''afternoon, a story'', spelled with a lowercase 'a', is a work of

electronic literature Electronic literature or digital literature is a genre of literature encompassing works created exclusively on and for digital devices, such as computers, tablets, and mobile phones. A work of electronic literature can be defined as "a constr ...

written in 1987 by American author Michael Joyce. It was published by

Eastgate Systems Eastgate Systems is a publisher and software company headquartered in Watertown, Massachusetts, which publishes hypertext. Eastgate is a pioneer in hypertext publishing and electronic literature and one of the best known publishers of hypertext ...

in 1990 and is known as one of the first works of

hypertext fiction Hypertext fiction is a genre of electronic literature, characterized by the use of hypertext links that provide a new context for non-linearity in literature and reader interaction. The reader typically chooses links to move from one node of text t ...

. ''afternoon'' was first offered to the public as a demonstration of the hypertext authoring system

Storyspace Storyspace is a software program for creating, editing, and reading hypertext fiction. It can also be used for writing and organizing fiction and non-fiction intended for print. Maintained and distributed by Eastgate Systems, the software is availa ...

, announced in 1987 at the first

Association for Computing Machinery The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) is a US-based international learned society for computing. It was founded in 1947 and is the world's largest scientific and educational computing society. The ACM is a non-profit professional member ...

Hypertext conference in a paper by Michael Joyce and

Jay David Bolter Jay David Bolter (born August 17, 1951) is the Wesley Chair of New Media and a professor in the School of Literature, Media, and Communication at the Georgia Institute of Technology. His areas of study include the evolution of media, the use of tec ...

. In 1990, it was published on diskette and distributed in the same form by Eastgate Systems. It was followed by a series of other Storyspace hypertext fictions, including

Stuart Moulthrop Stuart Moulthrop (born 1957 in Baltimore, Maryland, United States) is an innovator of electronic literature and hypertext fiction, both as a theoretician and as a writer. He is author of the hypertext fiction works ''Victory Garden'' (1992), whic ...

's ''Victory Garden'',

Shelley Jackson Shelley Jackson (born 1963) is an American writer and artist known for her cross-genre experimental works. These include her hyperfiction ''Patchwork Girl'' (1995) and her first novel, ''Half Life'' (2006). Biography In her own words: "Shelley ...

's ''

Patchwork Girl The Patchwork Girl (a.k.a. Scraps) is a character from the fantasy Oz Book series by L. Frank Baum. She first appeared in ''The Patchwork Girl of Oz''. History Scraps is a teenaged (possibly fourteen) living rag doll made of patchwork, butto ...

'' and

Deena Larsen Deena Larsen (born 1964) is a new media and hypertext fiction author involved in the creative electronic writing community since the 1980s. Her work has been published in online journals such as the ''Iowa Review Web'', ''Cauldron and Net'', ''fr ...

's ''Marble Springs''. Eastgate continues to publish the work in the 2010s and distributes it on a

USB flash drive A USB flash drive (also called a thumb drive) is a data storage device that includes flash memory with an integrated USB interface. It is typically removable, rewritable and much smaller than an optical disc. Most weigh less than . Since firs ...

Plot and structure

The hypertext fiction tells the story of Peter, a recently divorced man who witnessed a car crash. Hours later, he suspects that the wrecked car may have involved his ex-wife and their son. The plot may change each time it is read if the reader chooses different paths.

Critical reception

This is a highly discussed work of electronic literature since it was one of the first electronic interactive novels, therefore many articles have been written about it.

Espen J. Aarseth Espen J. Aarseth (born 1965) is a Norwegian academic specializing in the fields of video game studies and electronic literature. Aarseth completed his doctorate at the University of Bergen. He co-founded the Department of Humanistic Informatics ...

devotes a chapter of his book ''

Cybertext Cybertext is the organization of text in order to analyze the influence of the medium as an integral part of the literary dynamic, as defined by Espen Aarseth in 1997. Aarseth defined it as a type of ergodic literature where user traverses the text ...

'' to ''afternoon'', arguing that it is a classic example of

modernist literature Literary modernism, or modernist literature, originated in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and is characterized by a self-conscious break with traditional ways of writing, in both poetry and prose fiction writing. Modernism experimented ...

. It is however often thought of as a work of

postmodern literature Postmodern literature is a form of literature that is characterized by the use of metafiction, unreliable narration, self-reflexivity, intertextuality, and which often thematizes both historical and political issues. This style of experimental ...

, as evidenced by its inclusion in the'' Norton Anthology of Postmodern American Fiction''. Chapters of

's ''Writing Space'' and

J. Yellowlees Douglas Jane Yellowlees Douglas (born J. Yellowlees Douglas; June 25, 1962) is a pioneer author and scholar of hypertext fiction. She began writing about hypermedia in the late 1980s, very early in the development of the medium. Her 1993 fiction ''I Hav ...

's ''The End of Books or Books Without End'' also discuss ''afternoon,'' as does Matthew G. Kirschenbaum's ''Mechanisms: New Media and the Forensic Imagination.'' A number of scholars have discussed the extent to which ''afternoon'' extends or breaks with conventional definitions of narrative. Structuralist definitions Early scholarship used and adapted the theory of

narratology Narratology is the study of narrative and narrative structure and the ways that these affect human perception. It is an anglicisation of French ''narratologie'', coined by Tzvetan Todorov (''Grammaire du Décaméron'', 1969). Its theoretical li ...

to understand ''afternoon''. One of the first examples is Gunnar Liestøl's article "Wittgenstein, Genette, and the Reader's Narrative in Hypertext" in George Landow's ''Hyper/Text/Theory'' (1994). Jill Walker's 1998 analysis explores "ways in which the text confuses the reader but also the many stabilising elements that aid the reader to piece together a story". Walker and Anna Gunders's dissertation work. Rasmus Blok discusses "the sense of narrative" in ''afternoon''

Translations and editions

''Afternoon'' has been published in many different editions since it was first distributed on a floppy disk with a handwritten label in 1987.

Dene Grigar Dene Grigar is a digital artist and scholar based in Vancouver, Washington. She was the President of the Electronic Literature Organization from 2013 to 2019. In 2016, Grigar received the International Digital Media and Arts Association's Lifetime ...

has compiled an overview, with details about each edition. The hypertext fiction has been translated into Italian, German, Polish and French.

References

{{Reflist

External links

Eastgate
*

'
Scan of the case and content of the hypertext creation "afternoon, a story" from 1992
Hypertext Electronic literature works American fiction