The Unknown: An Anthology

by Scott Rettberg, William Gillespie, Dirk Stratton

The An Anthology is a work of experimental fiction collaboratively authored by four then-unknown writers, the print translation of The a Hypertext Novel, the esteemed and often-cited winner of the 1998 trAce/altX Hypertext Contest, judged by eminent novelist Robert Coover, who described The Unknown as "genuinely multi-sequential and massively rich in story material." Decadent, comic, lively, dark, and satirical, the fragmented novel explores the millennial collision of literature, technology, and commerce.

Paperback

First published January 1, 2004

Reviews

[Steve · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ok, so I read the hypertext rather than the bound version referred to here. In truth, I'm not really sure how the bound "anthology" would "work" anyway. Nonetheless, I was totally engrossed by the hypertext. Obviously, the form was intriguing. Not only was there no "order" (not unlike, say, B.S. Johnson's unbound book The Unfortunates), but there was also no discernible beginning, middle, or end (very different from the B.S. Johnson experiment). In addition, the shape-shifting content--sometimes "true," sometimes far from true, sometimes gonzo journalistic, sometimes straight narrative, sometimes goofy, sometimes deadly serious, etc.--matched the uncertainty of the form perfectly. Overall, I'm not 100% convinced that this kind of text is the wave of the future (as I suspect Rettberg may be gambling), but I thoroughly enjoyed the paradigm-shifting reading experience it provided.

Caveat emptor: As someone who briefly ran in many of the same circles as Rettberg (i.e., studying under Tom LeClair while having been best friends with a guy from ISU who studied under Curt White, etc.) I am perhaps somewhat better positioned to have both understood and enjoyed what Rettberg et al. were up to here.