Coover 1992

Coover, Robert. "The End of Books." New York Times. 21 June 1992.

describing how hypertext is seen as next big thing in writing, biggest thing since invention of print

"it is still so radically new it is hard to be certain just what it is. No fixed center, for starters -- and no edges either, no ends or boundaries. The traditional narrative time line vanishes into a geographical landscape or exitless maze, with beginnings, middles and ends being no longer part of the immediate display. Instead: branching options, menus, link markers and mapped networks. There are no hierarchies in these topless (and bottomless) networks, as paragraphs, chapters and other conventional text divisions are replaced by evenly empowered and equally ephemeral window-sized blocks of text and graphics" -- how has hypertext developed formal structures and metahpors, the way the book did? what are they?

"The most radical new element that comes to the fore in hypertext is the system of multidirectional and often labyrinthine linkages we are invited or obliged to create."

"this is a technology that both absorbs and totally displaces. Print documents may be read in hyperspace, but hypertext does not translate into print. It is not like film, which is really just the dead end of linear narrative, just as 12-tone music is the dead end of music by the stave."