the development of autobiography. In Confessions,

Augustine succeeds in establishing several notable traits that have become family resemblances within works commonly labeled as autobiography. He develops his life story in a chronologically linear way based upon personally selected events and facts from his life from 354 A.D. to 387 A.D. More importantly, he also presents the audience with a subject that is contextualized and personalized by its narrator—an approach to autobiography that has become nearly de facto in nature. Beyond these easily identifiable traits, however, his autobiography reveals something more significant in the development of “self-life-writing.” In Chapter X, Augustine asks the questions that still vex the contemporary autobiographer, i.e., how can one ever know the “true” self?25 (211).

Should the autobiographer move through his/her own memories and offer some conclusion about them? Should the autobiographer take on an involved or a distant persona as he/she revisits the past? Or, can an autobiographer perform “a sequence of

symbolic actions through which the ineffable self can be realized?” (Spengemann 32).

While a succinct characterization of St. Augustine from Confessions may be impossible due in part to both the complexity of his thought and his digressive expository method,

Confessions succeeds as an attempt to provide answers to these questions that confront all of us as we seek our own “true” selves. The text has also served as a traditional example of a monological autobiography. However, I would argue that the dialogical nature of

autobiography can be witnessed in almost any print autobiography, perhaps the best place

to begin dismantling the automatic assumption of the monological self is precisely with

The Confessions of St. Augustine, an autobiography that many26 claim invented the

modern conception of the self-narrative.

One of the fundamental markers of a social dialogue at work in Confessions runs

contrary to the popular perception of St. Augustine’s work as a benchmark for

contemporary autobiography and problematizes the assumption that autobiography is s

Cartesian self-representation. A common trajectory for the life-narrative is to catalogue

the past—to move from one point in time in the past to another point in time closer to the

present. In this way, the autobiographer attempts to conjure a past self in the present moment. St. Augustine does this more or less in Books I-IX, but his chronological log of past events is only a part of Confessions. As Karl Weintraub notes in The Value of the

Individual (1978), St. Augustine is as concerned with the present, future, and “above all, eternity” as he is with his past (23-24). He knows his journey is not yet complete.

Consciously, he uses the past as a foundation from which to persuade his audience. If he can be converted, anyone can.

As a genre, confessional autobiographies27 are particularly well-suited to

48 exposing the social influences on self-representation through the text. A confession clearly requires both a confessor and a confessee (recipient of the confession) in order to be complete. If St. Augustine as confessor writes solely for himself, then nothing is confessed to the other, and if the confession is to God alone, then it is gratuitous, perhaps even disingenuous, considering God’s omniscience. But the influence of the other upon

St. Augustine goes far beyond these rather intuitive observations. In the main, St.

Augustine sets out to do many things in Confessions, most of them dialogical in nature:

1) he actively confesses to (converses with) God as he writes and does so in the presence of an imagined reader; 2) he attempts to persuade his audience to seek out God within themselves as the only path to salvation; and 3) he relates selected events from his past to illustrate the depths of his depravity. Of course, St. Augustine does much more than this.

He spends much of Book V building a case against the Manichees (a legitimate threat to

Christianity in his time), and he spends nearly three books (XI-XIII) discussing the allegory and meaning in the opening lines of Genesis. Here, I am concerned primarily with the closely related aspects outlined in points 1 and 2 listed above as these activities reveal the strong dialogic tendencies inherent in Confessions, and disrupt the common assumption of a self-life writer free from social influences.

Among the evidence for the dialogic at work in Confessions is the conversation

St. Augustine has with God. He confesses his sins to an omniscient God, not to inform

God of his sinful acts, but rather to engage in the act of humbling himself to his creator.

While the dialogue with his reader may be symbolic in the sense that the audience offers no spoken or written utterance in return, there is little doubt that St. Augustine is engaged in a spiritual dialogue with the Supreme Being. Since God is omnipresent, he believes he

49 is influenced by God’s utterance as he writes:

Help me find the words to explain…I need not tell all this to you, my God,

but in your presence I tell it to my own kind, to those men, however, who

may perhaps pick up this book. And I tell it so that I and all who read my

words may realize the depths from which we are to cry to you…. For

whatever good I may speak to men you have heard it before in my heart,

and whatever good you hear in my heart, you have first spoken it to me

yourself. (24, 45, 208)

Of course, the nature of St. Augustine’s dialogue with God is ambiguous and ultimately unprovable in a literal sense—God acts as a literary trope. Nevertheless, there is little doubt that St. Augustine’s words are influenced by his perceptions of his communication with God:

I acknowledge that it was by your grace and mercy that you melted away

my sins like ice…what man who reflects upon his own weakness can dare

to claim that his own efforts have made him chaste and free from

sin…there are some who have been called by you and because they have

listened to your voice (emphasis mine) they have avoided the sins which I

here record and confess for them to read. (51)

St. Augustine thus shows the audience the futility of “reflecting” upon their sins in solitary isolation without a dialogue with God. It is only as they listen and hear God’s voice that they can make a change. The above excerpt also makes clear that he recognizes that his own life story channels God’s voice by encouraging the audience to avoid “the sins which I here record and confess” (51). In this way, St. Augustine attempts to offer a

50 path to salvation for would-be readers through his life narrative:

But what good do they hope will be done if they listen to what I say? Is it

that they wish to join with me in thanking you, when they hear how close I

have come to you by your grace, and to pray for me, when they hear how

far I am set apart from you by the burden of my sins? If this is what they

wish, I shall tell them what I am. (209)

St. Augustine uses the Socratic approach throughout Confessions to emphasize his ongoing dialogue with a personal God as well as to offer anticipatory answers to questions the reader has not yet asked. When he asks, “Why then does it matter to me whether men should hear what I have to confess, as though it were they who were to cure all the evil that is in me?” (208), the reader recognizes the question as moot—the book has already been written. Yet, St. Augustine provides the answer to reassure and to persuade the reader that he understands that a confession to God alone will not reach the other. He must also write for his fellow “men” [sic]:

But I confess not only to you but also to believers among men, all who

share my joy and all who like me are doomed to die; all who are my

fellows in your kingdom and all who accompany me on this pilgrimage,

whether they have gone before or are still to come or are with me as I

make my way through life. (210)

Some28 have argued that behind St. Augustine’s transparent claims noted above,

Confessions is a clear manifestation of the author’s enormous ego and a blatant attempt to secure praise from his audience. In this respect, some argue the work is in dialogue with potential readers. For instance, in St. Augustine of Hippo (1967), Peter Brown claims that

St. Augustine's dramatis personae in the Confessions is "above all, gloriously egocentric"

(167) and Lyell Asher notes in “The Dangerous Fruit of St. Augustine’s Confessions”

(1998) that St. Augustine’s “ego was of remarkable scope and stamina…” (231). Perhaps

Brown and Asher are correct in their assertions, and perhaps their comments declare

nothing more than the obvious—the autobiographical act is, essentially, an exercise in

narcissism. An exercise in self-love that seeks the approval of the other through

persuasion is, nonetheless, influenced by the dialogic. Regardless of his personal intent in writing Confessions, St. Augustine seldom deviates from the social act of attempting to

fortify, enrich, and increase the church (body) of Christ, i.e., the community of believers.

As we read (in translation) Confessions over sixteen centuries after its original publication, any attempt to pin down St. Augustine’s motivation for writing his work is bound to be problematic. We know his stated intentions: to illustrate the power of divine intervention, to show the sinful nature of humankind using himself as an example, to combat the flawed teaching of the Manichees, and to interpret the allegory and meaning behind Genesis, Book I. Beyond these intentions, we can only infer meaning. The teleological leanings of Confessions are, however, apparent.

Of all the autobiographies generally assumed to be monological, The Confessions of Jean-Jacques Rousseau is perhaps in the best position to actually claim this label.

Some29 even consider Rousseau to be the inaugurator of the modern autobiography. By initiating a switch from personal religious works (e.g., St. Augustine and St. Theresa) which often focused on the literal and metaphorical inspirational journeys of the author, he rejected the traditional Christian idea that “love of self and self-approval were the root of all evil” (Furbank xvii). In his own words, Rousseau was a solitary original, unique

52 among his fellow human beings, and his work, could not be imitated:

I am commencing an undertaking, hitherto without precedent, and which

will never find an imitator….Myself alone! I know the feelings of my

heart, and I know men. I am not made like any of those I have seen; I

venture to believe that I am not made like any of those who are in

existence. (3)

We can almost imagine Rousseau responding (loudly) with his now famous words in protest toward any claim that he has “no internal sovereign territory” and he is “for another, and through the other” (Bakhtin, Problems of Dostoevsky's Poetics 287). As an audience, we are encouraged by Rousseau to accept that these excerpts are written by a self in total isolation—the author alone with his thoughts without the influence of or concern for the other. If, however, “speech is a necessary condition for reflection even in solitude” (Bakhtin, The Problem of Speech Genres 67), then Rousseau’s claim is unbalanced by an inherent contradiction that he unwittingly reveals with his own words:

“Whether Nature has acted rightly or wrongly in destroying the mould [sic] in which she cast me, can only be decided after I have been read” (3). Rousseau concedes that it takes the other (through the act of reading) to “decide” whether his claims to originality are justified. He may know his own “heart” as he “knows men,” but he is also acutely aware that he is always writing to be “read” (3). His audience awareness both consciously and unconsciously shapes and directs his choices of what to include as he writes. So concerned is he about the reader’s impressions that he “dares” his audience to say, “‘I was better than that man’” upon finishing the text (3).

Like St. Augustine (whom he references through the use of his title) before him,

Rousseau declares that his purpose in “unveiling my inmost self” is to “present myself before the Sovereign Judge with this book in hand” (3). Rousseau’s approach to his autobiography, however, exhibits a key difference from St. Augustine. Whereas St.

Augustine confesses his sins to become closer to God, Rousseau confesses to his audience in the hope that they will grant him credit for the “authentic” act of doing so. He desires love, but not the love of God, which he is confident he already has: “I have little fear of dying without absolution” (91). Paradoxically, Rousseau wants the love of his fellow human beings. Though he repeatedly denigrates society and “men” in general throughout his works,30 in The Confessions of… he feels he must justify his actions to society in a way we do not see in St. Augustine’s Confessions. In other words, he views the disclosure of his sins as a necessarily dialogical act.

For instance, when Rousseau relates the story of Marion, a young girl with whom he was acquainted when he was in the service of Comtesse de Vercellis, he does so with qualification. After a relatively worthless red and silver ribbon belonging to the recently deceased Mademoiselle Pontal turns up in Rousseau’s possession, he blames Marion instead of confessing to the theft. Reflecting back on the theft, he attributes blame to those who failed to offer him the “encouragement” he needed to confess:

If I had been allowed to recover myself I should have assuredly confessed

everything. If M. de la Roque had taken me aside and said to me: “Do not

ruin this poor girl; if you are guilty, confess it to me.” I should have

immediately thrown myself at his feet, of that I am perfectly certain. But,

when I needed encouragement, they only intimidated me…yet it is only

fair to consider my age. I was little more than a child, or rather, I still was

one. (91)

Rousseau rationalizes as he confesses combining his revelations with self-justification.

He diminishes the importance of the theft by placing it in the context of the recent death of Mademoiselle Pontal (the owner of the stolen ribbon) as well as emphasizing the ribbon’s relative value. Rousseau also notes his young age as another extenuating factor for the audience to consider. His choice of details contributes to a lessening of the severity of his actions. In the main, the story of the theft of the ribbon serves a clear purpose for Rousseau—to shift the reader’s focus from the victim back to the confessor.

In concluding his telling of the theft of the ribbon and subsequently bringing Book II of

The Confessions of… to a close, Rousseau notes that it is actually he who has suffered the most:

If it is a crime that can be expiated, as I venture to believe, it must be

expiated by all the unhappiness which has overwhelmed the last years of

my life, by forty years of honourable [sic] and upright conduct in difficult

circumstances; and poor Marion finds so many avengers in this world.

(91)

He claims to have “behaved straightforwardly” in his confession and that “wicked intent was never further from me” (90). Rousseau would have done the honorable thing, if only the circumstances were more favorable for him; thus, Rousseau imagines a sympathetic interlocutor—a reader who accepts his justifications and offers absolution. Clearly, he wronged Marion, but his remorse and suffering again challenge the reader to judge him.

The example of the stolen ribbon demonstrates Rousseau’s stated purpose in writing The Confessions of… is to allow the reader to “know the inmost heart of the man”

and to be “thoroughly acquainted with Jean Jacques Rousseau” (339). His self-portrayal

as a unique man is shaped by his impression of himself as a truly original thinker—one

who wants to free humanity from the constraints of society. What action could be more

monological than freeing an individual from social constraints? Yet, there are many

dialogical ruptures in the “self” that Rousseau presents. Contradictions inherent in his

writing such as the ribbon incident give us an impression of an outsider who wants to be

included in the society he rejects. Throughout The Confessions of… there is a constant

tension between the opposite driving forces (and often selfish impulses) of being an

individual, yet also serving as a general model of a great man. The self constructed by

Rousseau in The Confessions of… uses this tension to establish a dialogue with his

audience. Despite potential claims to the contrary, evidence of a sense of the other

permeates Rousseau’s process of self-creation.

While St. Augustine’s Confessions establishes what could be considered an

archetypal example of what readers have come to expect from an autobiography by

demonstrating a linear narrative, for example, and Rousseau typifies an attempt at

“authenticity” which readers expect from self-presentation, Gertrude Stein’s The

Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas (1933) would seem at first glance to contradict the

audience’s notion of a prototypical autobiography. At risk of stating the obvious, for example, The Autobiography… is anything but what its title bluntly indicates—it is the work of Stein.31 In this sense, it is not a “true” autobiography but rather a stylistic

attempt by Stein to emulate the speaking style of her companion, to experiment with a

unique approach to writing, and to reflect upon her own genius. However, while Stein plays with the idea of an autobiography, her exercise in writing actually conforms more

than it contradicts the audience’s assumptions about autobiography. For example, her

narrative, as relayed in the “voice” of Alice B. Toklas, progresses in a chronologically

linear way from 1907 through 1932, the year she submitted the manuscript for

publication. And, though her playful imagination and often absurd boasting clouds the

audience’s perception of the events in The Autobiography…, the events and characters

are nonetheless verifiable.32

Just as Augustine strove to create the persona of a man awakened to his own

spirituality through both his own sinful philandering and the grace of God, Stein worked

hard to create the “genius” that she wanted the world to see. As she writes in The

Autobiography..., “I may say that only three times in my life have I met a genius and each

time a bell within me rang and I was not mistaken ... the three geniuses of whom I wish to

speak are Gertrude Stein, Pablo Picasso, and Alfred Whitehead” (Stein 5).33 Saying she possessed an enormous ego is, however, too easy a caricature of the complex person she was. One of the aspects that contributed to her complexity was her “Soliere” complex—

her ability to see great genius before anyone else did in art (a notion that she exploited

quite often), yet not to be acknowledged for her own “literary prowess.” Looking at the list of acknowledged greats that came through her atelier is bound to impress (Picasso,

Matisse, Rousseau, Cézanne, et al.), yet in the tradition of letters, she seemed to recoil

with bitterness from those she saw as usurping her right to recognized literary greatness,

particularly Hemingway and Joyce. The prominent artist, Man Ray, noted this pronounced dichotomy:

This attitude was carried to the extreme regarding other writers—they

were all condemned: Hemingway, Joyce, the Dadaists, the Surrealists,

with herself as the pioneer. Her bitterness really showed up when the

others got universal attention before she did. (as qtd. In Simon, Gertrude

Stein Remembered 90-91)

While she never admitted to any frustration caused by other writers’ fame, she was aware of how her failure to publish affected her: “Gertrude Stein was in those days a little bitter, all her unpublished manuscripts, and no hope of publication or serious recognition”

(Stein 197). Perhaps this punctuated envy, though not completely unacknowledged, contributed to her exaggerated sense of her own importance to the twentieth-century literary tradition. But her greatness is, as time has borne out, as real as it is invented— certainly not an uncommon proposition among artists of the past and present. For instance, when juxtaposed with the diverse picture created in the collage of biographical sketches by her acquaintances, her friends, her enemies, et al., a similar truth is exposed—whether her visitors despised her, worshipped her, feigned indifference or simply went along with the “Gertrude Stein Show,” they felt her compelling enough to write at great lengths about her.34 Accordingly, a look beyond the surface of some of

Stein's more boastful examples of self-promotion and bravado in The Autobiography... reveals a clear desire to reinvent herself by cloaking her past insecurities about her writing, transforming her place in the world, and promoting her genius-recognizing

(emphasis mine) abilities. In this sense, her work reveals a creation of self.

Clearly, Stein’s frustration as a writer was paramount to understanding her both as she saw herself and as others saw her. While most who visited her knew of “her great book” (Three Lives) as she often referred to it, her boasting often cloaked her frustration

(Stein 56). Throughout The Autobiography…, she incessantly refers to both The Making

58 of Americans and Three Lives as if trying to give the books the significance she thought was lacking. She saw herself as the harbinger of the twentieth-century moderns, and if no one else would tell the world, she would. To compensate for this inability to achieve what she felt was deserved recognition, she constantly discussed her influence, e.g., “[S]he wrote the poetry that has so greatly influenced the younger generation” and made exaggerated claims about her literary predecessors, e.g., “[T]he work of Henry James whom she considers quite definitely as her forerunner...” (Stein 78, 209). Some of the most telling moments, however, are when she attacks her past “friends:”

Hemmingway was yellow…he is…a pupil who does it without

understanding it, a weakness…and that is Hemingway, he looks like a

modern and he smells of the museums. But what a story that of the real

Hem, and one he should tell himself, but alas he never will. (Stein 216-

217)

Stein believed that Hemingway could imitate her style as a “pupil,” but that he did not understand it (216). Investigation of his style does point toward some commonalities between the two authors, but to the novice reader it seems clear that Hemingway’s craft is much more polished, more fluid. It was Hemingway who enjoyed the greater fame—to which Stein could only comment about how commercial Hemingway had become. By doing so, Stein offers the reader has a glimpse of the envy behind her words and thus a glimpse of a self that, much like Rousseau, desired social acceptance.

At times, however, it seems Stein realized her vulnerability to her desires. She notes in The Autobiography..., “I hate to look at Who’s Who in America [sic]... when I see all those insignificant people and Gertrude’s name not in” (194-195). When her fame

finally arrives, Stein is clearly jubilant: “She had never seen a book of hers in a bookstore

window before, except a french [sic] translation of the Ten Portraits [sic]...This event

gave Gertrude Stein a childish delight amounting almost to ecstasy” (243). According to

various testimonial accounts of those who were present at Stein’s salon during this

period, this “childish delight” came as no surprise (243). Hemingway notes that she was

always a legend in her own narrative and that fame, as she chastised others for pursuing

it, was an ultimate goal of hers. Hemingway mocked her literary pretensions35 noting that

every writer she dismissed was only dismissed for his character traits rather than his work

(Hobhouse 167).

Perhaps surprisingly, she tries to portray herself as the humble observer who

calmly receives visitors who offer her praise and ask for advice. At the beginning of The

Autobiography..., Stein writes,

Miss Stein sat near the stove in a lovely high-backed one and she

peacefully let her legs hang, which was a matter of habit, and when any of

one of the many visitors came to ask her a question she lifted herself up

out of this chair and usually replied in french [sic]...(9).

She reaffirms this image continually, stressing her nonchalant attitude towards the

attention: “And everybody came and no one made any difference. Gertrude Stein sat

peacefully in a chair and those who could did the same…” (124). While many of the

visitors to her atelier acknowledged her intellectual and artistic capacities, as noted in

Linda Simon’s Gertrude Stein Remembered, not once in twenty separate memoirs36 does anyone portray her as “peaceful,” calm and elegant. In fact, many of her prominent guests in their memoirs remarked about her cantankerous nature and her violent temper. Even

Alice herself, when writing her memoirs after Gertrude Stein’s death, claimed, “She was

a vengeful goddess and I was afraid. I did not know what had happened or what was

going to happen” (Simon, Gertrude Stein: A Composite Portrait 28). This pronounced dichotomy (one of many) between Stein’s view of herself and the view others have of her presents three possibilities of interpretation: 1) Stein wasn’t aware that others (including her partner) saw her in this way; 2) Stein found it necessary to “correct” an image she was aware of; or 3) the others misinterpreted her demeanor and actions and were thus incorrect in their assessment of her character.

Whichever possibility is the most accurate and whatever the element(s) of Stein’s persona embraced by the reader (aspiring writer, matriarch to the Parisian artists, frustrated genius, a vacuum for attention and adulation, etc.), it seems apparent that The

Autobiography... was successful in conveying a specific and likely “authentic truth37 about Stein. Just as Augustine needed to be recognized as a man who has accepted his

God after much inner turmoil and external sin, Stein needed to be recognized as the discoverer of original talent, the molder of that talent, and the arbiter of a new style of writing. Herein lies a family resemblance shared among The Autobiography…,

Confessions and autobiography in general. The persona of Gertrude Stein was a creation of Gertrude Stein—a symbolic representation of her “true” self. If she would not be a wife and could not be a doctor because of “boredom,” she would be a matriarch to the artists and their craft—creating fertile ground for them to flourish at 27 rue de Fleures

(Stein 81). She was a frustrated author who wanted to see her book in the window; she was the story herself—part truth, part fiction, part fantasy. The untold story of her motivations provides an undercurrent of her “self” that the reader can access through her

work.

In contrast to Stein’s posturing, when Maya Angelou set out to write her

autobiography, she did so reluctantly. A friend at a dinner party in New York City

insisted that Angelou write about her childhood and adolescent experiences. Another

friend called Random House to suggest that Angelou's story would make a good

autobiography and fill a vacuum in the genre, i.e., the general absence of any popular autobiographies from the perspective of African-American women. The persistence of her friends, of course, paid off for Ms. Angelou with the publication of I Know Why the

Caged Bird Sings (1970). An enormous commercial and critical success, I Know… is considered by some to be a literary novel—not an autobiography. Though she acknowledges the difficulty of keeping her voice consistent with the time represented in her autobiography, Angelou clearly disagrees with the characterization of her work as a literary-novel and considers I Know… to be a genuine attempt to reveal the self of her childhood and adolescence. As with Confessions, The Confessions of…, and The

Autobiography…, I Know…exhibits all the family resemblances of autobiography readers have come to expect, i.e., a chronologically progressive narrative based an actual events in the author’s life. And while Angelou’s narrative is unique, her “path” to a symbolic truth shares similarities with both Augustine, Rousseau, and Stein.

Angelou’s struggle with her identity in I Know Why… is both personal and consciously allegorical. She constructs her life-story up to the age of 16 instilling her 16 year-old self with the authority and presence of a much older woman (Angelou was approaching 40 when she began writing I Know Why…). Her past self is charged with the anger, bitterness, joy, pain, wisdom, and tolerance of a woman of experience, not an

“innocent” teenager. Angelou uses her agency to represent the plight of young, Southern black women (particularly those who are painfully aware of their predicament as the

“other”) before the age of desegregation and civil rights ushered in by Brown v. Board of

Education and Rosa Parks. As Jane Watts38 notes in Black Writers from South Africa

(1989), the process of relaying her story transforms Angelou’s autobiography into an exercise in group identity—an inherently social act. Angelou uses “personal history as an illustration of the troubles of an entire community” to “universalize in a socialist sense” the experience of “group identity” (Watts 125). Watt’s use of the term “universal” is certainly problematic for its limiting tendencies, but her emphasis on the social nature of the “I” as it relates to the conditions of the “Other” is relevant for detecting dialogical elements in I Know Why…. For Angelou, it serves at least two purposes. First, as previously mentioned, it allows her to channel the voice of the Southern black woman.

Second, it allows her to speak to the other (i.e., a white audience) that she envisions as tolerant and understanding. In short, she speaks dialogically for the other to the other.

In the first chapter of I Know…, Angelou introduces the reader to a girl struggling both with her appearance and with her racial identity. Preparing for Easter Sunday services at church, she eyes the “once-was-purple throwaway” (2) dress that she believes will help her emerge from her black skin as a white girl. In a manner reminiscent of the theft of the pears in Confessions, Angelou skillfully uses this opening segment to present the audience with the beginnings of a metaphor that will be threaded through her autobiography:

I knew that once I put it on I’d look like a movie star…I was going to look

like one of the sweet little white girls who were everybody’s dream of

what was right with the world...Wouldn’t they be surprised when one day

I woke out of my black ugly dream, and my real hair, which was long and

blond, would take the place of the kinky mass that Momma wouldn’t let

me straighten?...Because I was really white (1-2).

Just as the theft of the pears reveals the depths of Augustine’s distance from God and acts as metaphor referring to the fall in the Garden of Eden, so too does Angelou’s Easter

Sunday experience indicate the transformation she must yet undergo in relation to the story of Christ’s resurrection. By placing this introductory “dress” story of her ideal, yet

imaginary, physical metamorphosis in conjunction with the story of the resurrection of

Christ, Angelou’s wish for acceptance through physical transformation rather than

spiritual and emotional transformation shows that she has yet to go through the process

necessary to discover her true self—one that can only come through experience. And,

like Augustine before her, she uses this metaphor early in her autobiography to

foreshadow events that will occur much later in her narrative—particularly the birth of

her son.

From the opening pages of I Know Why…, Angelou positions herself

metaphorically among her peers searching for their identity in a world which places many

limits upon them: “If growing up is painful for the Southern Black girl, being aware of

her displacement is the rust on the razor that threatens the throat” (3). She conspicuously

avoids referring to herself instead choosing to refer to the “Southern Black girl”—a

pattern that Angelou will reiterate throughout her autobiography. The image of a rusty

razor at the throat of a generic black female prepares the reader for vivid descriptions of

what Angelou calls the “tripartite” of forces (misogyny, white prejudice, and black

64 powerlessness) which colluded against all black women in 1930s and 1940s’ America

(231). For example, when describing the deplorable educational conditions of “Negro girls in the South,” we can imagine a gallery of the other (i.e., Southern black women) behind her nodding in collective agreement with Angelou’s description:

[N]egro girls in small Southern towns, whether poverty-stricken or just

munching along on a few of life’s necessities were given extensive and

irrelevant preparations for adulthood…we were lagging behind, learning

the mid-Victorian values with very little money to indulge them. (87)

In the selection above, Angelou also makes it clear that she is speaking to her interlocutor. While the imagined gallery of the other behind her nods in agreement, the white audience in front of her visualizes a portrait of a place and time that transcends the monological presence of the author. Later in I Know Why…, she continues this dialogical pattern when she moves from generalized descriptions of Southern black girls to the conditions of black women in the South as mothers:

The Black woman in the South who raises sons, grandsons and nephews

had her heartstrings tied to a hanging noose. Any break from routine may

herald for them unbearable news. For this reason, Southern Blacks until

the present generation could be counted among America’s arch

conservatives. (95)

Again, her agency acts as a social voice for the oppressed not the individual voice of the self. The use of the phrases “The Black woman” and “Southern Blacks” testify to

Angelou’s dialogic self-construction. Notably, she forgoes the use of “we” in this excerpt. This exclusion hints to a more authoritative tone. She quickly, however, reverts

65 to the first person when referencing the other for whom she speaks:

It was awful to be Negro and have no control over my life. It was brutal to

be young and already trained to sit quietly and listen to charges brought

against my color with no chance of defense. We should all be dead. I

thought I should like to see us (emphasis mine) all dead, one on top of the

other. (153)

Relating her pain to that of all blacks, she knowingly moves from the singular “my” to the collective “we.” Her struggles of self-identity are absorbed in the greater struggles of the collective other as they are set in opposition to the difference of the other.

While Angelou’s struggle with her identity in I Know… is personal, it is also a deliberately communal as is evident in her title, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, which refers directly to the knowledge that she shares with those like her who suffer or those who are oppressed. The metaphor represents the plight of southern black girls in general, particularly those who are painfully aware of their predicament. In juxtaposition to the powerful forces set against the black woman, Angelou offers hope through the stories of many strong black women, i.e., Momma, Vivian Baxter, Mrs. Bertha Flowers, and most importantly, herself. Her numerous difficult experiences, e.g., getting molested, being raped, being “renamed” by a white woman, moving at least eight times before the age of sixteen, living in the junkyard, etc., have made her feel both displaced and older than her years. These same hardships, however, have made her more determined than ever—a determination she shares with other black women whose lives are also defined by hardship. This determination is particularly pronounced in Chapter 34. In this short chapter, she achieves a remarkable measure of success—she becomes the first black

conductor on the San Francisco streetcars (229). Again, she couples her success with that

of black women as a whole. Now, however, the threat of the “razor” is not quite as ominous. She comes to the realization that the powers aligned to prevent black women from moving forward are conversely (perhaps, perversely) what give black women their strength of character—in her own words, they are “survivors and deserve respect” (231).

Her suffering, associated with being black and female in America, is again placed in the context of many others.

Perhaps one of the most revealing, yet often overlooked, moments in I

Know…takes place before her employment success as a conductor in San Francisco. In

Chapter 27, Angelou has an educational and emotional experience that opens her mind.

Attending George Washington High School in San Francisco, she is enrolled in a “real school” where she meets a “rare educator” (Miss Kirwin) who is in “love with information” (182). Used to adults (black and white) who condescend to children,

Angelou is shocked when Miss Kirwin, who is white, greets each class with “Good day, ladies and gentlemen” and refers to her as “Miss Johnson” (183). Because Angelou has never had an experience with anyone like Miss Kirwin, she cannot understand how Miss

Kirwin does not “seem to notice” that she is black. Miss Kirwin’s clinical and methodical approach to learning, one devoid of sentiment or emotion, actually inspires Angelou to learn more. Reflecting on a visit to Miss Kirwin as an adult with a modicum of fame,

Angelou wonders “if she knew she was the only teacher I remembered” (184).

Her interaction with Miss Kirwin reveals several truths about Angelou to the reader. First, these passages allow the reader to see Angelou losing a bit of her absolute views about race in general and white people specifically. For the first time in her life,

she is exposed to someone who does not call attention to her color in either a positive or a

negative way. Second, this exposure leads her to embrace education on a deeper level;

her interactions with Miss Kirwin serve as a catalyst stimulating her curiosity about the world and motivating her to expand her knowledge though new experiences, drama, dance, etc. Third, Kirwin’s class shows her that she is far from “the most brilliant or even nearly the most brilliant student” (182). This harsh reality pushes her to accept this fact that she “had to be certain about all my facts before I dared to call attention to myself”

(182). Like Rousseau and Augustine before her, Angelou introduces a transforming figure (Mrs. Kirwin) who illuminates certain weaknesses in the character of the self being presented. Kirwin serves both as a catalyst to motivate Angelou to change, and as a literary device within the narrative that illustrates the further development of the self

Angelou presents.

The process of Angelou’s spiritual and emotional growth through personal experience begun in Chapter 1 of I Know…, and so necessary to the development of the

self she presents, culminates in Chapters 35-36. Only 16 years old, Angelou, insecure

about her sexuality and questioning her sexual orientation, determines the best way to

prove to herself that she is not a lesbian—sleep with a man: “I planned a chart for

seduction with surprise as my opening ploy… I put the plan into action. I plunged,

‘Would you like to have a sexual intercourse with me?’” (239). Once sex was

consummated, the “brother [she] had chosen” was gone and she was pregnant.

While Angelou’s description of the moments before the sexual act and the act

itself present the audience with the usual humor and candor typical of much of Angelou’s

writing, this brief interlude serves mostly to introduce her “immaculate pregnancy” (245)

and new son—seminal events that Angelou uses to offer her audience a sense of closure.

In juxtaposition to her external, physical transformation at the beginning of I Know… on

Easter Sunday, Angelou presents us with a mother-to-be going through the usual physical transformations, e.g., “I grew more buxom, and my brown skin smoothed and tight- pored, like pancakes fried on an unoiled skillet” (242), and a more self-reflective and maturing young woman, e.g., “For eons, it seemed, I had accepted my plight as the hapless, put-upon victim of fate and the Furies, but this time I had to face the fact that I had brought my new catastrophe upon myself” (241). The eventual birth of her son symbolizes her development into a young woman—she understands she can no longer be self-absorbed and childish. She must put another human being before herself. As an autobiographical subject, she has much of her life ahead of her (she is only 16). Yet, the audience has the impression that she is a fully-formed self at the conclusion of I Know....

If we remind ourselves at the end that the subject is 16 and not 40, we might be left to wonder, how will this naïve and frightened young girl face the enormous task of raising another human being?

As a reader, it is tempting to forget that it is the adult version of Maya Angelou presenting us with a confident persona who has the strength to overcome difficulties and realize her full potential. The “lapse” between her present and past selves, however, is no indication of the legitimacy or the illegitimacy of the version presented in I Know…. Like

Augustine, Rousseau, and Stein before her, Angelou creates her persona from the privileged position of the present tense. She editorializes, omits, exaggerates, embellishes, sentimentalizes, etc. And again, like Augustine, Rousseau and Stein before her, the symbolic self created from her imperfect memory represents a truth about the

author. As each author dealt with the respective social and ideological influences of the era in which they respectively lived (i.e., Augustine [the growing power of Christianity],

Rousseau [the Enlightenment], and Stein [the Modernism of the post WWI period]),

Angelou reflected upon her past self through the microscope of a contemporary social

context that signified her status as the other—her place as a black woman in the South

after the Civil Rights Movement. African-American scholars would also correctly note

that Augustine and Rousseau wrote from a position of power as part of an intellectual and

social elite—a status not possible for Angelou (or Stein, to a lesser degree). Despite these

significant influences, I Know Why… exhibits similar tensions between the individual and

society witnessed in Confessions, The Confessions of…, and The Autobiography of….

Angelou, however, takes the dialogical relationship to a different level. The self

that Rousseau attempts to construct in The Confessions of… is essentially that of an isolated individual constrained by the oppositional forces of society—“Myself alone!”

(3). Angelou, however, is always conscious that she is part of a community of the outsiders (“we”), and while her path may be unique, her story intentionally resembles the story of many other young black women during this time. She seems to say, “listen closely, for what I relate here is not only my story—it is the story of all southern black

girls. I speak for you and with you”

The history of the West privileges the concept of the individual (a self unique

among others) as central to the development of many of its contemporary institutions.

Among these institutions, autobiography (as a written representation of an individual life)

enjoys a continuing popularity across social demographics. A glance at The New York

Times Best Seller list quickly reveals the continuing attractiveness of the genre to readers.

Authors including tennis great, Andre Agassi, international soccer star, David Beckham,

and rap music and film star, Queen Latifah, have all recently penned their “lives” for

public consumption. Conceivably, it is because of the supremacy of the individual in

Western culture that boundaries between the self and the social have been confused and

conflated. Though often interpreted as an individual endeavor, the medium (language) by

which these individuals communicate their self-representation is always social. As

Bakhtin illustrates, whether written or spoken, language is never completely personal— never for the individual alone. Language serves one purpose—to communicate from one to another. In this chapter, I have provided evidence of the dialogical essence of historical

print autobiographies through the use of excerpts from four representative works. In

Chapter Three, my hope is to illustrate how the subtle dialogic leanings evident in print autobiography become considerably more conspicuous in hypertext media.

CHAPTER THREE: TECHNOLOGICAL TRANSFORMATIONS OF THE TEXT

In some distant, or not-so-distant, future all individual texts will electronically link to one

another....

George P. Landow, Hypertext 3.0

An electronic text is not a physical artifact, there is no reason to give it the same

conceptual unity as the printed book….

Jay David Bolter, Writing Space

In Chapter Three, I contend that the medium of hypertext has introduced features that have the potential to alter the relationship between the author and the audience.

These features include but are not limited to linking (hyperlinking), textual, audio and visual capabilities (hypermedia options), asynchronous and synchronous communication,

augmentation (editing and revising capabilities), and searchable databases. In order to

demonstrate how these features transform the text, I examine two digital hypertext versions of a traditional print autobiography, St. Augustine’s Confessions.

In The Gutenberg Galaxy (1962), Marshall McLuhan observed that every

communication medium or technology including alphabets, printing presses, and speech affects the expression of thought through language. McLuhan’s protégé and eventual

critic, Walter Ong, noted in Orality and Literacy (1982), the transformation from speech

to writing that took place several thousand years ago removed text from the world of

sound and “reconstituted the originally oral spoken word in visual space” (121). And the

shift from the handwritten manuscripts of the Middle Ages to the mechanically produced

printed books of the fifteenth century, meticulously detailed by Elizabeth Eisenstein in

The Printing Press as an Agent of Change (1980), effected widespread cultural changes

including the preservation of knowledge, the accumulation of information, and the

widespread dissemination of ideas in a cheap and efficient manner. Certainly,

technological transformations of text are not new phenomena exclusive to the current age

of digital media. As language gravitated first from the spoken word to crude stone tablets, from stone tablets to papyrus scrolls, from papyrus scrolls to the handwritten codex, and eventually from codex manuscript to the printed book, each successive

“technologizing”39 of the word altered the relationship between the speaker (writer) and the audience (reader). The migration of text from print to a digital format is the latest of these textual transformations.

Print, according to Jay David Bolter among others, is already finished as a primary form of media—it has been replaced by electronic writing which alters the relationship between the writer and the audience:

Print will no longer define the organization and presentation of

knowledge, as it has for the past five centuries…. What will be lost is not

literacy itself, but the literacy of print, for electronic technology offers us a

new kind of book and new ways to write and read…. Electronic writing

emphasizes the impermanence and changeability of text, and it tends to

reduce the distance between author and reader by turning the reader into

an author. (Writing Space 2-3)

In other words, Bolter claims that literacy itself will be redefined by the transformation of text from print to digital media. What was formally an active event (reading) becomes a reactive one (responding). Digital media, he notes, privileges a different type of relationship between the writer and the reader—one that anticipates writer-reader

interaction.

While the replacement of print by digital media may be the next evolutionary

step, this step is different as Kathleen Blake Yancey40 argues. The blurring of reader-

author roles as digital media replace (and displace) print that Bolter describes is further

complicated by a disconnect that exists between how writing is taught at the university

and how it is practiced in the public forum. Yancey argues that this moment in time is

unparalleled in the history of writing: “Never before have the technologies of writing

contributed so quickly to the creation of new genres…never before has the proliferation

of writings outside the academy so counterpointed the composition inside” (298). As with

previous technological developments that affect communication, the movement from

printed to digital media has and will continue to have myriad effects upon the language

and culture. Because our proximity is close to the current and ongoing shift to digital

media, many of the resulting cultural effects of the shift cannot yet be perceived or

properly analyzed, though Bolter, Yancey, George Landow, Johndan Johnson-Eilola,

Kathleen Hayles, et al. have certainly established a strong base by theorizing the effects of digital technology on literacy. I do not attempt here to catalogue or analyze all the various ethnological (i.e., cultural) effects of technology. Instead, this chapter provides the following: 1) a brief overview of the historical developments in technology that made digital media (e.g., streaming video, synchronous communication, et. al) possible, 2) definitions of and elaboration on the features of digital hypertexts, 3) a short examination

of two digital versions of a traditional print autobiography, and 4) speculation about what

the changing relationship between the writer and the reader might mean for hypertext

autobiography. This knowledge base allows us to approach online autobiography with

some fundamental principles and potentialities of digital media in mind. Understanding

these fundamentals is crucial to theorizing how the digital writer presents a “self” to an

audience and how the audience can potentially read, interpret, react, and affect the self

presented by the writer.

Origins of Digital Hypertext: From Theoretical Abstraction to Operational Computer

Program

Over 60 years ago a well-known scientist and electrical engineer, Vannevar Bush,

came up with a remarkable idea while working with various US government agencies. In

a 194541 article (“As We May Think”) published in the Atlantic Monthly, Bush proposed

the creation of a device he called the “Memex.” This microfilm-based device was

designed to allow an individual to store personal information (e.g., books, recordings, images, communication, et. al.) in a mechanized manner that would make data easily accessible to the individual and, if so desired, to the greater society. Bush asserted that the system of related links in the Memex was a much closer approximation to how we write and how we read in a natural state. His assertion was based on the intuitive observation that we do not think in a linear fashion. The human brain, he concluded, does

“[n]ot work that way. It operates by association. With one item in its grasp, it snaps instantly to the next that is suggested by the association of thoughts, in accordance with some intricate web of trails carried by the cells of the brain” (Bush 32). Thus, according to Bush, in both the reading and writing of text we digress, we welcome diversion, and we are affected by the involuntary synaptic connections in our brains. Perhaps, as Bush implies, “digress” and “diversion” are not even appropriate terms. If all associations are

systematic in the brain, a linear way of thinking would be a deviation or “diversion” from

the norm. Thus, Bush’s Memex rejects some linear organizing principles, e.g.,

alphabetizing, chronology, et al. as absolutes. Though never created, Bush’s Memex

established a base of ideas essential to the future development of hypertext and the

Internet.42

Extending Bush’s conceptualization of an associative method of connecting

divergent texts, Theodor H. Nelson set out to create a working version of a Memex-type

program in the early 1960s. It is difficult to define hypertext without first considering the

Nelson’s pioneering work, Literary Machines (1981).43 In Literary Machines, Nelson

defines hypertext44 as “non-sequential writing—text that branches and allows choices for

the reader, best read at an interactive screen. As popularly conceived, this is a series of

text chunks connected by links which offer the reader different pathways” (2). While

Nelson clearly relies upon Bush’s ideas in “As We May Think,” he was the first to coin

the term hypertext and the first to attempt to create a literal, working version of hypertext

by founding Project Xanadu in 1960. Project Xanadu was Nelson’s attempt to construct a

version of Bush’s Memex by establishing a computer network with a user-interface that

would allow users to transmit information electronically over long distances. In addition,

Nelson’s Project Xanadu could utilize a hypertext-like database from which the user

could link multiple, divergent files. Though Nelson’s Project Xanadu took 38 years to be

released (and then only in an incomplete form of the planned computer program), it was

the first literal realization of the concept of hypertext.

Around the same period of time that Nelson was developing Project Xanadu in

the 1960s, the United States military was also developing a system of exchanging

information electronically. The system they created in conjunction with Bell Labs and

other research agencies was called the Advanced Research Projects Agency Network

(ARPANET). A precursor to the Internet, by the early 1970s ARPANET provided many

of the digital services that are now in commonplace public use including email, voice

traffic, and file transfers. However, as revolutionary as ARPANET was, it was closed to

general public access and designed for a technical audience. Specifically, it was designed

during the Cold War to allow scientists at research universities and think tanks to

communicate quickly and easily across great distances. Moreover, it lacked Nelson’s

implementation of hypertext as an organizing principle in digital communication.

Almost two decades later, Tim Berners-Lee created the first true “web” browser

(World Wide Web or www)—an Internet-based hypermedia format designed to facilitate

global information sharing. Berners-Lee’s invention was instrumental in removing the

Internet from military control (ARPANET) and placing it at the public’s fingertips. The

user-friendly system allowed for the use of embedded hyperlinks and largely employed

the theoretical concept of the Memex articulated by Bush in “As We May Think.” The

World Wide Web allowed websites to make use of a “hosting” system where the core or

main website employed a label or domain name that utilized the prefix “www” before its

Uniform Resource Locator (URL) or its Internet “address.” The www prefix allowed the user entry into the Internet and when combined with the URL the user could view a

“homesite” or a source’s main website. A further system of organization was provided by the addition of a suffix (e.g., .gov, .edu, .com, et al.) at the end of the web address that identified the type of institution being accessed. By simply changing the Internet domain name (the word or phrase between the prefix and suffix) and the suffix and keeping the

77 www prefix, the user could quickly access any organization or individual that established a URL or web address. All that was needed to use the World Wide Web was a computer with an active modem and a telephone line to access a URL from anywhere at any time.

With the invention of the World Wide Web, digital communication became a reality for mainstream users and hypertext entered into common usage.

In recent history, Berners-Lee’s World Wide Web has been retroactively renamed

“Web 1.0.” The moniker is supposed to highlight the differences between the pre “dot- com bubble” version of the Internet that existed prior to 2001 and the current “Web 2.0” version of the Internet that came into use after 2001. Darcy DiNucci coined the term Web

2.0 in 1999 and wrote in glowing terms of its potential:

The web will be understood not as screenfuls of text and graphics but as

a transport mechanism, the ether through which interactivity happens. It

will still appear on your computer screen transformed by the video and

other dynamic media made possible by the speedy connection

technologies now coming down the pike. It will also appear, in different

guises, on your TV set (interactive content woven seamlessly into

programming and commercials), your car dashboard (maps, yellow pages,

and other traveler info), your cell phone (news, stock quotes, flight info),

hand-held game machines (linking players with competitors over the Net),

maybe even your microwave oven (automatically finding cooking times

for the latest products)…. The lesson is inescapable: Web development—

Web design, programming, and production—will split into fragments

mirroring the fragmented Web appliance scene. (32)

DiNucci’s words describe several fundamental differences between Web 2.0 and Web

1.0. For instance, while Web 1.0 was about static content delivery primarily through text and simple graphics, Web 2.0 would be dynamic and multimodal. Animation, video and audio options would now be possible. Web 2.0 would be released from its place on the

desktop computer and become accessible through mobile devices expanding the

frequency and quantity of electronic transmissions. Moreover, whereas Web 1.0 mostly

mimicked the top-down hierarchal, one-way transmission of information employed by

broadcast communication media including newspapers, radio, and television, Web 2.0

would encourage sharing by the information users as well as the traditional producers of

information. Content could now be created by the user because of the expanded

interactive communication options, i.e., blogs, wikis, RSS feeds, social-networking sites,

et al.45 Modification of existing content created by others (an option typically not

possible in Web 1.0 personal websites) is essential to the function of certain Web 2.0

staples, particularly wikis.

Of course, all of the Web 2.0 features DeNucci lists are now common, but the

moniker Web 2.0 is, perhaps, confusing and misleading. Web 2.0 is not a new version of

a computer program as the “2.0” implies. Rather, Web 2.0 is a term describing a cultural

shift. Berners-Lee himself pejoratively refers to the term as a “piece of jargon…nobody

really knows what it means. If Web 2.0 for you is blogs and wikis, then that is people to

people. But that is what the Web was supposed to be all along” (“Podcast Interviews”).

Regardless of its accuracy as a defining term, Web 2.0 symbolizes an important shift in

the development of the technology of the Internet. It represents increases in bandwidth,

program availability, multimedia options, user-friendly websites, as well as the number of

the technologically savvy Internet users. Web 2.0, in essence, can be considered the

realization of Bush’s Memex.

The structure and delivery mechanisms were not the only source of debate. A decade or so after Nelson began work on Project Xanadu and just a few years after

Berners-Lee released the World Wide Web, several critical theorists explored related ideas about textual design. In his canonical work, Hypertext 2.0: Critical Theory and New

Media in an Era of Globalization (1992)46, George P. Landow notes the unique merging

of literary critical theory and computer software design. Theorists as diverse as Roland

Barthes, Michel Foucault, and Jacques Derrida questioned conventional notions of

boundaries between texts, what it meant to call something a “text,” and whether or not a

text could be said to have an “author” in the historical, Romantic sense of an individual

creator without outside influence. Barthes was particularly concerned with an ideal text

that might allow the reader to engage a text in a way that was more organic, i.e., that was

much closer to the way our brains make connections between various bits of stored

information. In S/Z, Barthes outlines his vision for an ideal form of text that is

remarkably similar to Bush’s Memex and Nelson’s Project Xanadu:

In this ideal text the networks are many and interact, without any one of

them being able to surpass the rest; this text is a galaxy of signifiers, not a

structure of signifieds; it has no beginning; it is reversible; we gain access

to it by several entrances, none of which can be authoritatively declared

the main one; the codes it mobilizes extend as far as the eye can reach,

they are indeterminable. (Barthes 5-6)

Landow notes that Barthes “precisely matches that which has come to be called computer

80 hypertext—text composed of blocks of words (or images) linked electronically by multiple paths, chains, or trails in an open-ended, perpetually unfinished textuality” (2).

Hypertext restructures our conceptualization of how a text should progress. Linearity, according to Landow, is replaced with a type of de-centered text identified by Derrida in

Of Grammatology.47 Figure 1.0 illustrates the differences between a linear text (e.g., a printed text that is transferred [scanned] to a PDF file and becomes digital) and a decentered text (e.g., a born-digital text created in HTML coded hypertext). Noting the relative ease with which various forms of media merge in online environments, Landow further builds upon Bush’s Memex and Nelson’s definition of hypertext by including

Figure 1: Axial versus network structure in hypertext Source: Landow, Hypertext 3.0: Critical Theory and New Media in an Era of Globalization, p. 71

media elements beyond written text, e.g., video, audio, animation, et al:

[H]ypertext… links one passage of verbal discourse to images, maps,

diagrams, and sound as easily as to another verbal passage—[thus]

Hypertext denotes an information medium that links verbal and non-verbal

information.” (3)

The presence of these interactive links is also often associated with the cultural shift from

Web 1.0 to Web 2.0. For the purposes of this study, I employ a definition of hypertext

based upon Landow’s classification. Simply put, hypertext48 allows the writer to join separate written texts, images, video, audio, animation, and other forms of media through the use of hyperlinks (links).

Perhaps because of our general understanding of hypertext as well as the ubiquitous public use of the Internet, some of the elements described (e.g., web addresses) in this brief history of the development of hypertext and of the Internet might seem superfluous, even axiomatic. Yet, commonplace use of a new communication technology does not indicate a commonplace understanding of its origins or the developing ramifications of such technology—nor does the level of a new technology’s penetration into a culture point toward a level of scholarly inquiry worthy of such a seismic shift. As Elizabeth Eisenstein aptly noted when undertaking an exploration of the

effects of the printing press upon fifteenth-century European culture in The Printing

Press as an Agent of Change (1980), research topics that might seem exhausted may

upon further review reveal enormous gaps in academic scholarship:

What were some of the most important consequences of the shift from

script to print? Anticipating a strenuous effort to master a large and

mushrooming literature, I began to investigate what had been written on

this obviously important subject. …there was not even a small literature

available for consultation. Indeed, I could not find a single book, or even

sizeable article which attempted to survey the consequences of the

fifteenth-century communication shift. (xi)

Of course, the literature covering the more recent shift from print media to digital media is a bit more comprehensive than Eisenstein encountered in her research on the history of print (though much of it is celebratory in nature49). The aforementioned authors Landow,

Bolter, et al., have discussed how the text has been transformed by new media and what this transformation might signify for society. Yet, as Jacques Ellul notes in the foreword to The Technological Society, it is difficult to objectively analyze technological change as it happens:

I am keenly aware that I am myself involved in the technological

civilization, and that its history is also my own. I may be compared rather

with a physician or physicist who is describing a group situation in which

he [sic] is himself [sic] involved. The physician in an epidemic, the

physicist exposed to radioactivity: in such situations the mind may remain

cold and lucid, and the method objective, but there is inevitably a

profound tension of the whole being. (xxvii)

Like Ellul, we are “involved in the technological civilization” facilitated in part by the expansion of digital media. And there is an undeniable tension as text undergoes this mammoth transformation. To be certain, neither the brief history of the Internet provided on these pages nor a foundational definition of hypertext is sufficient to grasp how

autobiography, and more generally, self-representation, is affected by this relatively new

medium. In order to understand how technology has transformed the concept of a text, it

is necessary to review the various qualities of hypertext as they are applied in digital

texts. Before examining how the various hypertext qualities affect both the literal format

of the book as well as the idea of what it means to call something a text, I offer brief,

fundamental definitions of selected hypertext features to provide a guide to understanding

the technological terminology. Definitions of the associated terminology and its

technological applications will be key to my analysis in this chapter and in my analysis of

the evolution of autobiographical websites in chapters 4, 5, and 6.

Features of Hypertext:

Hypertext offers many features that differentiate it from print media in observable ways. These attributes primarily affect the way the author creates her text and the reader

(viewer) engages the text. Prominent technological features of hypertext include, but are

not limited to linking (hyperlinking), textual, audio and visual capabilities (hypermedia

options), asynchronous and synchronous communication, augmentation (editing and

revising capabilities), and searchable databases. Of course, this list is neither exhaustive

nor complete, but I believe these features have the most significant effects on the

relationship between the writer and the audience. A review of these characteristics

provides an idea of the qualities that may affect the construction and delivery of a text as

a device for self-representation. Since I previously examined a printed version of St.

Augustine’s Confessions in Chapter 2, I will provide examples from generalized digitized

versions of this text for the sake of continuity. These examples will help illustrate how

hypertext features are applied in some digital texts while presenting a useful contrast to

the printed version.

Linking (hyperlinking)

Linking, or hyperlinking, is arguably the most fundamental technological feature

of hypertext. Links or hyperlinks are digital connections between texts. Moreover, a link

is both a technology and a signal—a signal to the reader that there is an association made

by the author. Links can provide the ability of the reader to leave a text entirely. For

example, if the reader was reading St. Augustine’s Confessions; Book 1, Chapter 1, in a

hypertext format and came across a reference to biblical book of Psalms, Chapter 145;

Verse 3, which also contained a highlighted link, the reader would merely have to engage

the link to leave Confessions and view the corresponding text in Psalms. Linking also

provides the ability to connect to media other than texts, so the text of St. Augustine’s

Confessions, for instance, could link to a map of his home town (Thagaste) in present day

Algeria, an image of Augustine as depicted by Botticelli (c. 1480), an audio reading of a passage from Confessions by the acclaimed English actor, Sir Ian Murray McKellen, et al. Links can be single-directional or bi-directional. A single-directional link does not

allow the user to “click” back to the previous page or to new pages. For example, if the

user accessing the online version of Confessions clicked on a link referencing a biblical

verse St. Augustine was using in a particular book and chapter, the user would not be able

to return to the main text of Confessions without using the web browser back button or

the “history” application located in the browser’s pull-down menu.50 A bi-directional link

allows the user to easily go back to their original location in the text (or move to a new

location) without accessing an application that is external to the website. Links have the

ability to link to material internally (within the website) or externally (throughout the

Internet).

Hypermedia: Text, Audio and Visual File Capabilities

Dynamic websites are often multimodal, meaning they engage in delivery or presentation of text in multiple modes. All hypermedia file formats are typically identified by their suffixes after a file name, e.g., this text is a Microsoft Word document file identified by the suffix “.doc.” In addition to the virtual text in encoded HTML51 on

the website itself, texts can also be downloaded (placed on one’s own computer or other

external storage device) as files. E-books, scanned documents, forms, templates, et al. can

all be posted directly on any website as PDF (Portable Document Format) attachments.

PDFs allow easy viewing of text and images in a two-dimensional format across

computer operating systems. An effective use of a PDF file in an online version of

Confessions might be a scanned version of one of the codex scrolls written by Augustine

or an early printed version of the text to allow for a quick comparison of historical

manuscripts. For an audio component, the user may have linked access to a Wave file or

an MP3 file (downloadable files that can be played at the listener’s discretion without a

live Internet connection), or they may access an audio file such as a speech (e.g., reading

of a passage from Confessions by the acclaimed English actor, Sir Ian Murray McKellen)

that might play automatically (this is called streaming audio). For an image, the user

may have linked access to downloadable files (e.g., JPEGs [Joint Photographic Experts

Group], GIFs [Graphics Interchange Format], BMP file format [Windows bitmap], et.

86 al.). Like the previously mentioned audio files, these formats may be downloaded onto a remote computer or viewed (not saved) in a separate window, if the owner of the image prevents downloading. The image file type primarily determines two characteristics: pixel density (determines the sharpness of the image) and format compatibility

(determines the computer program in which the image may be viewed). Images may also be uploaded (placed on a website from a personal storage device) or downloaded as a

PDF. While any print version of Confessions might include a selection of images in the text, digitized image files might offer higher photographic resolution, the ability to alter the photograph (i.e., change the contrast, size, color scheme, et al.), and the ability to save a digitized copy of the image that could be duplicated in print or sent electronically.

Video may also be downloaded and saved as a file or viewed in a streaming format.

There are many video file formats, but the most common are DVR-MS (Microsoft Digital

Video Recording), MOV (for use with QuickTime video viewer from Apple, Inc.), and

MPEG and MPEG-2 program streams (a standard for digital broadcasting which contains multiple video and audio streams, and an electronic program guide). Similar to audio, the host site author chooses the availability of the video file (downloadable or streaming

“viewable”) for the viewer. A viewer of Confessions as an online text might be able to view the various cities where St. Augustine lived, watch interviews with experts on

Confessions, or view a recorded lecture by the late Joseph Campbell on the role St.

Augustine played in the development of Christian myth. Hypertexts, in short, often engage the reader on multiple sensory levels, often simultaneously.

Asynchronous and Synchronous Communication

Commonly embedded within webpages are hyperlinked asynchronous and synchronous forms of communication.52 Asynchronous forms of communication transmit data intermittently rather than in a steady stream. Asynchronous communication options include email, blog postings, discussion threads, RSS feeds (Really Simple

Syndication—a group of web feed formats used to publish frequently updated material, e.g., blog entries, news headlines, audio, and video), and wiki53 capabilities. Early autobiographical websites (Web 1.0) such as Justin Allyn Hall’s “Justin's Links from the

Underground—autobio” employ email and discussion thread options, while more recent social-networking sites (Web 2.0) including Facebook and MySpace employ nearly all of these asynchronous options.

Synchronous forms of communication transmit data in a continuous stream where the sender and receivers’ time is synchronized (both reader(s) and author(s) are present simultaneously). Synchronous communication options include but are not limited to, a web telephone conversation (via Skype54 or similar service), chat room or chat classroom,55 and instant messenger. Early autobiographical websites rarely offered these options as they typically were not available, were cost prohibitive, or required too much bandwidth. Yet, most social-networking sites associated with the Web 2.0 “movement” employ some form of these synchronous options.

Asynchronous and synchronous communication offer the online reader of

Confessions many opportunities for direct communication with the original author of the posting. Depending on the motivations for reading the text, the audience could contact the editors asynchronously for feedback on a project, seek out a spiritual community to

discuss issues of faith addressed in Confessions, post a blog comment anonymously, et al.

Synchronous communication opportunities might include attending a live classroom

discussion early Christian theologians or the influence of Roman Empire upon early

Christian life and teachings. Perhaps separate group chat sessions might discuss the influence of competing religions, e.g., the Manichees, upon the writings of St. Augustine.

Augmentation (Editing and Revising Capabilities)

In contrast to printed text that is permanent once the typeset begins its run at a

printer’s shop, hypertext is never fixed. Once a webpage, image, video, or audio file is

posted on the Internet, another user can open it up, take it apart, cut and paste, and repost

it in a repackaged manner. This activity is sometimes encouraged by the original creator.

For example, a site such as Wikipedia, an open source site, permits all users to edit

encyclopedia entries at any time, and cutting and pasting is common. Because such

digital texts are layered56 documents, HTML code can be altered directly using web- authoring programs including ColdFusion and Dreamweaver. Of course, St. Augustine

will not be revising digital versions of Confessions. However, the editors of the hosting

website might respond to viewer requests to improve the site by updating scholarship

links, increasing digital access to rare primary sources, or simply changing the formatting

of the site to make it more user-friendly. Hyperlinked wiki-sites57 with Confessions as a

discussion topic will continuously update content to reflect contemporary scholarship and developments including the discovery of new historical evidence, e.g., recently recovered translations of his work prior to Confessions.

Searchable Databases

Printed texts often include a table of contents, indexes, and source bibliographies

to allow the reader to perform internal subject searches more easily. While the

bibliography provides the necessary information for the readers should they choose to

investigate the sources further on their own, it does not provide the means of accessing the source directly, nor can it link other related (if not directly cited) sources to the primary text. In contrast, “search” functions which separate (or combine) internal and external searches58 are now common additions to many websites that host collections of

digital texts. In addition to the convenience of accessing both external and internal

databases, these databases provide helpful search ideas based upon previous searches as

well as library search method standards such as Boolean operators AND, OR and NOT to

further specify the search query. Some search engines provide an advanced feature called

proximity search which allows users to define the distance between keywords. Working

on the principle of linking, searchable databases provide the reader options for further

inquiry not possible in print. An in-text searchable database with internal and external

capabilities could access the primary text, the footnotes/endnotes, hyperlinked sources, a

particular university and its libraries (or any of the universities partner institution which

share access to primary sources), and/or a general search engine using tags and key words

or phrases. For example, a scholar interested in the text of Confessions from the

perspective of memory in autobiography could employ a searchable database using

hypertext in a relatively similar way to a printed index. A search for “memory in

autobiography,” might simply locate particular passages from Book 10, Chapter 8 in

Confessions where St. Augustine explores the problems associated with human memory.

However, a more sophisticated searchable database in a digital text might access definitions of the network theory of memory, scanned translations of rare texts, or Peter

Brown’s discussion of St. Augustine’s analysis of the process of memory and its reliability in Augustine of Hippo: A Biography.

To some degree these descriptions of the properties of hypertext may seem perfunctory—many of us currently use these features with frequency and skill. But as our use of technology becomes more routine it also becomes more transparent. And transparency can lead to a deterministic and uncritical mindset—a situation aptly noted by Heidegger in The Question Concerning Technology, “[W]e shall never experience our relationship to the essence of technology so long as we merely conceive and push forward the technological, put up with it, or evade it” (288). Because of this limited view,

Heidegger notes, we think the answer to the problem(s) of technology is more technology. To expand the definition of technology, we must first understand that the essence of something is not the same thing as the thing itself.59 Defining the features of hypertext is only a necessary first step. Using these brief categories as background or the essence of hypertextual autobiography, I turn to a specific comparison of two digital versions of St. Augustine’s Confessions. Because Confessions initially existed only in print, a useful comparison can be made between print and online versions.

Digitizing St. Augustine: Two Hypertext Versions of a Traditional Print Autobiography and Implications for Born Digital Autobiography

I have selected two separate digital versions of St. Augustine’s Confessions: “The

Christian Classics Ethereal Library” and “New Advent.” My intention in choosing these

91 specific websites is to provide textual examples of two religiously affiliated sites from two different ideological viewpoints. “The Christian Classics Ethereal Library” approaches Confessions from a protestant, Calvinist perspective, and “New Advent” is sponsored and updated by Kevin Knight, an independent Catholic parishioner. Certainly, there are limitations to what this approach might reveal. For instance, the composer/publisher of a digital version of Confessions would likely make textual decisions far removed from the judgment of the original author. Yet, the decisions of the digital composer/publisher should be viewed in the context of the countless historic decisions that have been made regarding Confessions over the centuries. Translators made judgments as did the scribes. Later, printers made key formatting decisions, and theologians and religious scholars (especially after the Reformation and Counter- reformations) made decisions based upon the dogma of their religious sects. While these judgments no doubt influenced the text we read today, no one discounts Augustine’s authorial intentions based upon the arbitrary decisions of a particular publisher. It is important to be mindful of these judgments as we analyze the digital version. Examining digital versions of Confessions reveals qualities specific to hypertext exposing the dialogic possibilities presented through digital media. It should also be noted that there is a distinct difference between a digital book and a hypertext. A digital book or text is essentially a text originally created for print that has been transferred to a digital format, e.g., PDF. A digital hypertext employs hyperlinks and hypermedia. In the pages that follow, I will describe how these two distinct websites use (or do not use) technological features specific to digital hypertext versions of St. Augustine’s Confessions.

“The Christian Classics Ethereal Library”

The digital version of Confessions hosted by The Christian Classics Ethereal

Library (CCEL) employs all of the five previously mentioned features of hypertext:

linking (hyperlinking), textual, audio and visual capabilities (hypermedia options), asynchronous and synchronous communication, augmentation (editing and revising capabilities), and searchable databases. CCEL offers four textual options to the reader:

HTML (web-based copy with graphics), PDF (a downloadable, digital copy identical to print version), plain text (a stripped down, text-only online version), or a digital audio book (see Figure 2: Christian Classics Ethereal Library…). The user who wants to engage

Figure 2: Christian Classics Ethereal Library: St. Augustine's Confessions homepage Source: “Christian Classics Ethereal Library” (www.ccel.org/a/augustine/confessions)

hypertext properties must select the HTML version. Hyperlinking is omnipresent in the

HTML version of Confessions. For instance, all in-text references (numerical endnotes) are hyperlinked. While shortened versions of the notes appear automatically in the left margins next to the reference, the full reference appears in a separate text box that opens

next the corresponding passage once the link is engaged. All internal references to

biblical passages are also hyperlinked. When the hyperlinked biblical passages are

engaged, The King James New Version (KJNV) version of the biblical passage appears next to the cited verse and chapter. The KJNV acts as the default version of the Bible; however, the default can easily be adjusted through the use of a multipurpose toolbar that

“floats” at the base of the text as the reader scrolls through CCEL’s Confessions. The toolbar allows the reader to change versions of the text from the KJNV to the New

International Version (NIV), American Standard Version (ASV), and the New Revised

Standard Version (NRSV). This toolbar option also allows the reader to disable access to a hyperlinked Bible entirely. There is also a text box that allows the reader to create personal tag names for customized references of individual pages. In other words, the reader can use personalized markers that will trigger future database searches for these words or phrases. Another button provides a convenient internal60 dictionary for

theological terms. This can be accessed by highlighting the term and clicking the button.

By registering with the CCEL (there is no charge for registration) the user can

access a number of additional functions, most of which are also free of charge. Once

registration is established, a simple username and password allows the user to utilize

these functions and access their own customized version of the text saved on the server.

For example, there are several annotation options that including personal highlighting, cutting and pasting functions, inserting margin entries, and hyperlinking. In other words,

the user can create an entirely customized version of Confessions with all the notes and links that the individual deems important. Basic functions such as expanding the font size or changing the font can be accessed. One inch scrolling banner advertisements61 line the

left and the right margins of the page. A standard help button allows for the typical

prewritten response to queries about function rather than help with content. Content help can be accessed via email on the contact link. A search bar labeled “Search within book” can be found in the left margin. A more comprehensive search tool is provided in the pull down menu at the top of the page. Titled “Search Within Books” this advanced search engine provides internal and external options as well as tabs which allows the reader to chooses specific texts, authors, definitions, scriptures or customize their search with tags.

The community link provided both a forum that list all ongoing discussion threads as well as related blogs. The support link is not for support with a technical or content problem but rather an opportunity of the reader to get involved with the site. In addition to a plea for funding,62 there is a request to “Volunteer some of your time:” Each book and section of confessions can be accessed via hyperlink in the left margins. When a book is selected

it changes from the standard blue hyperlink color, to an expanded bolded and shaded text

in maroon offering the reader an easy reminder of their location. At the top of the left

hand margin there is a button which provides the viewer with access to a downloadable

and savable version of the entire text in PDF if the reader prefers63 to read the text offline. In the right hand margin are the login/logout links as well as a register button for visitors. Immediately below the pull down menus at the top of the page, a link

“Confessions and Enchiridion, newly translated and edited by Albert C. Outler”—this link takes the reader back to the home page for this text, and reminds them that many other texts available for viewing in the Christian Classics Ethereal Library. In addition to the toolbar the viewer can advance to the next page or go back to the previous page at the top of the page with the classic “blue” hyperlinks. While it is a common feature for most

sites to have counters to track visitors, the CCEL simply notes that it “[M]akes important

Christian literature available to millions of users a year across 120 countries.” In all, this

version of Confessions exhibits many of the classic features of hypertext such as associative linking, interaction with site creators, and visual tools such as maps despite its

simultaneous existence as a canonical print text.

“The New Advent”

Aside for the obvious theological and dogmatic differences in these two

approaches to Confessions, the layout, functions, and usability of the sites are remarkably

similar. “New Advent” also employs all five hypertext features. While New Advent

offers most of the same hypertext capabilities that can be found in the Christian Classics

Ethereal Library version, various features have been changed. For instance, Bible

quotations are hyperlinked, but instead of floating in a moveable textbox when the

hyperlink is engaged, they are inserted after the passage in the text (see Figure 3.0: New

Advent). Engaging the verse hyperlinks also triggers the entire hypertext Bible (divided

into linked chapters) to appear in the left margin.

The option to choose from various interpretations of the Bible does not exist—

Roman Catholic doctrine limits readers to the Latin Vulgate64 version of the Bible

translated by St. Jerome. Throughout the text, key phrases and words (those italicized in

print versions of Confessions) are hyperlinked. When engaged, these hyperlinks open up

a dictionary reference to the selection. However, the definition covers more than meaning

and etymology—it covers historical, social and cultural background of the selection. For

example, when Augustine refers to “madness” in Book II, Chapter 2 the hyperlink over

Figure 3: New Advent: The Confessions (Book I) Source: New Advent (http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/1101.htm) the word “madness” reveals a discourse more than a definition:

All writers on this subject confess their inability to frame a strictly logical

or a completely satisfactory definition. The dividing line between sanity

and insanity, like the line that distinguishes a man of average height from

a tall man, can be described only in terms of a moral estimate. There is a

borderland between the two states which is not easily identified as

belonging certainly to either. Hence a definition that aims at rigorous

comprehensiveness is liable to include such non-insane conditions as

hysteria, febrile delirium, or perverted passions…. (“New Advent”)

Clearly, the New Advent version may have another agenda in posting Confessions online. These embedded links to commentary by site creators may have been created to 97

stimulate debate among viewers, to prosthelytize, etc. The hypertext is not only layered

in technological structure, but may also contain several ideological layers (the initial text,

the commentary, the audience response, the three texts working together, etc.).

The brief comparison offered here between these two hypertext versions of a

traditional, and canonical, autobiography in print illustrate more specifically how the characteristics of hypertext operate. First, in both versions, the digitally customizable text literally allows the reader to “create” a personalized and new version of Confessions based upon Augustine’s original writing. The text is created both virtually, as the reader constructs a reading based on selecting links of his or her choice in any order desired, and physically, as the reader can actually change the text through annotations, highlights, cuts and pastes of sections into new texts, etc. In short, these hypertext versions of

Confessions resemble the readerly text Barthes espoused in S/Z.

It should be noted that not all versions of Confessions online share all of these interactive features. For example, some sites such as the Fordham University site and

“The Confessions of Augustine: An Electronic Edition” hosted by the Stoa Consortium only host a plain text version or a PDF of the original text. While some plain text versions allow for a minimum of hyperlinked footnotes, a PDF version of a print text contains no hypertext; it is linear and is essentially read the same way as an offline print object such as a book. In contrast, the two versions described here allow the reader to create a relationship with the original text that is unique, interactive and unstable. For example, in

Book when Augustine hears the girl’s voice in garden telling him to “Take it and read” the reader of the printed version usually65 arrives at this point in the narrative after reading all or most of the text that precedes this passage. In print, the linear progression

allowed the reader to develop an understanding of the character and events that have led

to this cathartic turning point in Confessions. The print reader arrives at this point in time

understanding the significance of the event. Certainly, nothing prevents the reader of the hypertext version form reading in the same manner as the printed version, ignoring all hypertextual elements in the digital text in favor of the familiar linear format. But the reader who engages the features of hypertext may have gotten to this point in the text through a hyperlinked scripture passage, a definition, a linked footnote, a database search, an indexed link, or many other variations of internal or external hyperlinks. This cathartic moment in Confessions may be deemphasized or even lost on the reader of hypertext who may not have read or viewed enough to grasp the significance.

Still, the comparison between the canonical print Confessions and its digital counterparts does pose some useful starting questions for investigation in the remaining chapters, specifically the hypertext potential of online autobiography. Confessions is a printed text that has been transferred to an online environment. Though the versions represented here are indeed hypertextual versions and useful for structural comparison, they are limited by the lack of relation and contact to the original author. The remaining chapters explore two primary questions that arise:

o What happens when an autobiography is born digital, i.e., composed in a digital

environment with no print origins?

o How is the reader-author relationship affected when the author is active and

managing or nurturing the site as an anthropomorphic extension of their body?

These questions have deep implications for digital autobiography.

Before the age of the Memex-inspired Internet, it was not uncommon for one to

keep a diary or a journal, write a memoir, or pen a life-story. These activities were largely

solitary endeavors that were brought into the public realm only if the author had a

contract with a publisher. In turn, these contracts were based upon the perceived importance and/or fame of the author as determined by the publisher and based upon the

projections of sales of the author’s work. The author’s “work” was, of course, always in

the form of a printed text, and the number of autobiographies in print was relatively

insignificant until the late twentieth century, when the genre began to flourish.66

Coincidentally, the rise in the popularity of autobiography coincided with the advent of the Internet, and the “World Wide Web,”67 a new venue for sharing personal information

previously envisioned by Bush.

Today, the online presence of traditional print autobiographies, born digital

autobiography, and autobiographical “fragments” is ubiquitous. Various elements of self-

presentation (e.g., personal photographs, personal videos, resumes, blogs, et al.) can be

found on websites such as Picasa, YouTube, LinkedIn, and Blogger, and canonical

autobiographies can be seamlessly blended with new text from a new author. Millions

partake in autobiographical activities through the use of weblogs (blogs), wiki-sites, and

social networking venues (e.g., Facebook, MySpace) as the increased availability of

access to the web68 has provided a convenient medium for autobiographers to tell their

story. The technological affordances of hypertext allow authors to update diary writings

daily—in short, the discrete unit of a fixed print autobiography does not exist online as no

one representation of a self can be fixed. The self can be repeatedly re-imagined or

repackaged online for viewers and is exposed to consultation, criticism, and revision by

viewers who interact with the author in previously unforeseen ways. While the reader of

100

a print autobiography may be “condemned to passivity, devoid of any possibility of

intervening in the narrative,” the online viewer is encouraged to respond to the author

through commenting on his photographs, contributing to his blog threads, posting on his

bulletin board, and contacting him directly through email or chat (Lusebrink). Online

users often maintain multiple “profiles” on multiple websites that contain vast amounts of

personal data. What for most was an intensely private enterprise prior to the advent of the

Internet has now become a public undertaking. This transformation suggests that social networking sites are natural extensions of early online autobiographies described in

Chapter Four and Chapter Five.

101

CHAPTER FOUR— CYBERPIONEER: JUSTIN ALLYN HALL AND THE

BEGINNINGS OF ONLINE AUTOBIOGRAPHY

This may be a new medium, but I got old messages…

Justin Allyn Hall, “Justin's Links from the Underground”

In this chapter, I examine how an early Web 1.0 autobiographer (i.e., Justin Allyn

Hall) uses hypertext to create a born digital autobiography.69 In “Justin's Links from the

Underground—autobio,” Hall actively employs the features of hypertext outlined in

Chapter 3 including hyperlinking, audio and video capabilities, asynchronous

communication, augmentation, and a searchable database. By making use of these

hypertext features, Hall provides a dynamic text that allows for an interactive relationship

with his audience. “Justin's Links…” illustrates how hypertext can compromise authorial

control by introducing reified elements (texts not of the author’s creation) of other

authors through hyperlinks. Texts like “Justin's Links…” demonstrate how the figurative dialogical process of self-presentation apparent in traditional print autobiographies becomes considerably more literal in hypertext.

In Writing Your Life Story, But Not Necessarily Your Autobiography (2002)

Elizabeth Bezant noted, “[F]ew autobiographies are printed by traditional publishing houses. And often the ones they do accept are picked because the story is exceptional or the writer is well known” (Bezant). Digital versions of autobiography on the Internet, of course, are not bound to the editorial discretion of established publishing houses. Nor are online “personal homepages”70 constrained by the costs associated with print or the

problems of distribution. A writer needs only a computer, a word-processing program,

and a live Internet connection to post her digital autobiography. But as Bezant’s title

102

implies (i.e., writing a life story as opposed to an autobiography), digital media presents

new challenges for the potential autobiographer. For instance, if answering the question,

“What is autobiography?”71 remains problematic for scholars of print autobiography, the

intertextual nature of hypertext complicates the matter further. Hypertext, as previously

discussed in Chapter 3, introduces many dynamic qualities not found in print including

intertextuality. In defining intertextuality,72 I rely upon Jonathan Culler’s definition in

The Pursuit of Signs: Semiotics, Literature, Deconstruction (1981):

Literary works are to be considered not as autonomous entities, ‘organic

wholes,’ but as intertextual (emphasis mine) constructs: sequences which

have meaning in relation to other texts which they take up, cite, parody,

refute, or generally transform. A text can be read only in relation to other

texts….the autonomy of texts is a misleading notion….” (38, 103).

One such early online autobiography that exemplifies the inclusion of intertextual hypertext elements is Justin Allyn Hall’s (see Figure 4) “Justin's Links from the

Underground—autobio.” A pioneer of web logging (blogging) and perhaps even its

“founding father” according to Jeffrey Rosen of The New York Times (2004), Hall

describes himself as “writ[ing] and speak[ing] on years of personal experience with digital culture and electronic entertainment” and “search[ing] for intimacy and

stimulation in technology” (Hall). Now a 34 year-old living in San Francisco, California,

Hall began writing his personal web “homepage” online in January 1994 as a

Swarthmore College student at the age of 19 when the general public had little access to

the Internet and little knowledge of the potential of hypertext. Already aware of the

dialogical essence of constructing a self online, he declares, “All of information space is a

103

Figure 4: Justin Allyn Hall, ca 2008 Source: Justin Hall’s flickr account (http://www.flickr.com/photos/joi/2659889468/) shared multiplayer adventure” (Hall). While Hall claims to have retired from writing his autobiography in 2005, he still maintains a prodigious online presence (as of July 2009) with no less than three social networking sites (MySpace, Facebook, Friendster), a professional networking site (Linkedin), three weblogs (Justinhall, MyBlogLog, just in teractive) an image sharing account (flickr), a company website (GameLayers.com), a

Twitter account, and numerous additional active websites. Though he has recently shifted his creative energies away from his autobiography to a process he calls passively multiplayer online gaming (PMOG),73 Hall’s original website “Justin's Links from the

Underground—autobio” serves as an archetypal example of the ways in which early (pre

Web 2.0) authors of online autobiography incorporate hypertext elements in their writing. 104

In a hyperlinked webpage under the subheader, “why [sic] the web?” Hall asks a

question so familiar to the history of the autobiographical impulse that could have been

uttered by St. Augustine himself—“Why put details about your personal life online?”

His answer reveals both an early if perhaps utopian understanding of the Internet’s potential:

What would you rather read? A pamphlet? Or a heartfelt tale, or personal

perspective? The web will reflect humanity if we put our lives online.

Putting our lives online does not mean leading our lives online, it is about

utilizing unprecedented sharing. We interact in the real world, and we use

cyberspace to collaborate and share and conjure new possibilities. Do we

want to see ourselves, joys and sorrows, reflected in cyberspace, or do we

want an easier mall? Not that both won't exist, but when you sit down to

craft your page, take into account which you'd rather see…. Would

you rather they read your resume, or your autobiography (emphasis

mine)? (Hall)

Using Hall’s autobiographical homepage as a prototypical example, an appropriate

answer to his last rhetorical question might be yet another question: Could you tell the

difference between the resume and autobiography, i.e., could the two genres be easily separated? In “Justin’s Links…,” Hall’s incorporation of so-called “work-related” genres, i.e., resumes, cover letters, letters of recommendation, course syllabi, audio files and written transcripts of professional speeches, et al., certainly blurs the boundaries between these autobiographical “fragments” and the autobiographical narrative.

So why is Hall a “cyberpioneer”? What makes Hall relevant to this study is not

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that he was the first to post a hypertext autobiography (though “Justin's Links…” was

certainly among the earliest autobiographies online). Rather, it is his unique

understanding of the technological and social potentials of hypertext74 as it applies to telling one’s self-life story. Hall’s work encompasses Landow’s notion that “Full hypertextuality…depends …on the multisequentiality and the reader choices created not only by attaching multiple links to a single lexia but by attaching them to a single anchor or site within a single lexia” (Landow 15). Simply put, Hall understands that hypertext changes the relationship between the writer and reader by offering the reader options not possible in print. These hypertextual possibilities consume Hall. He does not simply post his life story on a personal home page for others to read. Instead, he continually searches for new ways that emerging technologies might enhance his ability to connect with others. Herein lies one of seminal differences between early hypertext autobiographies like “Justin’s Links...” and historical print autobiographies, e.g., Maya Angelou’s I Know

Why the Caged Bird Sings. With print autobiography, an author typically writes in isolation, drawing on personal memories. While the author may engage in an imaginary dialogue with his audience, the literal act of writing is a private, not a social endeavor.

The motivation for writing one’s print autobiography is, of course, varied and diverse, but fostering social relationships with strangers is not usually listed among intended reasons for writing. Contrarily, social interaction is, as Hall notes, a prime motivating force for online autobiographers and one he actively encourages in his readers:

Individuals and community groups should post their perspectives…

At my site, I encourage personal publishing… I've been publishing and

recieving [sic] feedback since January 1994…What's got me pumped is

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my autobio, tellin’ stories about my life. Sharing stories gives

guidance. You can't forget to link up your life. The web structure

encourages you to say—Here’s where I came from. Here is family, here

are my friends. Here are my mentors…You gotta share it, cuz it’s

you! You should be flattered that folks’d want to read it! (Hall)

In particular, Hall reveals the following traits in “Justin’s Links...”: 1) “Justin’s

Links...” is one of the first autobiographies to realize and actively employ the properties

of hypertext; 2) he is one of the first to actively solicit feedback from others on his site,

respond in writing to these parties, and alter his site based upon the suggestions of others;

3) beyond written text, he incorporates diverse and multiple media elements (i.e.,

animation, artwork, photos, scanned documents, PDFs, hyperlinks to other websites, et

al.); 4) he assumes a role of educator of a new technology and offers hypertext instruction

to the audience; 5) he recognizes autobiography as an evolving social process—not one

that is fixed, permanent or constructed in isolation from others; and 6) he is highly

reflective of the process of constructing a self in an online environment, e.g., he

understands how a historical understanding of genres in print may be challenged by the

possibilities of hypertext, e.g., on his home site, he includes a syllabus for a course he taught at Swarthmore that discusses the problem of writing a narrative in online environments. With these traits intact, Hall’s “Justin’s Links...” resembles Bush’s Memex and represents a new form of textuality and writing.

One of the first things the reader notices about Hall’s autobiographical home page

(see Figure 5) is how cognizant Hall is of his viewers and their “reading” needs. He recognizes that those new to online texts may have difficulty orienting themselves,

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Figure 5: “Justin Links...autobio” homepage75 Source: Justin Hall understanding what Robert Coover notes in “End of Books:” “(when) confronted with hyperspace…all comforting structures have been erased” (24). For example, at the top of

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the homepage of “Justin’s Links...” under the link “autobio,” he offers readers two

versions of his autobiography: a truncated, chronologically linear version and “au

natural” (a more intuitive version that takes advantage of the features of hypertext). These

two options show that he is aware of potential audience discomfort with reading his

autobiography in hypertext form versus print. Noting that the chronological version is “as

close as you get to a [sic] early 1996 table of contents for my non-linear life story,” like

many autobiographies in print, Hall relies upon “life-changing” or cathartic events in

constructing a self (Hall). Yet unlike many of the early autobiographies on the Internet

(e.g., Zilpha Keatley-Snyder’s “Autobiography” (see Figure 6), Cyrilla Williams’ “My

Life Story,” et al.), Hall not only makes use of the features of hypertext, he reflects upon

how hypertext features might shape his self-presentation. A quick glance at the live

version of Snyder’s “Autobiography,” for example, reveals that she does not employ any

hyperlinks (external or internal) nor does she utilize any of the other features of hypertext

discussed in Chapter Three. In short, her autobiography resembles a PDF—a static document that is digital but not hypertextual. The potential of the new medium in

Snyder’s “Autobiography” is not discussed and not realized.

By reflecting on the ways hypertext might affect his self-presentation, however,

Hall’s work resembles St. Augustine’s Confessions. Augustine reflects that we are, at any

moment, “what you [sic] want to remember…that which I wish to see stands out clearly

and emerges into sight from its hiding place” (214). In doing so, he acknowledges the

ability of memory to select and refine the past and that what we write and thus “capture”

today might not reflect what we remember tomorrow—a condition Hall contends

becomes a moving target considering the possibility of audience reciprocity in online

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Figure 6: Zilpha Keatley Snyder “Autobiography” (July 2007) Source: http://web.archive.org/web/20070707062059/www.zksnyder.com/Autobiography.html

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environments and the variable and temporal nature of hypertext: “as you, or your

business changes, so does the online manifestion [sic] thereof otherwise it is like a

pamphlet - not living, interesting” (Hall).

Each subject Hall discusses as his narrative progresses, from his family (including

his father, mother, brother, step-siblings, step-father, cousins, et al.) to his various love

interests, contains successive hyperlinks that allow the reader to side-step the main

“Justin’s Links...” narrative. For example, if we click on the hyperlink for “mom” when it

is first introduced in the main narrative, we enter into a new web site filled with

biographical information about his mother. By engaging “mom” or any subject hyperlink

either when it is first introduced or when it appears on any of the various pages within the

website, we are removed from the chronological progression and placed in a new

hypertextual environment that contains a vast assortment of details about Hall’s mother

(Joan Marie Hall). If the reader remains in the subordinate webpage “mom,” he is treated

to Joan Marie Hall’s biography including audio files of her voice, girlhood pictures of

her, and external hyperlinks to organizations of which she is a part. Of course, Hall is the

author of these hyperlinked subject webpages, yet his active employment of hyperlinks

for every character or event in his life story provides the reader with possibilities that are

not possible in print autobiography. These “subordinate” texts have the potential to create

new texts based upon reader choice rather than authorial control—an approximation of

Barthes’ “writerly text” or Derrida’s “assemblage.”76 Most readers in print would not

expect an author to continually digress from the main storyline to enter into expansive

biographic details about each relation in the author’s life. The main autobiographical

narrative would become too fractured to sustain a forward momentum if interrupted by

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frequent and persistent digressions. In contrast, the reader expects the possibility of

reading along a path that diverges from the main narrative in hypertext.

Oftentimes clicking on a hyperlink in “Justin’s Links...” takes the viewer away from Hall’s point of view entirely. For example, clicking on the link for “Jane” takes the

viewer to the “Umami Tsunami”—a website/blog hosted by one of Hall’s previous

girlfriends. Hyperlinks like “Jane” offer the opportunity for the reader to completely

leave the author’s text. While “Umami Tsunami” also links back to Hall’s current blog,

once inside this new website, the viewer has left Hall’s narrative. In this context, one can easily see how “the presence of multiple reading paths” in hypertext autobiography can

“shift the balance between the reader and writer…creat[ing] a text far less independent of commentary, analogues, and traditions than…printed text” (Landow 45).

As an early innovator of online autobiography, Hall actively sought out feedback from visitors to his website and encouraged a reciprocal relationship as he responded to reader comments via email. Occasionally, he also posted suggestions to improve his site and acted upon the advice of his viewers. For example, Hall notes that he is “pleased to get comments (good, bad, ugly, bizarre, even the poetical - eliciting a response is fun!).

…In addition, I wish to express my heartfelt appreciation to the people who make suggestions and corrections to my pages. They are better for your efforts” (Hall). He also posts a threaded discussion (i.e., email response chain) of his interaction with his commenting audience that allows the viewer to read the comments in the context in which they were given. This interactive correspondence between the author and audience is common today and thus may seem unexceptional. The current world of blogging and its reliance on pre-packaged web “template” programs such as those found on Blogger

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(www.blogger.com) has made this type of online relationship ubiquitous. Moreover, the

contemporary relationship between writer and reader is also enhanced by services like

Twitter77 and texting that allow for instantaneous feedback via mobile technologies.

Twitter, texting, and blogs, however, did not exist when Hall was writing “Justin’s

Links….” Also, blogs tend to be topical or thematic in nature and readers respond to views expressed by the author of the blog. Typically, the contemporary reader does not critique the content or the design of the site itself; this is especially the case since current blog “sites” are almost universally created from the aforementioned pre-packaged web program templates now possible in Web 2.0. In contrast, Hall’s autobiography was created entirely from HTML and UNIX code.78 Quite simply, this means that Hall both wrote the text and designed many of the graphical elements of his autobiographical homesite.

One particular event in “Justin’s Links...” (his father’s suicide) stands out as a useful example from which to illustrate how reified elements of subjects other than the author enter into the process of self-construction in hypertext. In a hyperlinked webpage separate from the homepage of “Justin’s Links…” and under a link titled “autobio,” Hall relays the story of his father’s suicide. A dynamic not possible in print emerges. He begins by briefly describing his father, Wesley Gibson Hall (see Figure 6), as “a wry, humanistic, sensitive man…also an intolerant spiteful bastard” and cataloguing moments they shared, e.g., a chess match between them, games of gin rummy, and nightly readings of the Hardy Boys (Hall). When Hall arrives at the day of his father’s death, however, he recognizes both the necessity of explaining the significance of the event in his own life as well as the need to include “independent” artifacts that represent his father. In the short

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Figure 7: Justin Hall’s Father--Wesley Gibson Hall Source: Justin Hall, “Justin’s Links…”

span of the three sentences, Hall includes seven successive hyperlinks to external documents related to his father’s suicide:79

Gramma says I was the last one to talk with him. He left a note and an

obituary. General Dynamics sent us a foot tall majestic porcelain fighting

eagle. A family friend, John Tucker, wrote a eulogy that probably

describes him better than I can. I can't really remember his voice, but I still

dream about him. Some of my most potent writing is about him. (Hall)

If we engage these hyperlinks, we are treated respectively to an audio wave file from

Hall’s grandmother, an original poem (“mistguided”) written by Hall about his father’s death, a copy of his father’s handwritten suicide note, an obituary published in the

Chicago Tribune, a transcript of the eulogy written by a colleague of his father’s, a description of a dream about his father, and more poems influenced by his father’s

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suicide. Hall’s chosen artifacts combine genres outside of the autobiography (i.e., poetry)

as well as independent documents representing the other (i.e., the Chicago Tribune

obituary, the suicide note [see Figure 7], and the eulogy). Collectively, these documents

simultaneously augment and encroach upon the boundaries of the constructed self. For example, we are encouraged to consider his father’s final words (“note”) in his own handwriting:

There's a divinity that shapes our ends

Rough hew them though we may.

The paths of glory lead but to the grave80

Figure 8: Wesley Gibson Hall’s Handwritten Suicide Note Source: Justin Hall, “Justin’s Links…”

Reading his father’s suicide note not only allows us to diverge from Hall’s self

narrative, but it also impels us to interpret meaning in Wesley Hall’s final words—

meaning we cannot derive from Hall’s narrative alone. We are confronted with a learned

man, one who is able to quote an amalgam of Shakespeare and Thomas Gray, but we are

also perhaps struck by the aloof nature of the quotations—his last words to his family

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contain nothing personal. The inclusion of Gray’s “paths to glory” might reveal an

egotistical man, or simply one who never fulfilled his personal ambitions. Possibly, we

may also be aware of a dialogic irony within the suicide note: the blending of two

prominent literary texts into a new creation—a synthesized (plagiarized?) text within a text within a text.

As a reader, we can certainly choose to avoid accessing these external, hyperlinked artifacts and read the document in a similar fashion to printed text by following the primary narrative. Yet, this seems unlikely considering the intuitive nature of online readers. Online usability theorists including Peter Pirolli, Stuart Card,81 and

Jakob Nielsen82 have referred to the process of reading online as information foraging.

Simply put, readers of online material do not read in straight lines—they scan for

information: “People rarely read Web pages word by word; instead, they scan the page,

picking out individual words and sentences. In research on how people read websites we

found that 79 percent of our test users always scanned any new page they came across;

only 16 percent read word-by-word” (Nielsen). The hyperlinks embedded by the author

are typically engaged by a reader scanning for particular information and only selecting

items of interest. This pattern of reading runs contrary to the linear succession more

typical in print autobiography. In addition, hyperlinks such as the ones for Wesley Hall

act as reified elements of subjects other than the author and introduce divergent media

that serve to disrupt the chronologically linear narrative so often associated with

historical print autobiography. When the online reader engages a link, for example,

Wesley Hall’s suicide note, she has chosen her own reading path that could not be

anticipated by or controlled by the author. As noted earlier, the possibility of reader

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choice makes literal Barthes idea of a writerly text—a text in which the illusion of the

writer’s control over the reader is challenged:

The writerly text is a perpetual present, upon which no consequent

language (which would inevitably make it past) can be superimposed; the

writerly text is ourselves writing, before the infinite play of the world (the

world as function) is traversed, intersected, stopped, plasticized by some

singular system (Ideology, Genus, Criticism) which reduces the plurality

of entrances, the opening of networks, the infinity of languages. (S/Z 5)

Moreover, by inserting hyperlinks into his autobiography which contain artifacts that

represent his father’s “voice,” Hall challenges the reader to engage divergent texts and

possibly come to “read” his life with “an understanding that is dialogic in nature”

(Voloshinov 102). “Justin’s Links...” is “one instance of a dialogic interrelationship

among directly signifying discourses within the limits of a single context” (Bakhtin,

Problems of… 188).

Hall’s multimodal depiction of his father’s suicide should not, however, be

considered an isolated case in “autobio.” Another life event described by Hall illustrates a similar pattern. Under a hyperlink titled “arrested,” Hall details his arrest and trial for

protesting the death penalty of Mumia Abu-Jamal83 in San Francisco. As with his father’s suicide, Hall gives the reader background information and his impressions of the event:

I was arrested and charged with felony attempted arson, inciting a riot, and

jaywalking. I was strip searched, detained for 19 hours, put in a cell. My

step-brother posted $5000 bail, I was free, unlike most of the other 280

protestors….All because I was taking notes too close to a rowdy

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demonstration to prevent the death penalizing of Mumia Abu-Jamal.

Needless to say, I have filed a complaint, and even a lawsuit, where i [sic]

got a chance to jerk the chain of the city!

In the space of a few sentences the reader is offered a total of nine active hyperlinks.

Through these links, Hall offers the audience the opportunity to learn about Mumia Abu-

Jamal, to read the court complaint, and to read his deposition among other documents. He comically notes that his visit to “Cook County Jail in Chicago in August '93, turned out to be good practice” (see Figure 8). When Hall uses the phrase “All because I was taking notes…” to persuade us that he is an innocent victim, we are encouraged to actively question the author’s position by carefully examining primary source documents related

Figure 9: Arrest Identification Card Source: Justin Hall, “Justin’s Links…” to the event. Also, the presentation of these independent artifacts offers the viewer a chance to gain a more detailed description of the arrest than if Hall was simply writing from memory. When the viewer leaves the main narrative to read the lengthy transcript of the court deposition, she has engaged a new voice distinct from the author of the autobiography. Each of these links augments his narrative by going beyond his words.

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And if we question the veracity of his story, Hall invites us to use a search engine

(Google is included on each one of his web pages) to further investigate.

Perhaps Hall also tells us as much about this event by what he leaves out.

Conspicuously absent from “Justin’s Links...” are the arrest record, settlement transcripts, and “objective” news reports of the protest—all public documents. In fact, the San

Francisco Chronicle noted in a June 28, 1995 article that the crowd was part of a “rowdy two-hour march…which…overturned trash cans, set fire to two trash bins and burned a couch in the middle of Valencia Street” the crowd was “unruly…with lit torches”

(Walker A–13). Similar sentiments were echoed in the June 27, 1995 edition of the San

Francisco Examiner. The Examiner referred to the event as “A raucous Mission District demonstration in which dumpsters were set ablaze and car tires slashed” (Lewis and

Delgado). Whether or not Hall was simply “taking notes” is an unknown and not essential to our search for the dialogic. However, as Hall notes himself, the ability to access documents “two clicks away” alters our understanding of his constructed self.

Unlike print autobiography, Hall’s hypertext homepage is not constrained by either the finite limits of the printed text or the arbitrary decisions of an editor or a publisher.

External texts can be hyperlinked ad infinitum. Moreover, once these links are activated, the reader has entered a new text that is often independent of authorial control. When a writer employs hypertext, the constructed self is always at risk of being permeated by the independent voice of another.

Aside from the elements of his personal life, Hall also uses his autobiographical homepage to situate himself as an instructor of hypertext. Beyond simply showing his audience the possibilities of hypertext by example, he provides step-be-step procedures

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for writing on the web. Of course, autobiography has always contained elements of a

teacher-student relationship. Throughout Confessions, for example, St. Augustine shows

the reader by his example a path to redemption, and he advises his audience against confusing knowledge with understanding. The relationship St. Augustine establishes with the reader as a teacher is filled with metaphor, i.e., engaging in teaching is preparation for understanding, which St. Augustine ultimately felt would serve to introduce the reader to

the teacher within, or Christ (Augustine 29). In The Confessions of Jean-Jacques

Rousseau, Rousseau includes obvious references to his philosophies of life and education

borrowing from his discussion of childhood education and the social contract in

Discourse on Inequality and E’mile, challenging the reader directly to “let each of them reveal, with the same frankness, the secrets of his heart” (3).

Yet, the teacher-student relationship Hall establishes (although often quite literal) is not that different in motivation from Augustine. Hall is seeking conversions, but not to

Christianity. He wants his readers to adopt his religion—posting their life online:

The web is the first semi-permanent unlimited world wide [sic] exhibition

space. Think of it as a neverending [sic] world's fair, where anyone can set

up a booth, and you don't have to be there to see it. The web is an

opportunity to make good [sic] our fifteen megabytes of fame. Because

web pages encompass any existing media, you can forge your site in your

own image. You can be unique, because there are no expectations. (Hall)

To facilitate the creation of these “personal perspectives,” Hall actually walks viewers through the creation of a personal webpage in a section labeled “Publish Yo’ Self” (see

Figure 9). Interestingly, he notes that he learns by self study and assumes his audience

120 will be able to do the same. He notes that “it’s like word processing in public” and

“Nothing to make you change your pages like some feedback on incomplete work”

(Hall). His comments show recognition of how the traditional dynamic between the author-reader has been altered by the reciprocal nature of the hypertext format: “people respond to energy! Put some into your pages, a lot and often if you expect people to do the same…with more work, your site will come to closer approximate you as a person”

(Hall). Here Hall implies that the social process of writing on the web is never quite

Figure 10: “Publish Yo’ Self” Source: Justin Hall, “Justin’s Links…” finished—it evolves with the insight of “people” and reciprocity is expected. An autobiographical home page is in a continual state of temporality; contrary to print autobiographies, it is never a completed, fixed published work. The digital autobiography, Hall notes, is a continually updated “approximate” version of “you as a person” (Hall).

Not unlike historical autobiographies, Hall also uses his online autobiography as a

121 call to action—as a manifesto. Not content with simply posting his life online, he seeks converts to the new interactive medium of the Internet and wants everyone to share in his utopian experience. In order to expand the dialectic possibilities of the new venue, he must sell it: “Storytelling is cathartic in any medium. The web offers widespread communication, community…[by] sharing stories online, we can pool our experience and memory to ease our pain and expand our horizons. (Hall) By doing so, his work once again, recalls St. Augustine’s Confessions, e.g.,

I must now carry my thoughts back to the abominable things I did for you

in those days, the sins of the flesh which defiled my soul….I need not tell

all this to you, my God, but in your presence I tell it to my own kind, to

those other men, however few, who may perhaps pick up this book. And I

tell it so that I and all who read my words may realize the depths from

which we are to cry to you. (Augustine 43, 45)

Whether it is to convert souls to Christianity or to persuade readers that creating a “cyber- presence” is a social necessity, the autobiographical impulse in these cases desires more than recognition—it desires both comprehension and a change in behavior of the reader.

In others words, both authors desire a social action from the reader—not individual passivity.

Early Autobiographical Websites— Old Wine in New Bottles or a Genre Redefined?

When asked to speak on the new conventions of reading and communicating online at the News Industries & Journalism/Preparing for 2010: New Directions for News

Conference in 1995 to a group of those in the media industry, Hall emphasized a

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fundamental shift in how new media must be approached when considering the

reader/viewer:

What’s the point of doing the same old in this new medium? …Big

deal…When people can browse through a site in a matter of seconds, and

leave for an independent operator in a single bound, the rules are

changed…This technology promotes decentralization. Force feeding the

net public heaping spoonfuls of what you think is tasty will fail—even if

people have a choice of spoons. People want to talk to eachother [sic], if

they are going to read something, they want it to be vibrant and heartfelt…

Personal web pages merge content provision and human connection. I’m

telling stories, but they’re human, and ultimately for my own

satisfaction…This is journalism of the future.

While this passage is typical of Hall’s utopian flourishes concerning the future potential

of the web, it does underscore a basic principle—the decentralizing and interconnected qualities of the Internet challenge and reconfigure the power of traditional relationships between broadcast mediums (print, radio, television, et al.) and the receiving audience of these mediums. And both the enormous public popularity of “Justin’s Links from the

Underground—autobio” and the documented evidence of audience interaction with its author testified to the veracity of his claims long before marquee print newspapers84 were

closing their doors, historic publishers were absorbed by media conglomerates, and

social-networking websites like MySpace and Facebook had a combined world

membership of nearly 500 million subscribers.85 With Hall, we see the beginnings of the

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evolution of the personal webpage, i.e., online autobiography, into a social-networking

model phenomenally popular in contemporary American culture.

While writing one’s autobiography was never simply an inwardly-focused

reflection performed by an individual self, most print versions tend to model familiar

genre conventions. True, there are a few examples of print autobiography that deviate

from the norm. Roland Barthes by Roland Barthes86 (1975) is an obvious example of a

print autobiography that plays with genre conventions including, the chronological

progression of time (the subject’s lifeline) and the readers’ expectation of a “story- structure” or narrative framework to give order to the events described by the author.87 In his so-called autobiography, Barthes situates himself as a text and in doing so sets himself up as an object of interrogation. Since Barthes spent his life fighting conformism and the status quo, he approaches his autobiography from an unconventional third person point-of-view and uses photographs from his youth to string together a disconnected commentary on the actions, characters and places in the photographs. Running contrary to publisher’s desires to relegate subject photographs to the middle of the text or place them in an addendum, Barthes intersperses them randomly throughout his text. In this manner, Hall’s hypertext autobiography is similar to Roland Barthes by Roland Barthes.

Yet, the photographs Barthes chooses follow no particular pattern—chronologically or otherwise. Hall’s photographic selections tend to progress chronologically with few exceptions.

However, while Barthes’ humorous take on the conventions of autobiography serves to illustrate the difficulties writers face when they attempt to capture their lives in text, his autobiography is an exception to the rule—an anomalous text used to

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demonstrate the limitations of the genre of autobiography and the idea, in general, of any

classification by genre. Moreover, Barthes’ criticism of the conventions of textual self-

construction in print is validated by the possibilities of hypertext. The process of writing,

notes Barthes, is always social, “[I]n writing a text, any text, the writer himself comes

undone, remaining only as devices within the text…we must surrender our individuality

whenever we enter language, which cannot belong to us” (2). As Hall illustrates, hypertextual writing always has the potential to reconfigure the direction of relationships

within the traditional rhetorical triangle by introducing temporality, reciprocity and

external hyperlinked texts that deviate from the primary text. By employing the capabilities of hypertext, Hall’s autobiographical homepage begins to make literal what

was previously theoretical, i.e., Barthes’ hypothetical writerly text (a text which alters the

balance between writer and reader by creating the presence of multiple reading paths) is

made real. Hall’s work both captures the autobiographical impulse and self-effaces it by

using the technological possibilities of hypertext to stretch the boundaries of the genre.

After viewing “Justin's Links from the Underground—autobio” and similar early

online autobiographies, it is no longer possible to claim that self-life writing is a mirror

that simply reflects an autobiographical image. The hypertext writing situation is such

that a social voice penetrates the construction of the text. I have already argued that

writing an autobiography has always been a social act and the product of self-reflection

reveals this. And while the Romantic notion of the individual self may obscure the reality

of social activity, the end products of early online autobiographical impulses resemble

not a linear text written by a solitary writer, but rather a myriad of textual possibilities

125 compiled by an assembler. Which path the reader eventually decides to take may reveal a life-story quite different from authorial intentions.

In Chapter Five, I examine how one web author, Miles Hochstein, emphasizes the photographic image over written text in the telling of his life story online. In doing so,

Hochstein eliminates most of the traditional narrative expository associated with traditional autobiographies. I also note how Hochstein’s website, “Documented Life,” evolves from its early manifestation in 2000 as a photographic life story with limited written text into a personal hypertext media database cataloguing Hochstein’s habits of media consumption by 2009. I contend “Documented Life” establishes a web “template” that social networking sites co-opt.

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CHAPTER FIVE: ESTABLISHING A WEB 2.0 TEMPLATE FOR SELF-

PRESENTATION—MILES HOCHSTEIN’S “DOCUMENTED LIFE: AN

AUTODOCUMENTARY” AND BEYOND

Our new environment compels commitment and participation. We have become

irrevocably involved with, and responsible for, each other…. We have to shift our stress

of attention from action to reaction.

Marshall McLuhan, The Medium is the Massage (1967)

In this chapter, I examine the online autobiography of Miles Hochstein

(“Documented Life”). “Documented Life” provides an early illustration of how Web 2.0 authors create templates for self-presentation that order and compartmentalize both static media and hypermedia (i.e., hyperlinked media). I define “template” loosely as a planned web-design format that introduces a set of conventions to personal webpages, e.g., hyperlinked columns for media categories, pull-down menu bars at the top of the homepage, roll over menus and graphics including pictures and animation in the center of the screen. Besides claiming that Hochstein creates a web template that is (eventually) closely imitated by social networking websites including facebook and MySpace, I also show how Hochstein’s autobiography employs the technological features of hypertext discussed in Chapter 3 (i.e., linking (hyperlinking), textual, audio and visual capabilities

(hypermedia options), asynchronous and synchronous communication, augmentation

(editing and revising capabilities), and searchable databases) to expand the dynamic relationship with the audience begun in Web 1.0 versions of autobiography, e.g., “Justin's

Links from the Underground—autobio.” “Documented Life” is a useful case study because the relationship between author and reader is further redefined by the pervasive

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presence of external hyperlinks that allow the audience to choose a course of textual interaction beyond authorial control. As I illustrate, “Documented Life” evolves from an original focus on a self-life story relayed through selected photographs to a collection of media, e.g., books, films, webpages, et al., reviewed by the author. In this sense, the template Hochstein develops is also an archetype for personal homepage content.

Hochstein’s website is significant because it illustrates a purposeful increase in the

reliance on visual media rather than written text to tell a self-life story. Accordingly,

websites like “Documented Life” foreshadow changes introduced by weblogs (blogs) and

more particularly, social networking websites. Visual media, social interaction and heavy

dependence on hyperlinking become essential to the development of the website and each

of these elements presents challenges to the idea of what it means to tell one’s life story.

In “Documented Life,” we witness the narrative structure typically found in historical

print autobiographies being replaced by a digital media database that catalogs the

author’s cultural and social interests.

As writers of online autobiographies adopted Web 2.0,88 they began to realize the

new media possibilities available to them. Web 2.0 allows for advanced audio and visual

applications not previously available to web authors; therefore, the look of a website, the

process of constructing a website, and who constructs a personal website have been

affected significantly since Web 1.0. In Web 1.0, bandwidth, technology and memory

restrictions had formerly limited digital autobiographers. Authors, including Justin Allyn

Hall (“Justin's Links from the Underground”), used HTML encoded text to create their dynamic personal websites. These early Web 1.0 authors, by necessity, had a general knowledge of HTML code and an understanding of its limitations.

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For example, imagine a web author like Hall writing his digital autobiography in

January 1994 before web-design computer programs such as Adobe Dreamweaver were available. Hall decides that he wants a simple webpage—a header and three short sentences to appear on the computer monitor as follows: Justin’s Self Reflection

Justin is bold

Justin is big

over Justin is under and

In order to make the text above appear on a “live” webpage (a webpage accessible

anywhere via the Internet) with the formatting he has chosen, he must type the following

HTML code:

Justin’s Self Reflection

Justin is bold

Justin is big

Justin is_subscript and ^superscript

Since “WYSIWYG” (what you see is what you get) web-authoring programs including

Dreamweaver do not exist in January 1994, everything Hall writes has to be manually

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coded. If he wants just the words “Justin is bold” on his webpage, he has to type

“ ” to begin his page, “” to use

12 point, Time New Roman font, “

Justin is bold

” to place the text in bold, and “ ” to finish the page. In other words, all of the basic formatting functions Web 2.0 authors assume are transparent and seamless were part of a laborious web authoring process that acted to discourage the less committed and less technologically savvy autobiographers.

The increasing availability of Web 2.0 technological features after the year 2000, however, made the process of web authoring much more user-friendly. These features provided online autobiographers with an opportunity to circumvent coding in HTML if

they wished. Sophisticated web-design programs, including the previously mentioned

Dreamweaver, with their convenient screen templates and relatively easy learning curves

encouraged more people to consider constructing their own pages because knowledge of

HTML coding was no longer a prerequisite skill. In some ways, these programs replicate

the basic functions of universally popular word processing programs like Microsoft Word

allowing for a transfer of skills from one well-known computer program (Word) to a

lesser-known computer program (Dreamweaver).

A prime example of an early Web 2.0 author who utilizes many of these advanced

media applications is Miles Hochstein. Hochstein’s “Documented Life: An

Autodocumentary” (see Figure 10: Documented Life Homepage [July 2009]) is one of

the more exhaustive early Web 2.0 autobiographical websites in its breadth and scope as

Hochstein has maintained this site since 2000. Hochstein’s work is particularly relevant

to this study for two primary reasons.

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Figure 11: Documented Life homepage (July 2009) Source: http://documentedlife.com/log/

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First, like Hall, Hochstein initially seeks to interact with readers in a dynamic

fashion where his autobiography is a work in progress potentially influenced by reader

feedback. Both dialogue and emulation are sought by Hochstein—the reader is enticed to become a writer who converses with Hochstein and one who creates his or her own autobiographical website as a mimetic activity. In an early version of “Documented Life”

(2001), he frankly noted this desire in a welcome letter89 to his audience:

You - I hope that you enjoy this exercise in the representation of identity,

this “autodocumentary.” If it encourages you in your own effort to

represent yourself, to yourself or to the world, whether on-line or in-life,

whether in cyberspace or in meat-space, that would make me happy. This

site is a message in a bottle. If you are reading these words, maybe that

means you have found the bottle you were meant to find. Sending me e-

mail is the step that completes the communication loop. (Emphasis mine)

What was your response to Documented Life? Or how's the weather? Let

me know. (Hochstein, “Welcome”)

The image of his autodocumentary floating on the sea in a glass bottle is analogous to

finding his website among thousands of similar sites on the web. Hochstein clearly

recognizes that “Documented Life” is but one of thousands of personal websites available

to the audience, and his message must vie similarly for the attention of the reader with

thousands of others. But it is not a message that the author wishes simply to be read

without a re-active response from his audience. Like Hall before him, Hochstein craves

an active discourse on what it means to create a representation of one’s life online.

Reciprocity means not only the potential of literal contact with him, but also, the potential

132 for the readers to engage in their own online self-representation taking his vision in

“Documented Life” as their inspiration.

As noted in Chapter Two of this dissertation, an imagined dialogical relationship between the author and the audience has always been a part of the process of self- presentation through a written autobiography. St. Augustine actively conversed with his

God as he wrote, and he attempted to persuade his audience to seek out God within themselves as the only path to salvation. An audience was imagined by Augustine and the reader presumably “assum[ed] a responsive attitude toward” the utterance as they read

(Bakhtin 76). With “Documented Life,” the dialogic relationship between the author and the reader that was previously only metaphorical now has the possibility of becoming incarnate—literal and observable—because not only does the technology enable an exchange of information, but the autobiographer, in this case, Hochstein, plainly invites such a response. Bolter best captures this reification of the writer-reader relationship in digital texts in Writing Space:

A computer text is never stable and never detached from the changing

contexts that readers bring to it…. The text is not complete until it is

experienced by the reader…. What was only figuratively true in the case

of print, becomes literally true in the electronic medium. The new medium

reifies the metaphor…the reader participates in the making of the text as a

sequence of words (emphasis mine). Even if the author has written all the

words, the reader must call them up and determine the order of

presentation by the choices made or commands issued. There is no single

unequivocal text apart from the reader…. (Bolter 158)

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In many ways, “Documented Life” is a literal manifestation of what Bakhtin referred to

as dialogism. If the “first and foremost criterion for the finalization of the [speech] utterance is the possibility of responding to it,” then Hochstein plainly expects his speech utterance to elicit “response, agreement, sympathy, objection, execution…” from his audience (Bakhtin 69-76). With social engagement, he feels that a dialogue between the viewing audience and those self-life writers like him “may even begin to give meaning to

the idea of global village-hood” (Hochstein, “Welcome”). Autobiography, he posits, is

not merely a record of self-reflection, but it is also an invitation to a virtual community.

Web authors like Hochstein are privileged by the communicative possibilities

inherent in the digital environment. They may receive prompt and enduring feedback

from their audience and such feedback always has the potential to become part of the

autobiography, either as a whole, original “text,” i.e., a transcript of the actual email,

phone, or chat session, or more indirectly through changes to the site motivated by

comments made by the viewers. In my email correspondence with Hochstein (see

Appendix B for a full transcript of my email conversations with Hochstein), he noted that

visitors to his website often wrote to express approval of his work and to note that

“Documented Life” inspired them to create their own websites: “Over the years…people did write me and some did say they were inspired by my site, particularly at the time it was ‘Yahoo Site of the Day.’ Other online autobiographers sent me links to their own efforts” (Hochstein). From simple collected data such as a numerical registry of the number of website visitors to “Documented Life” to email correspondence and synchronous communication through chat (which can be recorded) or to site-embedded

threaded discussions, the contemporary author of a digital autobiography has the

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opportunity to engage in real and immediate dialogue with the audience. In essence,

“Documented Life” approximates and foreshadows developments to come in social

networking sites by merging the narcissistic tendencies of the autobiographical impulse with the desire for immediate and continuous social contact.

Second, Hochstein is among the first online autobiographers who change his

approach to self-presentation from being strictly autobiographical (i.e., an interpretive

narrative record of personal events and the meaning of those events to the subject) to

cataloguing the media they consume on a daily basis. His personal website gradually

morphs from being a pictorial version of autobiography (see Figure 11: Documented Life

Homepage—Initial Version [2000]) into a compendium of links to outside material in

2009. The phrase “outside material” refers to media content created by parties other than

the author. While Justin Allyn Hall certainly discussed personal topics in a manner

somewhat removed from the standard narrative structure of a traditional print

autobiography in “autobio,” he did not use external websites copiously in his original

autobiography, and he largely separates his hypertext autobiography from his online

hobbies by separating the web portals (entry points).90 Most of the links in Hall’s

“autobio” all relate in deliberate ways to the telling of his life-story. For example, when

Hall relates the story of his father’s suicide, all of the media elements included, e.g.,

photographs, newspaper clippings, scanned handwritten notes, et al., are all accessed through embedded hyperlinks, meaning the viewer never leaves the host website. The author (in this case, Hall) writes and controls the web architecture since most of the media content is contained within the author’s website. Though Hall eventually moves away from his “autobio” to create a much larger web presence, his original hypertext

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Figure 12: Documented Life homepage—initial version (2001) Source: http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://documentedlife.com

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autobiography remains intact as a separate digital text—it is never blended with a larger

collection of the author’s various media interests as we witness in “Documented Life.”

Initially, Hochstein follows Hall’s example in the original manifestation of his website,

but as his website grows to include the massive collection of his media viewing habits

visible in the 2009 version of his site, external links dominate his personal website. In my

personal email correspondence with Hochstein, he reveals his awareness of a switch in

his narcissistic tendencies from overt self-presentation (i.e., the original “Documented

Life” portion of his site now labeled “biophilia” [see Figure 12: “biophila” 2009]) to

associative self-construction via external hyperlinks (i.e., the most recent manifestation of

“Documented Life”):

The site is a very low priority to me, and I have often (recently)

considered taking it down and putting it in a book for my children and

grandchildren. There is no reason to have it online anymore. I’m just not

that into me! And I don’t want people to think I am that in to me, which

is the main downside to having it there… I decided that the way I wanted

to record my life was by keeping a public list of the content of the media

that I consumed (emphasis mine), hence the current front page of my site.

In contrast to my face, I really am interested in the media that I

consume…An ordinary life leaving a little trail of cultural consumption

behind it. (Hochstein)

In this passage, Hochstein openly acknowledges that his intention is to have his collection of carefully selected media in “Documented Life” serve as a loosely associated self-life narrative constructed through a digital medium. Interestingly, he seems to privilege

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Figure 13: “biophila” (2009) Source: http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://documentedlife.com

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printed text by suggesting that the autobiographical segment of his current website

(“biophilia”) be placed in a book. Hochstein insists that the answer to the

autobiographical question, “Who is Miles?” is a “nexus of multiple streams of culture…

representations of what I see, rather than of how I was seen or how I appear”

(Hochstein).91 As is visible in the organizing principle of his web template (i.e., categorizing media consumption habits according to media formats [books, movies,

websites, et al.]), the way Hochstein chooses to represent himself through “Documented

Life” evolves to replace the narrative structure typically found in historical print

autobiography with a continually updated “nexus of multiple streams of culture”

(Hochstein). With the exception of the occasional brief explanation or caption, he largely

leaves it up to the viewer to determine what his media consumption might say about his

life. In the main, “Documented Life” has transformed from an autobiography with personal images as its focal point, to a hypertext compilation of the author’s ongoing media consumption—a life habit rather than a life narrative. In this sense, “Documented

Life” serves as a prototype for what becomes a common pattern of behavior in social networking websites—posting external media hyperlinks as associative representations of the self.

As a result of these changes, the design of Hochstein’s web template comes to reflect his evolution from online autobiographer to online personal database manager.

Outside media gradually become more important to “Documented Life,” and the column devoted to his “biophilia” (pictorial autobiography) becomes less significant. While it still receives placement in the center column of his homesite in the most recent manifestation (see Figure 10), it has been marginalized in its importance as just another

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element of “Documented Life” as it is now only accessible through a thumbnail.92 The screen space Hochstein devotes to the renamed “biophilia” (see Figure 12) is reduced; the pictorial narrative, this latest arrangement would imply, is now simply another facet of his autodocumentary—not the core purpose or mission of the website. He is still the

“author” of the website posting the occasional picture or two with brief commentary, but now the outside media he consumes becomes the focal point for his musings—not his ruminations on pivotal or cathartic episodes in his day-to-day life that often provide a narrative structure for both historical print autobiography and some Web 1.0 digital autobiographies. Without a traditional narrative structure to guide his reader, the viewer must sift through a continually updated collection of the author’s interests. The self presented in “Documented Life” is a work in progress characterized by the action of its viewer’s habits—not by seminal personal events. “Documented Life” illustrates a density

of media content that requires large amounts of free time to post, discuss, and update.

And while he offers little in the way of reflection on what his media habits, taken as a

whole, might mean in terms of presenting his life story online, the brief autobiographical

details combined with a catalogue of selected media suggest a more associative reading

of the latest manifestation of “Documented Life.” In other words, readers not only choose

their own reading path, they may draw their own conclusions about the subject presented

in the autobiography independent of authorial intentions.

From Personal Images to Digital Breadcrumbs: Documenting a Life Lived Online

Images have long played a role in traditional print autobiographies, and much has

been written about the role images (i.e., pictures, sketches, engravings, etc.) play in both

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print and in electronic environments. In Art and Visual Perception: A Psychology of the

Creative Eye (1974), Rudolf Arnheim claims that all thinking is essentially perceptual

(and particularly visual) in nature. To Arnheim, the traditional divide between both

perception and reason and seeing and thinking is inaccurate: “all perceiving is also

thinking, all reasoning is also intuition, all observation is also invention” (5). Rather,

Arnheim argued, “the remarkable mechanisms by which the senses understand the

environment are all but identical with the operations described by the psychology of

thinking” (Visual Thinking v). For digital texts which depend heavily upon the image,

Arnheim’s ideas have many ramifications. All artistic expressions including writing,

claims Arnheim, become “a form of reasoning, in which perceiving and thinking are

indivisibly intertwined. A person who paints, writes, composes, dances,…thinks with his

senses” (Art and Visual Perception… 5).

Much has also been written about both the social impact of images in the media93 and the history of images (particularly the photograph),94 and thinkers such as Walter

Benjamin95 have approached photography, specifically from a meta-level, exploring not photographs, but rather the idea of photographs as representations. Surprisingly, comparatively little has been written about the role images play both in crafting autobiography in print and hypertext. Aside from Linda Haverty Rugg’s Picturing

Ourselves: Photography and Autobiography (1997), few authors have discussed the role of images as they pertain to the construction of the self in print. Where hypertext is

concerned, scholars including Sherry Turkle, Linda Warley, Helen Buss, Laura Sullivan,

and John Palmer discuss “digital life-writing” in great detail but pay little attention to the specific influence of hypertext images on the construction of the autobiographical self

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(Warley 26).

Of course printed editions of autobiography vary tremendously by publisher, but

it is safe to say that even a cursory observation of texts in print reveals some

generalizations about the state of images in printed versions of autobiographies.

Typically, autobiography in print approaches images in one of three ways: 1) placing all

the selected pictures as a group at roughly the mid-way point in the text; 2) including

photographs in a separate appendices; 3) offering “grouped” pictures at various intervals

that catalog a certain stage in the life of the narrator.96

Therefore, in most print autobiography, images tend to move with the text in a chronologically linear fashion. There are exceptions in obvious cases such as Barthes by

Barthes and Nabakov’s Speak Memory where the authors intentionally play with the notion of a chronological trajectory of photographs, but as Margaretta Jolly notes in her review of hundreds of print autobiographies in the Encyclopedia of Life Writing:

Autobiographical and Biographical Forms (2001), photographic images, like text, are chosen by the author or editor to illustrate the progression of an author’s life. In most instances in print, the linear limitations of printed text noted by Bolter in Writing Space, follow through to photographs.

While Hochstein continues to maintain his digital photographic autobiography begun in 2000, his photographic autobiography is only one part of his greater autobiographical online presence in his “Documented Life” project. Like Justin Allyn

Hall, he includes great detail about his life and events, and in the process he reflects deeply upon the act of creating an autobiography. And, like Hall, Hochstein is interested

in much more than relaying a chronological narrative in hypertext. As previously noted in

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this chapter, Hochstein meticulously catalogues his life as much by the external media he

consumes as by his own written words and personal pictures. “Documented Life: An

Autodocumentary” could perhaps be characterized as a personal, customized database in

addition to being labeled an online autobiography. In this sense, Hochstein’s approach to

online self-presentation differs from Web 1.0 versions of online autobiography such as

“Justin’s Links….” While a life-narrative is present, the traditional narrative drive

associated with print autobiography is not the focal point for the website. In essence,

“Documented Life” shares strong family resemblances with the template formats of the most popular current social networking sites including but not limited to facebook and

MySpace.

For example, the subheadings on “Documented Life” (see Figure 10) are clearly patterned after the media he absorbs: “photon” (photos he has taken), “book” (books he has read), “biophilia” (a linear timeline in photos of his life to date), “talkie” (films and television shows he has viewed), and “netkill” (websites he has viewed). Under “book” he notes frankly, “I list each book I read and every book I can remember reading in my

48 years of life” (Hochstein). Then, after each book title, a summary and analysis is given. In a recent update (August 2009) of his site, for example, he reviewed Barbara

Kingsolver’s Prodigal Summer (see Figure 10, “book” column). Taken together these

“slices” or catalogs of individual activity and media consumption create an associative autobiography. Like Hochstein’s site, contemporary social networking sites function in much the same way. Sites like facebook, et al. encourage personal profile “authors” to document all of their actions through their own content or the media content of others.

Commentary is encouraged and uploading and hyperlinking are systematized as methods

143 of self-presentation established in many of today’s social networking sites similar to

Hochstein’s later manifestations of “Documented Life.” The user’s profile may, in large part, be a compendium of external hyperlinks with only brief textual explanations of each link.

Considering the extent of Hochstein’s website, the title “Documented Life” is perhaps more apropos than the term autobiography. It is neither a typical blog, nor is it an autobiography in the archetypal sense—it is an amalgam of both and more. “Documented

Life” is so dense and so multimodal in nature that viewers are now challenged in their efforts to determine what is Hochstein’s “material” and what has been created by another person. In “Documented Life,” the construction of the self becomes decidedly more communal, the text becomes increasingly ephemeral, and the historically privileged author becomes considerably less privileged. The reader’s role is much more reactive in determining what to make of the website’s author as they must interpret what the media choices of the author say about Hochstein. Therefore, the traditional autobiographical contract between the reader and the writer breaks down. As Judith Coullie notes in “Not

Quite Fiction: The Challenges of Poststructuralism to the Reading of Contemporary

Autobiography,” the relationship that exists between the writer and the reader has been driven historically by a “presumed” contract between both parties: “Autobiography usually expressly invokes a contractual agreement with the reader: the reader reads the references as true, and the text undertakes to refer to people, places and events which had material existence” (226). While “true” references do not necessarily infer that there is a pure mimetic correlation between real life and the written self, the idea of a contract with the reader intimates a dialogic creative process. However, this autobiographical contract

144 that draws upon Lejeune’s le pact autobiographique discussed at length in Chapter One also presumes the author will provide a narrative framework to give order to the events described in the autobiography. Yet “Documented Life,” in all of its incarnations, the textual narrative expository does not exist in a traditional sense.

Similar to many contemporary online autobiographies and autobiographical websites, “Documented Life” privileges photographic self-representation. Hochstein notes in his original, 2001 version of “Documented Life” that he will rely heavily on images to create his online autobiography; the indication is that text will be subordinate:

“Words are fine, but I'm interested in the images...to tell a visually meaningful story”

(Hochstein, “Other”). From 1959 to 2009, each picture in the link “An

Autodocumentary” can be clicked on to reveal more pictures from that year. He usually offers captions to clarify the place and time captured by the photograph, and he occasionally offers additional textual interpretation of the people and events pictured.

There is, however, no formal narrative exposition. Whereas Hall used pictures to augment his hypertext autobiography, Hochstein’s photographs dominate his self- presentation in effect creating an associative visual narrative. Accessing the hyperlink

“biophilia” or a hyperlinked thumbnail of his pictorial timeline in the center column of the “Documented Life” home page reveals a linear progression of photographs that moves horizontally from left to right in groups of seven. He assumes he will live to be 90, since his pictorial time line ends with that age. Years to come are indicated only by a question mark (?). All of the photos are hyperlinked and when a linked photo is engaged, it reveals several more photos from the selected year. Often, the lack of textual information surrounding the events and people in the pictures invites (demands?) the

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reader to interpret the images without guidance from a traditional textual narrative

framework present in most historical print autobiographies.

For example, a quick review of the pictorial link for 2006 reveals pictures of

Hochstein and his wife, Leora, on December 3, 2006 (see Figure 14: Leora and Miles

Hochstein, December 2006). There are no names identifying them (I recognized them

Figure 14: Leora and Miles Hochstein, December 2006 Source: http://documentedlife.com/log/

from other hyperlinks) and no captions to indicate why these pictures were taken. The

poses are informal and non-descript. Both appear to be drinking something. Besides this

rudimentary information and without analyzing the images through the lens of a theoretical framework, not much more can be deduced from these photos. Are they at

home? What time of day is it? Are they at breakfast? Drinking coffee? Why do their faces

appear to be sullen? Why did they take the photos? Who took the photos? Were the

photos taken specifically for the autodocumentary? If so, is it supposed to reveal

146 something to the viewer? Without more information, we cannot answer these questions.

The reader must make inferences, which Hochstein seems to encourage actively. And these inferences allow readers to create their own narrative explanations for the events and people they view.

Continuing further into the 2006 photo hyperlinks in the section now called

“biophilla,” Hochstein presents the reader with pictures of his entire “Portland Oregon nuclear family” (see Figure 15: Hochstein Family Pictures, 2006) and the information he divulges in the captions continues a vague pattern. Occasionally, he offers names or specific places, but rarely both. Of course, some names are excluded to protect the privacy of his family, i.e., his children and the children of his extended family and friends are never referred to by their given names or by their nicknames. Hochstein explains how his approach to providing information on his collected images has evolved since the original manifestation of “Documented Life” on a separate webpage:

Documented Life started back around 2001 as a photodocumentary of my

life, a little game to see if I could find one picture from each year of my

life. Then it became more biographical because I felt the pictures required

some kind of explanation. Now I no longer include much biographical

information here because, really, it’s not very interesting and I feel no

need to do so, and have not felt that need for a long time (emphasis

mine)…. However, I do like the idea of a life-long photographic record of

one life, and the one I've created may cover an unusually long time span as

these things go. Since I first published this site back in the early 2000s,

what I've done here has been done by many other people in many different

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Figure 14: Hochstein Family Pictures, 2006 Source: http://documentedlife.com/log/

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ways - stop action daily photo journals, life-casting, and much more…

(Hochstein)

Nevertheless, we learn most of our information about Hochstein if we follow a linear

chronological progression through the images. Hochstein seems to assume that his reader

will follow this pattern from beginning to end and thus not need the redundancy of

multiple captions. Yet, as he notes himself in “Critical Criteria for Reading Online Visual

Autobiography, Photographic Autobiography, Illustrated Life Stories and

Autodocumentaries,” lack of textual information is sometimes the point of the

autodocumentarian. Perhaps, Hochstein contends, images ring more truthful when they are not given arbitrary captions, but are viewed as part of a progressive “advance” of a life. He notes that good “site(s) convey the sweep of a person's life...the process of change over time….There ought to be SOME advantages to aging, and acquiring a history worth illustrating is surely one of them” (Hochstein). Web 2.0 makes Hochstein’s process of aging more organic and evolutionary as he can actually manipulate how the images advance in time and continue to update the site indefinitely.

In the main, Hochstein goes beyond simply challenging assumptions about autobiography by blurring genre boundaries and this includes his approach to the role

images should play when juxtaposed with textual elements (albeit minimal). He does not

distinguish among the myriad of tangible items that represent a life in the way many

historical autobiographers have by putting on a so-called “best face.” As Hochstein notes

himself: “I have tried to make a documentary film, dedicated to getting the facts right,

including the boring ones” (Hochstein). Of course, even in cataloguing “everything” one

still makes judgments. Along these lines, he understands profoundly that any

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representation of one’s self is bound to be presented with the age-old problems of truth—

even a representation based on images:

I have used photographs to create a kind of text. Although my purpose is

documentary (and I would derive no personal satisfaction from my

autodocumentary unless I believed in its factitudinal nature), nonetheless

the reader is left with a puzzle. Does the photograph, in the age of

Photoshop, deserve any privileged status as a representation of historical

reality? …perhaps it does, because the amount of effort needed to

misrepresent my own life would be vastly greater than any reasonable

person would want to bother with, and I believe myself to both be, and

seem to be, a reasonable person. But at the limits of the possible, and with

sufficient budget and determination, fictions can be created with images

too. Text is not the only way to create a fiction.

His statement indicates that he may not completely understand the possibilities of unintentional misrepresentation and the limited point of view of the narrator that can affect the construction of the self. Nevertheless, his self-reflection reminds us of similar questions about the nature of “truthful” self-representation that have historically troubled autobiographers all the way back to St. Augustine in Confessions.

As I noted in Chapter Three of this dissertation, George Landow applied key terms used by Roland Barthes, Michel Foucault, and Jacques Derrida to hypertext. In

Hypertext 2.0, he argued that these French theorists and Mikhail Bakhtin used rhetorical terms (i.e., link, network, interweaving, path, matrix, web, and interconnectedness, etc.) to convey a vision of the decentered text. This vision anticipated how these decentered

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texts would exist in a non-hierarchical system of relations similar to the current operating

mechanism of hypertextual systems (23-25). Sounding jubilant at the idea of what he

perceived to be the material manifestation of the decentered text, Landow remarked that

“hypertext creates an almost embarrassingly literal embodiment” of both Barthes’

writerly texts and Derrida’s decentered text (33-34). Hyperlinking would allow readers to

actively engage the text—to produce meaning, which Barthes associated with writerly

texts.97

Hochstein represents only a token sample of hundreds of thousands of personal

websites, but representative websites like “Documented Life” reveal how the

incorporation of Web 2.0 elements further establishes the potential for a literal dialogical

relationship between the author and the reader. The irony, perhaps, is that as the

technology (e.g., chat, email, message boards, et al.) that makes the dialogical

relationship more literal in nature is also the technology that offers increased media

options at the author’s disposal. These new tools can be used to reinforce the solipsistic

monological self in many ways, even as they deconstruct it. While the pictures, links etc.,

rupture the author’s voice with intrusions, they also reinforce the position of the

monological author by illustrating in depth the author’s private world. The vast array of

media and content at the author’s control serve to establish a more dynamic version of

self-presentation than can be found in print autobiography. And authors who post their

self-life writing online do not necessarily have to incorporate the interactive elements

inherent in hypertext (e.g., Zilpha Keatley-Snyder’s “Autobiography” [see Figure 6]).as

Hochstein’s example suggests, the audience receives a more thoroughly developed self- presentation (self-absorption?) of the author’s life than with text alone.

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Moreover, the template Hochstein creates in the most recent manifestation of his

website introduces the idea of media assemblage as an associative representation of a

self. Rather than relying on a narrative structure, Hochstein illustrates that hyperlinking to

one’s interests can reveal substantive characteristics of the author. Contrary to much of

the discourse concerning the non-linear nature of hypertext in general, the sequencing of these “autodocumented” lives, to use Hochstein’s term, are surprisingly linear. At first glance, these hypertext selves seem to be radically different from their print cousins. In fact, the tendency toward order seems prevalent. Categories are abundant, things move along chronologically and in general, the narrative progress (the forward movement of the story) is always apparent. This online “collage” approach that has become commonplace thanks to facebook and MySpace, allows the online autobiographer to establish a persona through his or her personal tastes, rather than relying only upon a narrative with carefully selected pictures.

Here we see Eakin’s notion that the process of self-discovery is not fixed and stable. Hochstein assumes that he will continue “writing” his autobiography as he ages.

By posting from his present age of 50 to his future age of 90 in 2049, Hochstein develops a familiar pattern to autobiography that is chronological and sequential. Whereas Hall proceeded chronologically, his use of coded HTML makes his narrative appear much less rigid in its system of organization. Text does not follow rigid borders, hyperlinks are pervasive, and “back buttons” are not immediately apparent. In all, Hall’s autobiography is much less schematic, its development takes shape organically as he adds new information. Hochstein depends upon the frames and templates to shape the visual appearance of his page and to draw clear boundaries between what is part of the

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“autodocumentary” and what isn’t.

Yet, if “autobiography is…a revelation of the present situation” and not a window to the past self, then perhaps a good way to reveal the present situation of the subject is to continually document one’s cultural interests in addition to including updated versions of one’s image (Pascal 11). To facilitate his switch from documenting personal images to documenting personal online habits, Hochstein makes a deliberate move away from a central focus on his catalog of photographs as his media consumptive habits (i.e., his

“likes”) are visually compartmentalized away from his autobiographical pictorial progression. The main website gradually develops a recognizable look that could easily be confused with any standard online news sources (e.g., www.pbs.org). It relies on RSS feeds, tag clouds and sound bite summary clips of information. The information is divided into columns and the main page scrolls downward at some length before it terminates. Hochstein’s website, in short, has evolved into a now familiar template in website design.

As of 2009, Hochstein is moving away from his autobiographical pictorial as the core of his personal webpage. Like Hall before him, he has embraced the multimodal possibilities of Web 2.0. And while Hall still maintains his original version of “autobio” as a nod to his past work in Web 1.0, his new work (multiplayer online games) is far more interactive and socially constructed than his online autobiography. Hochstein still updates a few token photos for his autodocumentary each year, but his site has evolved into a collage of his interests, neatly divided into their respective media and suggestive of the structures of social networking.

In some ways, however, to call these precursors to social networking sites by Hall

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and Hochstein “collage” in the print sense of the word is both limiting and inaccurate.

When readers skim through a collage in print, they view or read texts assembled from

many voices. But there is always the sense that the assemblage is controlled or shaped by a guiding vision of the assembler. In digital texts, that sense of authorial control is lost.

Once a link is engaged, the viewer has effectively left the author’s site free to wander possibly never returning to the author’s home site. They are literally not viewing the authors work. They have been transported to a new voice. In this sense, the boundary between the public and the private in websites like Hochstein’s “Documented Life” has been blurred.

Before blogs and social networking sites became commonplace, pioneers like

Hochstein established Web 2.0 templates for self-presentation. Hochstein’s mass accumulation of media and his desire for social engagement are benchmarks of popular social networking site like Facebook. Certainly, FB encourages media assemblage as representative of a self. The construction of a profile is an essential part of social networking. The imitation Hochstein sought is now systematized in a computer program owned and run by a for profit company. Hochstein acknowledges this fact himself:

Back when I created this site, I thought it would be fun to see if it would

somehow be connected to personalizing and socializing the web—living

online in some great world community. Since then Facebook [sic] and

others figured that problem out in a much deeper sense (emphasis mine),

and the universal human community on the internet [sic] is still emerging.

(Hochstein)

The focus on media consumption and downplay of reflective thought and narrative drive

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illustrate how “Documented Life” establishes a template that will later appear in emerging social networking sites and blogs. For example, when contemporary social networking sites encourage the users to elaborate in a personal “profile” on many aspects

of their lives, in practice, the user’s profile becomes secondary to the social engagement

facilitated by the “wall.” In the Epilogue that follows, I briefly touch upon how popular

social networking sites have adopted a web template that looks and functions in ways that

directly resemble “Documented Life.” I describe some the more interesting features of

websites such as facebook and conclude with some potential ramifications of online autobiography as it is manifested in social networking sites.

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AN EPILOGUE: COMMUNAL AUTOBIOGRAPHY? SOME BRIEF THOUGHTS ON

SELF PRESENTATION IN SOCIAL NETWORKING ENVIRONMENTS

If everyone was to tell their stories on the web, we would have an endless human

storybook, with alternating perspectives.

Justin Allyn Hall, “autobio”

Facebook users represent one of the biggest communities in the world — digital or

otherwise…. Please use this page as a place to share your unique stories. Facebook helps

you connect and share with the people in your life.

facebook Slogan

I link, therefore I am.

Katie Hafner

In “The Virtual Self: Self-Representation and Self-Knowledge on the Internet”

Eugene Gorny claims that online self presentation (autobiography) “offers the subject not

as an isolated individual, but a part of an intricate societal network” (Gorny). Yet,

autobiography as “an intricate social network” is far removed from the Greek origins of the term autobiography. Translated literally from Greek, autobiography means “self-life- writing” or auto (self) + bios (life) + graphe (writing).98 At the core of this translation

and definition is the notion of one person who writes to present an individual self. For

most of the last 400 years of Western history, the Enlightenment ideal of the individual

has been the center for establishing a framework that has driven our understanding of the

self as separate and distinct from the community. According to this framework, when the

autobiographer writes his/her life story, he/she does so divorced from the corruptive

influences of outside voices—he/she follows only the precepts of an isolated, internal

156 voice. Historically, print autobiography (as its name implies) has been considered a solitary, individual activity that produced a static, permanent product—a written print text that represented the sum of the author’s efforts to both catalogue his/her life and bring meaning to it through interpretation.

As described in Chapters Four and Five, however, web authors Hall and

Hochstein’s attempts to develop online autobiographies offered a merging of this

“solitary” activity with the communal nature of the Internet. With Hall, we witnessed the extensive use of hyperlinking to reified elements of the human subjects that were a part of his autobiography. These reified elements of others could be static artifacts such as a photograph or a public document, or they could be dynamic elements, e.g., a hypertext website created by someone other than the author. In some instances, Hall did indeed hyperlink to external websites hosted by subjects (e.g., past girlfriends) integral to his autobiography. These external hyperlinks challenged his control of the viewing habits of his reader—a situation he openly welcomed and encouraged. We also noted Hall’s reliance on multiple forms of media to tell his story. And we became acutely aware, through his latent exhibitionism and through his own words, of Hall’s need for social contact—for feedback and reciprocity, i.e., his desire to read and respond to other’s life stories. He considered his autobiography a success if others emulated his impulse to self- represent. Hall’s “autobio” illustrated the possibilities of a literal dialogic relationship between the author and the audience through online autobiography as demonstrated by the actual communication he received from visitors to his site and by the actions taken by many of those readers to create their own personal websites in reaction to Hall’s work.

With Hochstein, we became aware of a conscious movement away from written

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text as a device for self-representation. Photographic images became the primary means

of telling his life story, and the loss of a narrative exposition required the reader to infer

much of the detail of the autobiography from these images. More importantly, with

Hochstein we noted the evolution of the autobiographical website from a self-life story to

a personal database of media interests. Again, the visitor to “Documented Life” is left to

infer what the author’s collection of media reveals about the life of the author, creating a

more associative representation of a self than we witnessed with Hall. Additionally, we

noted that Hochstein created a web template that compartmentalizes his interests

according to media format. His systematic compartmentalization of media formats that

are presented as a way to record “a life lived online” are a clear nod to the Web 2.0 templates that later co-opt his website layout—social networking sites, including but not limited to, MySpace and facebook.

Genre Problems Revisited—Are Social Networking Sites “Really” Autobiography?

As their titles indicate, social networking sites such as MySpace and facebook

were conceived to allow the individual to establish a distinctive personal profile that is

interconnected to a larger community of profiles. This merging of the social with the

individual has created a phenomenon not previously available to autobiographers.

Though social networking sites are a relatively new phenomenon, they can be used to illustrate several emerging trends in autobiography. First, the “distance” between author and reader is collapsed in hyperspace. Because the reader now has the ability to comment specifically on content in a personal digital profile, to post personal messages on bulletin boards within the profile, to add or alter some content areas (e.g., video sharing, music

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uploads), and to contact the author directly via message (either private or “wall” posts),

chat room or email, barriers between writer and reader have been renegotiated, if not eliminated. Additionally, the reader or viewer of the author’s digital profile can uncover

details about the author through links to the author’s friends or previous comments by

other viewers. The author no longer has absolute control over how the material is

presented after the initial construction of the personal profile in the template. Secondly, social networking sites illustrate that online hypertext autobiography (or at least this particular offshoot) has moved to an explicitly dialogic construction where the author can

never be read without the mediating influences of a participatory audience. This does not

mean that these social-networking “autobiographies” have a broader audience or a more

engaged readership merely because, in theory, anyone with access can view their

websites. Instead, because the medium allows the viewer to become an author of sorts

(i.e., by choosing to access media links in random order or by clicking on links outside

the autobiography) the relationship between the reader and the author is now dynamic in

nature.

Moreover, as we witnessed in “Documented Life,” in facebook the personal

profile becomes an afterthought. The user engages the “news feed” (see Figure 16: Ron

Tulley’s facebook “home” (a.k.a., the “news feed”) (August 2009) as a public space. The news feed also dominates the user’s physical space. In fact, in social networking sites the news feed (a.k.a., “Home”) becomes the default page (the webpage which the program automatically opens after the user logs in). The personal profile is relegated to status as a button in a pull-down menu at the top of the default webpage. Ironically, “Home” is not the personal profile but rather the communal space. The “news feed” becomes an

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Figure 16: Ron Tulley’s facebook “home” (a.k.a., the “news feed”) (August 2009) Source: http://www.facebook.com/home.php?ref=home

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oxymoron—a sort of communal autobiography where auto becomes poly and the

continuous stream of communal information absorbs and subsumes the individual commentary.

Social-networking hypertext databases also defy many conventions of print autobiography outlined in Lejeune’s le pact autobiographique. For instance, the finite

“completion” of the written self through a progression of personal events that has a clear beginning and an end as can be witnessed in traditional print autobiography does not exist because a digital text has no “beginning” or “end”—it can be augmented continuously.

However, like the fragmented nature of the hypertext that websites like facebook use, a simple chronology of important events will not do. The coherent beginning, middle and end that Aristotle defined in Poetics, is somewhat askew in cyberspace. The apparent pattern in social networking is circular—there is no beginning, middle and end to the autobiography written in hypertext because while digital texts have entry points, they do not possess the fixed beginning or end points found in print. The author’s linear narrative is supplanted by a hypertext that catalogs and organizes according to media labels (e.g.,

“photos” “newfeeds”) rather than according to a chronological timeline. While the organizing principle of the narrative structure is not totally suppressed—date and time stamps still exist— the autobiography develops discursively and a narrative point of view comes about through the community’s linguistic selections versus authorial choices. For example, if John replies to Sid that he “likes” or “doesn’t like” his friends post, Sid may react in demonstrable ways. He may remove the post, change the post, respond back to

Sid, chat in real time with John, block John as a friend, or choose a myriad of other possibilities.

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Figure 17: Ron Tulley’s facebook “profile” (August 2009) Source: http://www.facebook.com/home.php?ref=profile

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Moreover, information, not necessarily specific personal context, is the modus operandi of social networking sites (see Figure 17: Ron Tulley’s facebook “profile”

[August 2009] for an example of information listing in a facebook profile]. As much information as possible is listed, and daily postings may reveal something more

“authentic” than the traditional narrative found in print in the sense that they do not rely on expository but rather on the vicissitudes of personal favorites and media habits. And some scholars contend that activities including playing games, posting pictures, online quizzes all disclose a more “real” version of a person than a contrived, polished narrative structure in which the author has carefully selected the details and events and left out much of what might be considered irrelevant, mundane or inappropriate. While the potential for fabrication always exits in the telling of one’s autobiography, media usage patterns “tell” a story about the website author that is easily verifiable. I argue that in many ways the personal activity that takes place in a social-networking site approximates the self-in-process and gets closer to the metaphor of the self Olney embraced.

But if everyone produces a digital “self” in a similar manner with a similar template and if they subsequently dismiss their personal profiles (much in the way

Hochstein is dismissing his) as only a gateway to social connectivity, what is the point of self-representation online? If social networks absorb and blend millions of personal life- narratives, are there substantive individual distinctions apart from the facebook application that most users employ, e.g., quizzes, “viral” videos, et al.? As posting

“borrowed” media replaces the narrative expository and images become more prominent than text in the telling of one’s life, McLuhan is, perhaps, the specter in the creation of these sites—the medium is the message.

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Figure 18: 314’s MySpace “profile” (August 2009) Source: http://www.myspace.com/314pkp

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Early online autobiographers like Hall and Hochstein sought out social interaction—they both openly declared reciprocity as one of their key motivating factors in producing their websites. They strove to encourage contact and imitation. Their sites incorporated opportunities for feedback. And they both understood the transformative power of the

Internet and specifically hypertext. Quite literally, to them, the Internet was designed to facilitate a communication—to create community. It is not a broadcast medium which relies upon hierarchical control. Social networking sites by their very name as well as their mission statements state openly that they serve as a social conduit. In theory, both the networking aspect of sites like facebook and the individual autobiographical profile may exist as separate entities—accessible through separate links. But though the two functions have not been completely merged, the “news feed” and the “wall” make it difficult to establish clear boundaries between the self and the other. In practice, a social networking profile becomes secondary to the wall, i.e., the infinite dialogue trumps the life story. The communal text of the news feed becomes the focus for the social networking participant.

Perhaps we must return again to ask the deceptively simple question that scholars of autobiography have struggled to answer: what is autobiography? In the present situation, we might also add an addendum to this question: what is autobiography in the new medium? To answer this new question, we must return to a loose interpretation of

Lejeune’s three basic aspects of the writer/reader agreement as outlined in Le pacte autobiographique, i.e., 1) a generally factual account of the subject’s life; 2) a linear chronological progression of time (the subject’s lifeline), and 3) a “story-structure” or narrative framework to give order to the events described by the author (13-16). I contend

165 that we will find that digital autobiography, as manifested in social networking sites, fulfills the autobiographical pact between the audience and the reader in all of these ways despite challenges to the form of the text.

First, social networking sites contain generally factual elements of the subject’s life. While the possibility of a false self-portrayal always exists, it is actually more difficult in many ways to lie online than it is in print. For instance, facebook checks the basic information (e.g., name, email address, student/alumni status, et al.) against the information in school databases and removes falsified posts. If I claim I am an alumnae from Case Western Reserve University, facebook can easily check the accuracy of this statement by cross-checking the veracity of this claim with the school’s records. Second, the chronological progression of time is now part of the template. While an autobiographer such as Rousseau may have had difficulty recollecting accurate time and place information, all entries for photos, links, messages, posting, etc., are now recorded with an automatic date and time stamp. The default function on social networking sites is set to allow for the most current information to be placed first; however, this default can also be adjusted to reverse this order to allow for authorial reflection upon these events and for the audience to read the events in chronological “order.”

Third, I contend the story structure is retained in a relative, associative way in contemporary social networking sites including facebook and MySpace. In fact, it could be argued that social networking sites approximate a more organic conception of the self as hyperlinks are associative and random, one’s autobiography is always constructed in conversation (internally or externally) with others, and that the unified “self” in any autobiography, as well as the narrative that creates it, is essentially a fiction. While social

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networking sites offer the writer an opportunity to include a traditional chronological narrative, their templates generally discourage this approach by supplanting the narrative with symbolic reified elements of others (e.g., commentary, videos, photos, audio comments, template backgrounds) and providing a template for downloading a personal database of artifacts. This database is composed of lists that inform the audience (e.g., I like these things, I do these activities, I know these people, I have this education, I look like this, et al.) and provide the audience with an opportunity to “create” a narrative of their own (see Figure 18: 314’s MySpace “profile” [August 2009] for evidence of a database of linked “lists”). The personal database acts to supplant the traditional narrative expository, yet it can also act to reinforce what a narrative exposition does to the reader if

the reader interprets what these links may mean. Online autobiographical acts exist in

social networking sites as personal databases—virtual spaces where templates encourage uploading and downloading of personal and external media files that an author posts to present an image of himself/herself. Out of these databases, a mosaic develops from the combination of disparate types of media. This mosaic communicates a representation of the subject that is in many ways beyond the control of the author.

The third characteristic outlined in the autobiographical pact (narrative structure) is the most problematic as the web templates found in digital environments challenge traditional definitions of narrative structure in print. If we rely upon Wittgenstein’s

“family resemblances,” however, to broaden the scope of these three delimiting

characteristics, we find that the multimodal and interactive nature of hypertext has both

sustained the historical features of self-presentation found in print autobiography. Yet,

the social influences that were always intrinsic to print self-representation have become

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conspicuously visible through the possibilities of hypertext. Through a process of

autobiographical creation that is inherently social in nature and deeply influenced by the outside voices (e.g., media not created by the author, commentary from viewers, et al.), an autobiographical subject emerges as an amalgam of internal and external voices. In short, social-networking websites have merged a historically individual undertaking

(autobiography) with a communal environment (interconnected “personal” profiles)

creating the opportunity for a radical transformation of the presented self.

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NOTES

1 Cf. Samuel Ishmael Raditlhalo’s Who Am I?: The Construction of Identity in Twentieth- century South African Autobiographical Writings in English (2003).

2 Wu and Ch’i ling wrote their “autobiographies” in the third person.

3 Spengemann is aware of this problem as well when he notes, “To call any modernist work ‘autobiographical’ is merely to utter a tautology” (168).

4 According to the “Poetry International Web” website, praise poetry is defined as “poetry that developed as a way of preserving the history of a clan by narrating how it was founded and what its outstanding achievements were. The praises centered on the leader of the clan. As the clans grew into tribes, it was the leader of the tribe who became prominent and hence his praises were sung” (par. 2). Cf. .

5 In Zarathustra’s Sisters: Women’s Autobiography and the Shaping of Cultural History (2003), Susan Ingram examines the works of six prominent historical women: Lou Andreas-Salome’, Simone de Beavoir, Maitreyi Devi, Asja Lacis, Nadezha Mandel’shtam, and Romola Nijinsky. Several of these women wrote under pseudonyms (Simone du Beavoir) and a few (Nadezhda Mandel’shtam and Romola Nijinsky) reveals their own lives through writings about their famous husbands (the Russian poet, Osip and the ballet dancer, Nijinsky)

6 Lang was highly critical of the nebulous definitions of autobiography proffered by Olney and Spengeman. She was especially critical of the metaphor of the self theory asserted by Olney.

7 Dickens notes in the preface to David Copperfield: “It will be easily believed that I am a fond parent to every child of my fancy, and that no one can ever love that family as dearly as I love them. But, like many fond parents, I have in my heart of hearts a favourite child. And his name is David Copperfield” (2).

8 Interestingly, the first edition of Leaves of Grass, in which Song of Myself was published, included no titles for any of the twelve poems included. Song of Myself was later mistakenly titled based upon the first line in the poem and its subsequent content (Cowley x).

9 To test this theory, I went to the websites of the three largest book sellers (Borders , Barnes and Nobles , and Amazon ) on 10/01/2008.

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10 In Metaphors of Self: The Meaning of Autobiography, James Olney notes a similar conundrum: “[T]he subject of autobiography produces more questions than answers, more doubts by far (even of its existence) than certainties” (5).

11 From Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, Scene II, Act ii, Lines 43-44.

12 From the poem, "The Blindmen and the Elephant," written by John Godfrey Saxe. In this poem, six blind men feel only one part of an elephant and come to argue that it is similar to a wall, a spear, a snake, a tree, a fan, and a rope, respectively. In other words, each man comes to a completely different conclusion of what an elephant is like.

13 Cf. Spengemann’s The Forms of Autobiography: Episodes in the History of a Literary Genre (1980).

14 According to the 2009 New York Times Almanac, MySpace claimed 73 million users in 2008 and Facebook claimed 41.4 million users in 2008 making them the two most popular social networking websites in the United States.

15 Linda Warley alludes to this point in “Reading the Autobiographical in Personal Home Pages”: “[I]t is clear that autobiography theory must stretch if it is to address digital life writing” (Warley 32).

16 Cf. Rene Descartes’ Discourse on the Method (1637) and Meditations on the First Philosophy: In Which the Existence of God and the Distinction between Mind and Body are Demonstrated (1642).

17 Known simply as Confessions.

18 Rousseau names his autobiography, The Confessions of Jean-Jacques Rousseau to distance himself from The Confessions of St. Augustine.

19 Cf. Mary Helen Washington’s Invented Lives: Narratives of Black Women 1860-1960 (1987).

20 See Pascal. Design and Truth in Autobiography (21), Olney, Metaphors of Self: The Meaning of Autobiography (44-45) and Spengemann, The Forms of Autobiography: Episodes in the History of a Literary Genre (50-74).

21 There is a bit of disagreement as to why Augustine includes these last three chapters. Some maintain that the first chapters (I-IX) address Augustine’s quest for truth and the last three chapters (XI-XIII) focus on his thoughts upon truth’s meaning. Others (see Pierre Courcelle’s Recherches sur les Confessions de Saint Augustin) maintain that Augustine planned to write a complete exposition of the texts in the Bible, but he found this plan to be to exhaustive and gave it up after the first chapter of Genesis.

22 The original translation is “Thou,” but was changed to you.

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23 To make the importance of this event clear to the reader, he likens his situation to St. Antony’s conversion upon hearing Matthew 19:21--St. Antony is immediately convinced to give up his worldly career and devote himself to God.

24 In keeping with the focus of this essay on the creation of the symbolic self, I have chosen to avoid delving too deeply into the complex belief system of the Manichees, though they are a motivating factor for Augustine. In order to properly discuss the implication of the Manichees on Augustine’s thought, it would be necessary to consider the historical context of Confessions. Because Western thought has long been influenced by Christian ideology, it is difficult from a contemporary mindset to imagine a world where Christianity was simply one of many fledgling religions competing for dominance. Augustine spends the greater part of Books III, V, VI, and VII discussing how he accepted, challenged and then broke with the Manichean doctrine. His impetus to convince his readers of the one true Christian faith is manifest in his thoughts on the Manichees.

25 Augustine attempts to address what he knows are gaps in his life story: “I shall therefore confess both what I know of myself and what I do not know” (211).

26 Cf. Saul Padover, Confessions and Self-Portraits: 4600 Years of Autobiography, Karl Weintraub’s The Value of the Individual: Self and Circumstance in Autobiography (1978), and William Spengemann’s The Forms of Autobiography (1980) among others.

27 One could, perhaps, argue that all autobiographies are indeed “confessional” in nature as they all reveal a personal narrative to their audience. Though I do not believe the distinction between confessional autobiographies and autobiographies to be simply a semantic one, I would assert that the confessional autobiography is particularly well- suited to exposing the dialogic ruptures in the text.

28 Additionally, in his translation of Confessions (1992), James O'Donnell concludes “Few proponents of Christian humility have obtruded themselves on the attention of their public with the insistence (to say nothing of the effectiveness) that marks this work. For a man who felt acutely the pressure of others’ eyes and thoughts, Augustine was often unable to refrain from calling attention to himself” (1: xii). Volney Gay's “Augustine: The Reader as Selfobject” (1986) notes, “Confessions was Augustine's solution to his culture's denunciation of narcissistic needs…(u)niversal needs to feel esteemed and loved by a wholly good object re-emerged in his theology and in his grand, public confessions…. His would be a confession to God and to humans at the same time. It would gain him God's forgiveness and so union with Him, and an audience of readers who would mirror back to him their esteem” (65).

29 Cf. Peter France’s Rousseau, Confessions (1986), Jean Starobinski’s Jean-Jacques Rousseau: Transparency and Obstruction (1988), Elizabeth De Mijolla’s

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Autobiographical Quests: Augustine, Montaigne, Rousseau, and Wordsworth (1994) among others.

30 I am thinking specifically of two of Rousseau’s works: Discourse on the Origin and Basis of Inequality Among Men (1754) and Emile (1762). In Discourse… he chastises the civilized, “social man” for thinking himself above the savage: “In reality, the difference is, that the savage lives within himself while social man lives outside himself and can only live in the opinion of others, so that he seems to receive the feeling of his own existence only from the judgement [sic] of others concerning him. It is not to my present purpose to insist on the indifference to good and evil which arises from this disposition, in spite of our many fine works on morality, or to show how, everything being reduced to appearances, there is but art and mummery in even honour [sic], friendship, virtue, and often vice itself, of which we at length learn the secret of boasting; to show, in short, how abject we are, and never daring to ask ourselves in the midst of so much philosophy, benevolence, politeness, and of such sublime codes of morality, we have nothing to show for ourselves but a frivolous and deceitful appearance, honour [sic] without virtue, reason without wisdom, and pleasure without happiness” (237). In Emile, we need look no further than his opening lines: “Everything is good as it leaves the hands of the Author of things; everything degenerates in the hands of man” (3).

31 It seems unlikely that anyone might think otherwise since Stein even notes this point herself at the end of the text: “About six weeks ago Gertrude Stein said, it does not look to me as if you were ever going to write that autobiography. You know what I am going to do. I am going to write it for you…And she has and this is it” (252).

32 Cf. Janet Hobhouse, Everybody Who Was Anybody (1975) and Linda Simon, ed. Gertrude Stein: A Composite Portrait (1974).

33 To some degree, Stein is being facetious when she says this. And, to some extent, she takes a “tongue-in-cheek” approach to the act of writing an autobiography—in many ways this is simply a literary exercise for her. However, as is apparent in the memoirs of others who visited her during her Paris years, her personality clearly shows through any attempt to “coyly disguise…through the foil of Miss Toklas” (Simon, Gertrude Stein: A Composite Portrait 65).

34 Cf., Linda Simon., ed. Gertrude Stein: A Composite Portrait. (1974).

35 Hemingway writes in A Moveable Feast (his own “autobiography”), “She had such a personality that when she wished to win anyone over to her side she would not be resisted, and critics who met her and saw her pictures took on trust writing of hers that they could not understand because of their enthusiasm for her as a person... a more conscientious and less lazy writer would have put much of her work in the waste basket” (as qtd. in Simon, Gertrude Stein Remembered 83).

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36 Cf., Linda Simon., ed. Gertrude Stein Remembered. (1994); includes a collection of memoirs by twenty people. Among the memoirists are novelists Sherwood Anderson and Thornton Wilder, bookseller Sylvia Beach, Russian painter Pavel Tchelitchew, journalists T. S. Matthews, Therese Bonney, and Eric Sevareid, and photographers Carl Van Vechten and Cecil Beaton.

37 Notably, Stein’s “truth” is confirmed by her contemporaries. Most of the memoirists included in Linda Simon’s Gertrude Stein Remembered (1994) note several consistencies—she was a struggling writer who longed for fame, she was a friend if you sang her praises and incorrigible if you contradicted her, and she wanted to be part of “the story” as she said in The Autobiography…, “She always liked knowing a lot of people and being mixed up in a lot of stories...” (81).

38 Cf. Chapter One of this dissertation for more explicit detail on Watts.

39 Cf. Walter Ong’s Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word (1982).

40 Cf. Kathleen Blake Yancey’s “Made Not Only in Words: Composition in a New Key” CCC 56.2, 2004: 297-328.

41 According to Bush, the article was written in 1936 but kept in his desk drawer until he submitted it to the Atlantic Monthly in 1945.

42 The Internet is a media conduit for hypertext and hypermedia. It should not to be conflated with the term hypertext.

43 Though Nelson published Literary Machines in 1981, he was developing and writing about hypertext in the late 1950s and early 1960s. See footnote 4 for more detail.

44 It is important to note that Nelson has since abandoned the term (hypertext) he created. On his homepage, “Ted Nelson's home page” he notes, “In 1960 I had a vision of a world-wide system of electronic publishing, anarchic and populist, where anyone could publish anything and anyone could read it. (So far, sounds like the web.) But my approach is about literary depth—including side-by-side intercomparison, annotation, and a unique copyright proposal. I now call this “deep electronic literature” instead of “hypertext,” since people now think hypertext means the web” (Nelson). Last accessed 2/20/2009.

45 I define these terms (i.e., blogs, wikis, RSS feeds, and social-networking sites) in the section titled “Asynchronous and Synchronous Communication” in Chapter 3.

46 Landow has updated this version with the release of Hypertext 3.0: Critical Theory and New Media in an Era of Globalization (2006). This third edition of the text addresses changes brought about by the developments characterized by Web 2.0.

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47 In Of Grammatology and in “Structure, Sign and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences” among other texts, Derrida defined some of the basic tenets of deconstruction including the de-centered text. He contended that a centered text, a text in which the logocentric writer guides the reader in a linear fashion is contradictory and false: “The concept of centered structure – although it represents coherence itself – is contradictorily coherent. And as always coherence in contradiction expresses the force of a desire” (“Structure, Sign and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences” 171). Contrarily, a de-centered text, like hypertext, keeps shifting its center as the reader pursues various links and trains of thought.

48 Landow notes that he uses the terms hypertext and hypermedia interchangeably.

49 Cf. John Perry Barlow’s “The Economy of Ideas: Selling Wine without Bottles on the Global Net” (1995), Howard Rheingold’s The Virtual Community (1995), and Richard Lanham’s The Electronic Word (1993).

50 When links connect to an uploaded media form such as a PDF, the media file often opens up in a separate window thereby creating, in effect, a de facto form of a single- directional link.

51 HTML stands for HyperText Markup Language. It is the primary computer language used in the design of webpages. I discuss HTML in detail in Chapter Four.

52 Asynchronous forms of communication including email are typically found in “contact” buttons on most websites. Synchronous forms of communication including instant messenger (IM) are commonly used in commercial operations (.com or .net) which require convenient customer service options.

53 Wikis, though not often employed in autobiographical webpages, employ wiki software to allow for the easy creation and editing of any number of interlinked webpages. They employ “WYSIWYG” (What You See Is What You Get) text editors within the web browser. Wiki websites are more commonly used to create collaborative websites that allow for the free exchange of ideas.

54 Skype is a communication service company that provides a software application (also called Skype) that allows users to make voice calls over the Internet. It includes options for video streaming which enables both parties to see each other via webcam as they converse.

55 Chat classrooms differ from standard chat rooms in noticeable ways. Class chat rooms typically have a moderator or instructor who controls various technological features of the setting including access.

56 When we write in hypertext, we undergo a complex, invisible process. When we type hypertext on a computer, we use a keyboard which sends signals to a word processing

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program or web authoring program, which in turn uses its source code to send electronic signals to a motherboard or central processing unit (CPU). The CPU then decodes the source code into binary language (a series of 1s and 0s); the CPU interprets binary language as yes and no responses to questions in the word-processing program. Then, binary is turned back into source code, which represents what we know as letters on a screen. Text is actually encoded HTML which in turn is layered over the binary code. All of these layers take place in a nanosecond.

57 Wiki-sites would presumably have links to the full-text version of St. Augustine’s Confessions.

58 Search function should not be confused with commercial search engines like Google which are solely external programs. Many websites use commercial search engines for external searches and provide convenient links to such sites on their homepages.

59 For a more in-depth discussion of how our modern society came to think of technology as a concept referring to the tools of progress divorced from social ramifications and impacts, see Ronald Tulley’s “Is There Techne in My Logos? On the Origins and Evolution of the Ideographic Term—Technology,” The International Journal of Technology, Knowledge and Society, 4:1, 2008, 93-104.

60 “Internal” means that the dictionary is hosted by the CCEL not an external website.

61 I discuss commercial influences upon online autobiography beginning in Chapter Five. Advertisements have become a “feature” of hypertext.

62 I discuss issues of financing websites beginning in Chapter Five.

63 Choice of format (PDF, Plain Text, et. al) is another feature of hypertext. I do not include it as one of my five significant features of hypertext since choosing a version of the text that can be read in an offline environment eliminates all other features of the hypertext. A live version is required to employ the properties of a hypertext.

64 The Latin Vulgate version of the bible includes the so-called “deuterocanonical books” which are not recognized as biblical texts by Protestants. These seven books are Tobit, Judith, 1 Maccabees, 2 Maccabees, Wisdom, Sirach, and Baruch.

65 Of course the reader could have read this passage in print before reading the writing that preceded it, but this unlikely. Unless the reader randomly opened this page or accessed an index for a specific section, a typical reader would read from page 1 onward.

66 Cf. Jerome Hamilton Buckley’s The Turning Key: Autobiography and the Subjective Impulse Since 1800. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1984.

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67 The “World Wide Web” is a term that is often confused both with hypertext (see Nelson) and with the term “Internet.” The World Wide Web was created by Tim Berners- Lee in 1992. It is designed to be a service that allows a user to view a webpage that runs on the Internet. The Internet is a greater global communication conduit for data upon which the World Wide Web relies. The World Wide Web can be recognized by the designation “www” before Uniform Resource Locators (URLs) more commonly known as web addresses.

68 Cf. “Internet Access and Usage and Online Service Usage” section of The Statistical Abstract of the United States (2007). By 2000, nearly 113 million American adults (age 18 and up) had access to the Internet at home or work. The 113 million who had access comprised approximately 57 percent of the adult American population. When those under the age of eighteen are factored in, the number climbs to over 65 percent. Moreover, according to the methodology used by The Statistical Abstract of the United States, these numbers do not account for less formal Internet access points, i.e., libraries, universities, etc.

69 For a definition of born digital, see Chapter Three, p. 90.

70 The phrase “personal homepages” is used interchangeably in popular culture with the terms homesite, homepage, personal webpage, and personal website when referring to online autobiography, hypertext autobiography, and digital autobiography. While having multiple terms may present problems of referentiality, these terms refer to the autobiographical texts in online environments.

71 Certainly, this question is still problematic, but as Susanna Egan notes in Mirror Talk: Genres of Crisis in Contemporary Autobiography (1999), it is a topic that has largely “been theorized out of existence” along with the idea of the ontological self (9). I address this question specifically in Chapter One.

72 In addition to Culler, for more information on the concept of intertextuality see also Julia Kristeva’s Desire in Language: A Semiotic Approach to Literature and Art (1980) and Gunhild Agger’s Intertextuality Revisited: Dialogues and Negotiations in Media Studies (1999). For a critique of intertextuality, see William Irwin’s “Against Intertextuality” (2004).

73 According to Justin Allyn Hall, Passively Multiplayer Online Gaming or PMOG “is a system for turning user data into ongoing play. Using computer and mobile phone surveillance, a user and their unique history. These resulting avatars can be viewed online, and they interact with other avatars online. Examples of data: web sites visited, email addresses, chat handles, contents of email or messaging, contents of word processed documents, digital images, digital video, video game moves.”

74 It is important to note that Hall’s proficiency with HTML (the computer language used for basic web authoring) is essential to the development of his website. Prior to Web 2.0

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and so called “WYSIWYG” (What You See Is What You Get) programs, a web author would have to understand HTML thoroughly to create a dynamic website like Hall’s.

75 The screen capture used on page 6 is a truncated version of the homepage “Justin's Links from the Underground—autobio.” See for the complete hypertext version.

76 For an in-depth discussion of these concepts, see Chapter Three.

77 According to the Twitter website, “Twitter is a service for friends, family, and co– workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?” Twitter can be activated through any device including computers and most mobile technologies. Twitter 1 March 2009. 20 March 2009. .

78 HTML stands for HyperText Markup Language. It is the primary language used in the design of webpages. In the early days of the web, “coding” in HTML was the only way to create a website. Today, sophisticated computer programs including but not limited to Dreamweaver allow the author of a website to avoid having to use HTML code to create design elements and text by embedded HTML in a template. However, educated users of programs like Dreamweaver may still see the code “behind” the template, and if they know HTML, they may revise the code “by hand.” UNIX is a computer operating system originally developed in 1969 by a group of AT&T employees at Bell Labs. In short, HTML and UNIX are known as source codes. Source code makes the software function; it is the “invisible” layer of instructions underneath what the user sees.

79 The hyperlink “Gramma” is no longer active as of 10/15/2007.

80 The reader may recognize these words as an amalgam of two literary works. The first two lines are from Hamlet, Act 5, Scene 2, and the last line is from Stanza 9 of Thomas Gray’s “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard.” Hall points this out himself in a separate hyperlink.

81 Cf. Pirolli, Peter and Stuart K. Card. “Information Foraging.” Psychological Review 106.4 (1999): 643-67.

82 Cf. Nielsen, Jakob. “Information Foraging: Why Google Makes People Leave Your Site Faster.” Alertbox 30 June 2003. 20 March 2009. .

83 Mumia Abu-Jamal is a former Black Panther Party activist from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, who was convicted for the murder of police officer Daniel Faulkner in 1981. While sentenced to death for murder, he is currently serving an undefined sentence at the Pennsylvania State Correctional Institution near Waynesburg, Pennsylvania. His

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death sentence was quashed in December 2001 by a judge of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.

84 In 2009 alone, three major historic urban newspapers have discontinued operations: Seattle Post-Intelligencer; Rocky Mountain New; Ann Arbor News. The Tribune Company, which owns the Los Angeles Times and the Chicago Tribune, is in bankruptcy. For more on the ongoing problem of print newspaper solvency, see also “The 10 Most Endangered Newspapers in America” Time Magazine, 09 March 2009 .

85 As of July 2009.

86 Originally published in French and translated into English (en francais, Roland Barthes par Roland Barthes).

87 For more on the historical genre conventions, see Chapter One.

88 See Chapter Three for a discussion of Web 2.0.

89 Hochstein’s welcome letter does not appear in the 2009 version of “Documented Life” (as of July 2009).

90 Of course, Hall does do this today on many of his websites.

91 It should be noted, however, that he never states this plainly in any of his versions of personal website.

92 Thumbnails are small graphical representations of larger images. A thumbnail can represent a picture, a graphic, or even a website. Thumbnails are used to maximize screen space while maintaining a representation of an original image.

93 Cf. Marshal McLuhan, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (1964), The Medium is the Massage: An Inventory of Effects (1967), and Verbi-Voco-Visual Explorations (1964); Noam Chomsky, a number of works, but particularly, Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media (1988) and Media Control: The Spectacular Achievements of Propaganda (1997); Lev Manovich, The Language of New Media (2001).

94 Cf. Alan Trachtenberg, Reading American Photographs: Images as History, Mathew Brady to Walker Evans (1989) and Visual Culture: Images and Interpretations (1994) Eds., Norman Bryson, Michael Ann Holly, Keith Moxey and James Elkins “Art History and Images That Are Not Art” (1995).

95 Cf. Illuminations (1969) Ed. Hannah Arendt and “A Short History of Photography” in Classical Essays on Photography (1980) Ed. Alan Trachtenberg. Both works were published posthumously.

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96 Cf. Vladimir Nabakov’s Speak Memory: An Autobiography Revisited (1947).

97 Cf. “The Death of an Author” (1967).

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APPENDIX A—EMAIL CORRESPONDENCE WITH JUSTIN ALLYN HALL

Hi Ronald! Here is your original email, and some replies in-line:

> On Feb 7, 2009, at 08:00, Ronald J. Tulley wrote:

> Hi Justin: > > Before I begin let me apologize both for the length of my email and > the impromptu contact. Judging by all that I have read from your > various postings, you seem like a person who would encourage this, > so mea culpa if I am wrong in this presumption. If I am right, > please indulge me. > > My name is Ron Tulley. I am an English professor at a medium-sized > private school in the Midwest (see profiles here > > and here > if you're interested--NOTE: my profile is very dated). I am in the > final stages of writing my dissertation at Case Western Reserve > University on the evolution of autobiography. My dissertation > examines the ways that autobiography has been influenced by the > multimodal realm of the Internet. Specifically, I trace online > (digital) autobiography from its infancy, i.e., from early “cyber- > pioneers” including you--Justin Allyn Hall (“autobio”) and Miles > Hochstein (“Documented Life: An Autodocumentary”) to the present day > proliferation of social networking sites (e.g., Facebook, MySpace, > Bibo, et al.). I am particularly interested in the ways digital > self-life writing approximates many conventional aspects of > autobiography. Principally, I am concerned with how the > digital autobiography reproduces the archetypal characteristics of > narrative drive, the inclusion of verifiable events in the subject’s > life, a strong tendency towards a linear chronology, and the finite > limits of what can be included within the printed text.

> Without all the scholarly legerdemain, my basic contention is that > hypertext autobiography mimics the “self-in-process” that scholars of > autobiography have claimed cannot be accurately recorded in print.

I like your line of thinking!

> Now that you know what I am doing, I was wondering if you would be > willing to answer a few quick questions for me? > > Did you actively incorporate feedback from outside parties into your

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> revisions of “autobio”?

Yes. Some of the most memorable feedback was about boundary transgression - "please remove X story about me from your web site" - I believe I have always ultimately complied (even if it took me a little while). So my autobiography has been redacted by outside parties.

I used to carry around a paper journal, and I would hand it to other people and suggest they write something somewhere. In the case of the web, I encouraged other people to write their own web pages, and then I would link to their web page from my own. So that was a sort of ready dialog - "meet me online, then meet someone else over here" - otherwise, managing edits for other people who had pages on my page was crazy to imagine, especially as I incorporated a wide range of relationships in my writing.

For a while I had comments on my daily postings. That definitely provoked responses some times, and also other future blog entries. At one point some of the folks commenting on my blog proposed that I had been faking some of the contents. So I wrote two posts in the third person, like I was reporting on my life - that was a direct response to their allegations of falsehood. http://www.links.net/daze/04/05/11/web_site_founder_flees_mounting_scandal.html http://www.links.net/daze/04/05/17/linksnet_backlash_takes_toll.html

> Did you notify them of such changes if you did or did you assume > that they would simply note the revisions w/o your help? if someone requested a redaction, I definitely confirmed that. if someone said "You never write about X" and I later wrote about X, I might mention them. If there was someone I profiled or interviewed or felt a strong passion for the writing I'd done in response to our conversation or something they shared with me, I might tell them.

> Have you switched your “web-host” over the years or has the primary > URL always been the same?

I started off at http://raptor.sccs.swarthmore.edu/jahall/ then moved to http://links.net/ in the summer of 1994 and haven't looked back. justin.org points to the same site.

I've had four web hosts in the last 15 years - I can list them if you're interested.

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> Did you get permission (legal or other) from the parties you posted > online?

Increasingly, until the burden became too great and I stopped writing about other people and then I didn't have much to write about.

> Did certain people contact you to take their information off of your > site?

Absolutely. I get a few requests a year. I guess that's to be expected with thousands of information scraps posted over eleven years or so.

> Were you conscious of an evolving “self-in-process” that you were > creating online as juxtaposed to a fixed-print version of your > autobiography? If you had any knowledge of the theories of Derrida, > Bakhtin, Barthes, et al., at the time you were writing "autobio" > that would be nice to know too, but not as important.

I'm not sure I understand "self-in-process" as you mean it here - juxtaposed? I'd been in psychotherapy for many years in grade school. So I think I learned to talk about myself, and process my thoughts there. I had written autobiographical short stories.

When I saw the structure of the web, linked pages, I thought it made a ton of sense as a place to build a networked biography. It was really the file structure that killed it - I started before databases and I tried to hand order a massive heirarchy of life taxonomy. Even with a database you need some categories. Life fortunately defies categorization. So everyone ends up using time as the default organizing principle. For a few brief years I was excited to write non-linear non-chronological memories.

In college I took a class on Proust. His wandering memoir style seemed like a nice match for non-linear web linked life telling. I think I read some of the post-structuralists, cultural studies folks, postmodern literary theory. The self as a pastiche, a palimpcest - layers of information, diverse viewpoints, dissolving the self into a multitude of identity pieces that are constantly recontextualized according to relationships of power. a lot of people around me were looking at the world this way. I remember having some debates with people about the act of writing about someone as an act of claiming them for your story. I always said that I taught people to tell their stories online so they could claim their own story and extend the

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overall range of voices online.

So yeah I was exposed to some theory, and I actively sought some out in classes. But I had to hold my own sometimes, because it seemed like if you absorbed enough of those ideas it would be very hard to author yourself with much conviction.

> Will you continue to maintain (host) the original site for the > foreseeable future?

Sure yeah although it's been having technical difficulties. I like having a home on the web that shows me and my work and thoughts, etc. I'm so busy making something new (a game incorporated with online life called The Nethernet http://thenethernet.com/ ) - I don't have a professional life anchored in my individuality. I have a professional life anchored in group identity - a CEO of a small business, and a husband to my wife and co-founder. So I have a lot of focus, I'm not writing my identity in order to find out who I am. It means my web site has gotten more boring!

> Would you ever consider revamping the original site and > incorporating into a new site of your creation (i.e., not a pre- > packaged template, blog, or social-networking type site)?

When I was 19 I thought I'd write long essays or free verse poems about my life constantly online forever until I died. Since I abandoned those plans, I have been open minded about what I might ever do with what is on my links.net.

> You obviously were ahead of your time and continue to be in terms of > your knowledge and understanding of the potential of the Internet. > Your work inspires me, Justin. It has been integral to my research > for the last two years. I hope that you can answer my questions in > the spirit they're intended and offer me new perspectives I haven’t > yet considered.

Thank you Ron - I appreciate your questions and patience. I hope my answers here help your work some!

Cheers, Justin

> Best, > Ron >

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> Ronald J. Tulley > Director of Technical Communication > Assistant Professor of English > The University of Findlay > 1000 N. Main Street > Findlay, Ohio 45840 > (419) 434-4608

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APPENDIX B—EMAIL CORRESPONDENCE WITH MILES HOCHSTEIN

Miles Hochstein wrote:

Ronald, Happy to try to respond. See below.

Ronald J. Tulley wrote:

>Hi Miles: Before I begin let me apologize both for the length of my email and the >impromptu contact. Judging by all that I have read from your various postings, you >seem like a person who would encourage this, so mea culpa if I am wrong in this >presumption. If I am right, please indulge me. My name is Ron Tulley. I am an English >professor at a medium sized private school in the Midwest (see profiles here > and here > if you're interested--NOTE: >my profile is very dated). I am in the final stages (I will defend this semester) of writing >my dissertation at Case Western Reserve University on the evolution of autobiography. >My dissertation examines the ways that autobiography has been influenced by the >multimodal realm of the Internet. Specifically, I trace online (digital) autobiography >from its infancy, i.e., from early “cyber-pioneers” including Justin Allyn Hall >(“autobio”) and (you) Miles Hochstein (“Documented Life: An Autodocumentary”) to >the present day proliferation of social networking sites (e.g., facebook, MySpace, Bibo, >et al.).

>I am particularly interested in the ways digital self-life writing approximates many >conventional aspects of autobiography. Principally, I am concerned with how the digital >autobiography reproduces the archetypal characteristics of narrative drive, the inclusion >of verifiable events in the subject’s life, a strong tendency towards a linear chronology, >and the finite limits of what can be included within the printed text.

I'm an historian and empiricist at heart, so I don't know how to escape the linear nature of time!

One thing that I think I tried to avoid was any implicit argument that my life was "leading up to" something, or headed to a destination. Not sure exactly what you mean by narrative drive, but I certainly didn't feel as if I had one. Nor do I feel that today.

>Without all the scholarly ledgerdemain, my basic contention is that hypertext >autobiography mimics the “self-in-process” that scholars of autobiography have claimed >cannot be accurately recorded in print. Now that you know what I am doing, I was >wondering if you would be willing to answer a few quick questions for me. Did you >actively incorporate feedback from outside parties into your revisions of “Documented >Life”?

I sought no feedback. My wife and I talked about the implications of going public in 2001 and 2002. It was relatively rare at that time. I was a little scared about it, but I

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thought it would be fun.

>Did you notify them of such changes if you did or did you assume that they would >simply note the revisions w/o your help?

As I have revised the site I have never notified anyone. Who, after all, would care? I've always (or at least for a long time) been aware of google cache and "the way back machine" so I know that earlier versions are out there, which I consider to be somewhat unfortunate, because in some areas the things that I want to say have changed, and there is no way to "unsay" something on the internet, but that's life. I figure that for most readers, they will, if they bother to take the time at all, see the current version, so I sometimes change the site to reflect my preferred rendering of reality.

>Part of your inspiration according to your site was to encourage others to create their >own life stories online. Have others notified you that you inspired them to write their >own story? Have you developed an online "community" of sorts that was (is) initiated >by your site?

Yes, I did say that didn't I? Over the years (not in recent years, really) people did write me and some did say they were inspired by my site, particularly at the time it was "Yahoo Site of the Day". Other online autobiographers sent me links to their own efforts. Maybe they were inspired by me, or maybe they found me after they started their efforts - I don't know. For a while I maintained the "otherpeople.htm" page. It is still there... but not linked. That was in the period that I was researching most heavily other people doing what I was doing. After a while it got old and I lost interest.

The idea of "online community" was an idealistic thought... a passing thought. I didn't know what the internet was in 2001. Did anyone? Facebook and places like that begin to look like community. My site with static pages is laughable in that context - it has not created community, and obviously could not create community. Now that we have real community sites, that seems very clear. I don't think I knew how putting my story online would matter in 2001 or 2002. It was just an adventure. A way to shout out to the world... I'm here and WE are here on planet earth. Throw it out there and see what happens. Maybe lots of folks will do it. Maybe we'll all email each other. Maybe we'll discover that we are living right next door to each other. Who knows? I didn't know. The people who were developing interactive web 2.0 sites had a much better idea than me!

>Have you switched your “web-host” over the years or has the primary URL always been >the same?

It has never changed. Behosting, recommended by someone I met online (owner of "inflatablesheep"). Domain name has remained the same. I chose it because I had a lot of pieces of paper and photos... I thought of the photos and paper as "documentary evidence" of the reality of the past. I had saved all these old driver's licenses. Cool!

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>Did you get permission (legal or other) from the parties (not your family members, I >assume) you posted online?

Nope. In a few cases I worried about using the picture of an old girlfriend or friend. But I don't think I ever really asked. I usually just threw it up there and then eventually shared the url with them. No one has ever said "take it down." I thought about it a little, but there never seemed an overwhelming reason not to put an image up. I viewed their images as part of my life. If they had asked I certainly would have removed them.

>Did certain people contact you to take their information off of your site?

No, never happened.

>Were you conscious of an evolving “self-in-process” that you were creating online as >juxtaposed to a fixed-print version of your autobiography? If you had any knowledge of >the theories of Derrida, Bakhtin, Barthes, et al., at the time you were writing >"Documented Life" that would be nice to know too, but not as important.

I was very influenced by Derrida and Barthes, but I'm not sure how that affected the project. In both a Jewish kabbalistic sense and a Derrida-ian sense, reality is the text, the world is secondary. God speaks and the world is created. If God speaks differently the world is created differently. Etc. etc. I believe that the stories we write create reality. However, as a photographer and a scientist, I have a different (not necessarily reconcilable) view of images, which I view as "evidence" about reality. To me a photograph is a trace of reality, an artifact that is secondary to the physical and "actual" world. So I was always caught between the understanding that the words I wrote were creating the story of my life as I (if no one else) would then have to live it... but the photographs were (as I understood it and still do) creations... not things that created reality.

I mean, the very name of the site "documented" life, points to the empirical bent which initiated the project. Yet, anyone as influenced by Jewish mysticism and deconstruction as I am couldn't help but be aware of the flip side of that, in which deploying words, symbols, or even "documents", is itself a creative act.

So what to do with this dual understanding? Certainly you could argue that HOW you arrange photographs is an editorial decision, a process of creating reality. But still, photographs are themselves, as I treat them, and as I understand them, fixed traces of what really was, and no matter how I present them, they maintain for me that status.

I was at the time I was writing and creating the site, going through a process of therapy and considerable unhappiness in my work life. (Life is much better now!) So the site was an escape and a bit of therapy too. In that sense I was writing a self for myself, and in particular perhaps trying to write a past that I could live with. Trying to pin it down, but also trying to tame it. Obviously, I was also creating a version of it that I could live with publicly, a version that was emotionally tamped down, a version that I wouldn't

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mind sharing with my parents (they would read it, I assumed), or with old girlfriends, or with my children, or my spouse or friends... or future friends, or future employers. So it had to be a big lie - the kind of lie that all of life in human society is, purged of pain and self pity and unhappiness and rage and anger - just the dry facts, symbolized by the photographs. I was here. I was there. I felt this. I felt that. People have said I revealed a lot, but if the truth were known I have concealed much as well. Not the names and places and outlines, but, mostly, the feelings. I could write an agonized scream of an autobiography, and perhaps one day I will, but this site was consciously about not doing that... while telling the truth at the same time.

>Will you continue to maintain the site for the foreseeable future?

The site is a very low priority to me, and I have often (recently) considered taking it down and putting it in a book for my children and grandchildren. There is no reason to have it online anymore. I'm just not that into me! And I don't want people to think I am that in to me, which is the main downside to having it there.

For the last few years I've just put up a few yearly photographs, nothing more, just because if it is going to be online that it ought to be minimally up to date.

I may take it down in the next few years.

One very strange aspect of creating the site was, and remains the relationship between the time when the story was written and the time it describes. Most of the writing probably was in the 2001 2003 period. (I know that the 1995 page was the first... naturally, perhaps... my wedding.) Since then I have been engaged in low intensity journaling (I update photos a little, change a text here or there)... and sometimes I've gone back and rewritten the more recent material... transforming a journal into a autobiography, as the past grows more dead, and more fixable as a story, or perhaps as the past grows freeer, a zone less fixed by memory and facts, and thus more open to being created in a version that pleases me.

I enjoy reading biography and history. Creating truths out of whole cloth holds little interest to me. I've tried writing fiction, and I find it difficult. But I know that writing history and biography requires an "entrained imagination"... we must take the facts (documents, photographs) seriously, but there is a creative spark that makes them live, and perhaps in some sense we even create realities (in a Derridian sense) by how we arrange and frame the facts. But in the end, the facts, documents and photographs, I do believe, are real, and they are what make the story worth reading. A fact, for me, has a beauty that no fiction can really approach. Old photographs are magic time machines, little windows into a world so spectacular that the imagination (my imagination) just boggles. I peer into old photos (not just my own) and I'm stunned by the thought of how wholly real and wholly vanished the world they portray really is. I can't get enough of those windows into the reality of the past.

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>I know you may have answered many of these questions both directly and indirectly on >your site in its various manifestations. I sincerely appreciate your time in articulating >your responses again in those cases. You obviously were ahead of your time and >continue to be in terms of your knowledge and understanding of the potential of Web >2.0. You note, "Back when I created this site, I thought it would be fun to see if it would >somehow be connected to personalizing and socializing the web - living online in some >great world community. Since then Facebook and others figured that problem out in a >much deeper sense, and the universal human community on the internet is still >emerging." While there can be no doubt that the Internet is still emerging, Facebook and >social networking in general owe a good deal of gratitude to you and those pioneers like >you who produced their life online in an organic and evolving manner and in doing so >provided models for a template that has now become commonplace--at least that is what >I contend ;-) Your work inspires me, Miles. It has been integral to my research for the >last two years. I hope that you can answer my questions in the spirit they're intended and >perhaps offer me new perspectives I haven’t yet considered.

>Best, >Ron

>Ronald J. Tulley >Director of Technical Communication >Assistant Professor of English >The University of Findlay >1000 N. Main Street >Findlay, Ohio 45840 (419) 434-4608

Ron, You are very kind. Thank you. If you publish on any of this please do send me a link to your work - I'll enjoy seeing what you make of it. If I've left a question unanswered, just ask again.

Miles

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