Toward the end of William Gaddis’s novel of American capitalism, J R (1975), a truck passes by on a Manhattan Street displaying five dwarves who are house painters and the words, “None of Us Grew but the Business.” At the time of publication, readers might have taken this phrase and Gaddis’s novel itself, as a corporate satire: one that traces (in grueling detail), the construction of a multi-billion-dollar empire by a solitary pre-adolescent, J R van Sant, who owns and operates a conglomerate from his grade school payphone. A handkerchief that he’d put over the mouthpiece makes him sound ‘big… continue

In the context of the 1990s, there are three writers to whom the phrase “electronic literature, c’est moi” could conceivably apply: Michael Joyce, Stuart Moulthrop, and Shelley Jackson. In particular, afternoon, a story, Victory Garden, and Patchwork Girl were generative works that exerted outsize influence both within and beyond the genre.1 The scale of proliferation that accompanied and followed this period, however, in tandem with the rapid commercialization of the Internet, was something few predicted. Issues of monetization, open access, how to define electronic literature, whether hypert… continue

Vienna Now! Recent literary studies such as Mark Taylor’s Rewiring the Real (read Vanwesenbeeck’s review); Michael LeMahieu’s Fictions of Fact and Value; and the volume Wittgenstein and Modernism (edited by Karen Zumhagen-Yekplé and LeMahieu), have ushered in a return to logical positivism in literary studies, more than two decades after the perceived impasse between continental and analytical philosophy (as captured in the historical stand-off between Derrida and Searle) seemed to have been decisively settled in favor of the former (read Kellert’s essay and Michaels’ essay). Perhaps not… continue

In June of 2015 at the University of Otago in Dunedin, New Zealand, the “What [in the World] was Postmodernism?” Symposium brought together scholars, poets, and media artists to reflect on how postmodernism has shaped their respective fields and practices, and how the defining traits of that movement have managed to—or failed to—translate into whatever we decide has superseded it in today’s postcolonial, posthumanist, and digital culture. Scholars interrogated how we might deconstruct or reconstruct the phenomenon of the postmodern—as a style, philosophy, or era, among other possibilities—alon… continue

A few years before the Electronic Book Review was launched, the late Umberto Eco, addressing a symposium on the future of the book at the University of San Marino, made use of a familiar allegory. This was the story of Thoth and the invention of writing, and he told it as a way of prefacing his enthusiasm (as opposed to a general despair in the broader public) for the emerging correspondent modes reading and thinking. Then, as now, our vantage point is liminal, a Duchampian infra-thin in which one age (the age of the book) is transitioning into another (the age of the screen). It’s been 60 yea… continue

Following in the line of Cary Wolfe’s MusicSoundNoise thread (2001), Trace Reddell’s LitMixer (2001), Mark Amerika’s Sounds of the Digital Intelligencia (2007), and Reddell’s subsequent Sonic Contents (2006), the present gathering from Robert Cashin Ryan further explores the noise of culture and productive capacity of sound. Since its inception in 2000, the music/sound/noise thread on ebr has consistently explored the productive capacities of sound (in its myriad forms) as a theoretical and affective site for interpretation and critique. In this sense, the name of the thread effects a dual mov… continue

These essays, also an ebook, have not been written according to an Ulmerian formula. Their only common feature is the application of a structural language that eschews beginnings, middles and ends. Instead these essays prioritize the organization of different material by juxtaposition, analogy and thematic extension – an appropriate logic for an age contoured by recombinant media. These essays, also an ebook, have not been written according to an Ulmerian formula. Their only common feature is the application of a structural language that eschews beginnings, middles and ends. Instead these essa… continue

As I thread my way through ebr, I touch base with the artificial intelligentsia that my work circulates in. The artificial intelligentsia is an internetworked intelligence that consists of all the linked data being distributed in cyberspace at any given time, one that is powered by artistic- intellectual agents remixing the flow of contemporary thought. As I thread my way through ebr, I touch base with the artificial intelligentsia that my work circulates in. The artificial intelligentsia is an internetworked intelligence that consists of all the linked data being distributed in cyberspace at… continue

Everything that happens, happens now. The essays, narratives, and essay-narratives gathered under the thread title, Fictions Present, reaffirm the ‘presentist’ bias in electronic publishing and in ebr particularly: our non-periodical, continuous publication is designed to keep the archive current and to present critical writing not as an afterthought, but as an integral element in the creation of literary fictions. Everything that happens, happens now. The essays, narratives, and essay-narratives gathered under the thread title, Fictions Present, reaffirm the ‘presentist’ bias in electronic pu… continue

There has never been a ‘Best of the Electronic Book Review’ or a print collection. After ten full years of online publication, ebr has devised other ways of marking time, using techniques available in the same electronic media where the work first appeared. Here the editor presents an initial ‘Gathering’ of ebr essays, pulled from each of the journal’s threads to date. Read more here There has never been a ‘Best of the Electronic Book Review’ or a print collection. After ten full years of online publication, ebr has devised other ways of marking time, using techniques available in the same ele… continue