Michael Joyce (born 1945) is a retired professor of English at

Vassar College Vassar College ( ) is a private liberal arts college in Poughkeepsie, New York, United States. Founded in 1861 by Matthew Vassar, it was the second degree-granting institution of higher education for women in the United States, closely follo ...

, New York, US. He is also an important author and critic 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 ...

. Joyce's ''

afternoon, a story ''afternoon, a story'', spelled with a lowercase 'a', is a work of electronic literature written in 1987 by American author Michael Joyce. It was published by Eastgate Systems in 1990 and is known as one of the first works of hypertext fiction. ...

'', 1987, was among the first literary 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 ...

to present itself as undeniably serious literature, and experimented with the short-story form in novel ways. It was created with the then-new

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 ...

software, deployed the ambiguity and dubious narrator characteristic of high

modernism Modernism is both a philosophy, philosophical and arts movement that arose from broad transformations in Western world, Western society during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The movement reflected a desire for the creation of new fo ...

, along with some suspense and romance elements, in a story whose meaning could change dramatically depending on the path taken through its lexias on each reading. For instance, a hard-to-find series of lexias presented a new set of facts about the narrator's actions which affects the reader's judgment of the narrator. In ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

'',

Robert Coover Robert Lowell Coover (born February 4, 1932) is an American novelist, short story writer, and T.B. Stowell Professor Emeritus in Literary Arts at Brown University. He is generally considered a writer of fabulation and metafiction. Background C ...

called ''afternoon'' "the granddaddy of hypertext fictions", while The ''Toronto Globe and Mail'' said that it "is to the hypertext interactive novel what the Gutenberg bible is to publishing."Michael Joyce
Eastgate.com. Retrieved on 2013-07-28. His ''Twilight, A Symphony'' (1996) was his second hypertext novel. Joyce's published books include ''War outside Ireland: a novel'' (1982), ''Of two minds: hypertext pedagogy and poetics'' (1995), ''Othermindedness: the emergence of network culture'' (2000), ''Moral tales and meditations: technological parables and refractions'' (2001) and ''Foucault, in Winter, in the Linnaeus Garden'' (2015). He is a graduate of the

Iowa Writers Workshop The Iowa Writers' Workshop, at the University of Iowa, is a celebrated graduate-level creative writing program in the United States. The writer Lan Samantha Chang is its director. Graduates earn a Master of Fine Arts (MFA) degree in Creative Wr ...

. He was a Professor of English and Media Studies at

Poughkeepsie Poughkeepsie ( ), officially the City of Poughkeepsie, separate from the Town of Poughkeepsie around it) is a city in the U.S. state of New York. It is the county seat of Dutchess County, with a 2020 census population of 31,577. Poughkeepsi ...

. Joyce has collaborated with

Los Angeles Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the largest city in the state of California and the second most populous city in the United States after New York City, as well as one of the world' ...

-based visual artist

Alexandra Grant Alexandra Annette Grant (born April 4, 1973) is an American visual artist who examines language and written texts through painting, drawing, sculpture, video, and other media. She uses language and exchanges with writers as a source for much of t ...

. The work Grant has made based on his texts ("The Ladder Quartet" and the "Six Portals") has been exhibited at the

Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (MOCA) is a contemporary art museum with two locations in greater Los Angeles, California. The main branch is located on Grand Avenue in Downtown Los Angeles, near the Walt Disney Concert Hall. MOCA's o ...

and Honor Fraser Gallery in Los Angeles.

References

Critical references

Arnaud Regnauld & Stéphane Vanderhaeghe, "Machiner le subjectif," ''Traduire l’hypermédia / l’hypermédia et le traduire. Cahiers virtuels du Laboratoire NT2'', n° 7, Alice van der Klei & Joëlle Gauthier eds., 2014, np.
*Michael Joyce, ttps://www.bibliotheque-numerique-paris8.fr/items/browse?collection=105 "L'après-midi d'un phonème, or la faune of après-''afternoon,"'' ''Translating E-Lit'' Arnaud Regnauld ed., Octaviana, 2015. *Arnaud Regnauld, "Livres de sable et parcours incertains : exploration de trois cyberfictions. Michael Joyce : ''afternoon, a story'' (1987), Shelley Jackson : ''Patchwork Girl'' (1995), Mark Amerika : ''GRAMMATRON'' (1993-1997)," ''TLE n°28'', "La vérité en fiction," Sylvie Bauer & Anne-Laure Tissut eds., Saint-Denis: Presses Universitaires de Vincennes, 2013, pp. 123–136. * Arnaud Regnauld & Stéphane Vanderhaeghe, "''afternoon, a story'' de Michael Joyce : vers une hypertraduction ?," T''raduire à plusieurs / Collaborative Translation,'' Enrico Monti & Peter Schnyder eds., Orizons, Paris, 2018, pp. 399–412. *Arnaud Regnauld, "Liquid Times —Michael Joyce’s ''afternoon, a story''." ''Journal of Comparative Literature and Aesthetics,'' Maya Zalbidea Paniagua ed.,Vishvanatha Keviraja Institute, Orissa, India, 2019, pp. 37–48.

External links

Michael Joyce Papers
at the

Harry Ransom Center The Harry Ransom Center (until 1983 the Humanities Research Center) is an archive, library and museum at the University of Texas at Austin, specializing in the collection of literary and cultural artifacts from the Americas and Europe for the pur ...

Michael Joyce author page
from

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 ...

Michael Joyce's web page
from

An interview with Michael Joyce

An interview with Michael Joyce and review of Liam’s Going
from Trace Online Writing Centre Archive * Joyce'
Twelve Blue
a hypertext story * ''Disappearance: A Novel'' o
Steerage Press
{{DEFAULTSORT:Joyce, Michael 1945 births Living people Iowa Writers' Workshop alumni California Institute of the Arts alumni Vassar College faculty American literary critics Postmodern theory Electronic literature writers Postmodern writers American male short story writers American short story writers American male non-fiction writers Electronic literature critics