Judy Malloy's seat at the (database) table: A feminist reception history of early hypertext literature

Abstract

When Robert Coover anointed Michael Joyce the ‘granddaddy’ of hypertext literature in a 1992 New York Times article, it could scarcely have been imagined that this pronouncement would come to define the origin of electronic literature. This short article examines the human and machinic operations obscuring Judy Malloy’s Uncle Roger, a hypertext that predates afternoon. Malloy’s reputation was stunted because Uncle Roger was algorithmically invisible, a factor that became increasingly important as the Web’s commercial capacities matured. afternoon’s endurance can be traced to its ISBN, which made afternoon easy for readers to find and united disparate stewards in preserving access to this work. Malloy’s programming expertise and the goodwill among hypertext authors were insufficient to protect her against sexist exclusions that, in aggregate, fostered enduring disequilibria. While some male pioneers of hypertext are now full professors, Malloy and other early female hypertext pioneers are adjuncts or are otherwise at a remove from the academic power base. Ironically, Judy Malloy’s papers— 13,200 items, 15.6 linear feet—are collected at Duke University’s Rubenstein Library, but Judy herself still seeks sustained academic employment. This gesture is read in the context of pursuing the digital humanities ‘for love’ in a higher education environment that’s increasingly neoliberal in its financial allegiances. ................................................................................................................................................................................. Before I read Jill Walker Rettberg’s (2012) excellent ‘Electronic Literature Seen From a Distance: The Beginnings of a Field’, I’d suspected that Judy Malloy’s elision from the electronic literature reception history as the first author of hypertext fiction was attributable to genre. Her comic piece Uncle Roger, a romp through Silicon Valley set in thenpresent day 1986, did not evince the seriousness, ambiguity, and intricate plotting that critics and other purveyors of taste associate with high art. I accepted without question Robert Coover’s (1992) declaration of Michael Joyce’s afternoon, a story as the ‘granddaddy of full-length hypertext fictions’, even though Malloy’s Uncle Roger predates Joyce’s afternoon by at least 1 year and possibly 3 years, if one measures from afternoon’s publication date (1990) rather than its introduction to the coterie of enthusiasts who exchanged stories authored on Hypercard and other systems. afternoon is a magnificent work that merits its august reputation. But Rettberg traces the far-reaching implications of Joyce’s reputation in her distant reading, which demonstrates that afternoon is far and away the Correspondence: