N. Katherine Hayles on Joe Tabbi

I have known Joe Tabbi for decades and am very appreciative of his work on the electronic book review and other projects involving electronic literature. It is impossible to overstate how much dedication and work it takes to keep an academic journal going, week after week, month after month, year after year. Joe’s work has been exemplary in this regard, and his unflagging dedication to ebr nothing short of heroic.

I also have had numerous personal interactions with Joe, from publishing his book Cognitive Fictions in the Electronic Mediations series I co-edit at the University of Minnesota Press, to his participation in one of my NEH seminars on electronic literature three decades ago.

It seems to me that over the years he has mellowed and his sense of humanity has flowered. Our last meeting was in Bergen, Norway, when he was kind enough to gift me with his recent work on posthumanism. He surprised me with his subtly humorous view of the foibles of academia, quite a contrast to his younger, more earnest self.

Aging has many deficits (as I can testify as someone even older than Joe Tabbi), but one of its rewards can be coming to terms with who one is, at peace with one’s virtues and flaws alike. Not everyone achieves this desirable state (think of Donald J. Trump), but it appears to me that Joe Tabbi has. Congratulations are in order all around, for a distinguished academic career of innovation and service, for keeping electronic literature at the center of academic discussions, and for a peaceful, satisfying, and much-deserved retirement.