ABSTRACT
It has been ten years now since I published a monograph whose agenda was to give an overview of different genres of digital literature and to offer of a number of close readings of specific works (Simanowski 2002). Close readings were rare in the first wave of digital literature studies, during which general issues of the new writing space and tools, as well as taxonomic questions of the new genres of text, were discussed. In order to foster close readings I founded the online journal dichtung-digital in May 1999 and published my monograph Interfictions (Simanowski 2002) about writing on the Net, offering not only a theoretical approach to and a terminological discussion of the new forms of literature in digital media but also various case studies in the field of hyperfiction, collaborative writing projects, and kinetic concrete poetry. In the same year Hayles published her book Writing Machines with an extensive case study of Talan Memmott’s Lexia to Perplexia, looking in particular at how the code supplements and comments the text; in 2003, the collection Close Reading New Media: Analyzing Electronic Literature by van Looy and Baetens appeared, an anthology that aimed to provide a set of case studies to illustrate and test theories developed in years of terminological and theoretical debates. These titles seemed to start a second wave of digital literature study moving from highly generalized perspectives on new media art and literature into detailed readings paying attention to the specificities of a particular work.
