Celebrating Joseph Tabbi

Rob Wittig on Joe Tabbi:

I am very happy to add my appreciation, gratitude, and admiration to this wonderful gathering of texts celebrating Joe Tabbi. I well remember the days in Chicago that when I would convene regular gatherings of the self-parodyingly self-styled “Chicago School of Electronic Literature” at Belmont Street’s Moti Mahal restaurant.

This photo was taken by little Scott Rettberg, and there’s little Joe Tabbi and little Kurt Heinz and little me. There we were, dreaming together about a future of literature that would keep pace with the rapidly evolving technology of digital communications and computation, a future that would use the same platforms many people were already using in their everyday lives for both creativity and scholarship. We all shared an open-minded view of what we’d call “language arts,” a term I loved both for its inclusiveness—embracing everything from radio DJs, to improv comedy, to text messages, to slam poetry, to typography—and for its origins in elementary education curriculum, teaching little ones to read and write.

Joe at the time was the representative of academia among us. But his was not the typical academia of that time. He embodies a spirit of scholarship I recognized from my love of pre-romantic scholars of the Enlightenment such as Diderot, Mme.du Staël, and Voltaire. I remember being struck deeply by Joe’s courage and persistence in continuing the crucial tradition of critical journals as he molded and promoted ebr, the tradition from which come so many of our daily thinking tools. Instead of making a journal that was like most of the journals around us at the time, which were essentially historical re-enactments of once-fiery, once-new art forms and essay forms, he was determined to support new art making and new thinking in genuinely new forms. Why did Joe need to show courage? Because far from getting any support from his institutions in those early days, he was told relentlessly that ebr didn’t count; it didn’t count for his career, publication there didn’t count for authors’ careers, it was a “waste of time,” it “wasn’t a real thing.” But Joe always knew that it was not only real, it was important. He stuck with it. His calm, dogged confidence helped our little group, as it has helped thousands of students, artists, and scholars over the years.

I really appreciate Joe’s love of design—his determination to make the way the words meet your eye intelligent and beautiful. Above all I honor his determination to create a community, a genuine community that includes both scholars and creators. You have given so much assistance to a huge number of people, helped so much good work reach its audience. Thank you. Heart emoji. Quill pen and paper emoji. Convivial dinner emoji.