Salon.com > Paul LaFarge

Why the book’s future never happened

Tue, 04 Oct 2011 14:04:00 +0000

What happened to hypertext fiction? If you were alive and literate in the 1990s, you may remember the hype with which hypertext was touted as the next big thing: a medium that had the potential to transform storytelling in the post-Gutenberg era, the way the invention of movable type gave rise to the novel. Hypertexts were published, first on diskette, then on CD-ROM, then on the Web. Robert Coover’s essay about Stuart Moulthrop’s 1993 hypertext "Victory Garden" was on the front page of the New York Times Book Review.

Nag on wheels

Fri, 12 May 2000 16:00:00 +0000

How could I resist the NeverLost? The woman at the Hertz counter at Burbank Airport, just outside Los Angeles, told me that, for only $6 a day, this little machine would tell me how to get anywhere I wanted to go in California. I didn't really want to go anywhere -- just to a Pasadena, Calif., hotel and back to the airport -- but what if I changed my mind? The L.A. freeways, with their constant insistence that I merge across clogged lanes of speed-crazed commuters and exit on strange left-lane offshoots, frighten me. Each time I do it, I feel as though I'm on a roller coaster with no rails, no brakes and nothing but luck and the kindness of unkind, probably gun-toting strangers saving me from certain death.

"How do I use it?" I asked. The woman at the counter smiled. "It will show you. People say it's very user-friendly." I signed the rental agreement with a certain excitement. No one I know in San Francisco has ever used anything like the NeverLost. My friends are fully digital, wireless, Web-enabled, glow-in-the-dark people, but when they get lost, they have to ask directions like anyone else. For once, I would lead them in the gadget race. I would be an early adopter.

Welcome to Planet Pinkwater

Fri, 04 Feb 2000 17:00:00 +0000

A woman in her 20s asks Daniel Pinkwater one of life's great questions: "Daniel," she writes, "what is Gorgonzola?" He explains: "If cheese were a religion, then Gorgonzola would be God. Or at least Jesus. And that," he adds, "is a religion I'd subscribe to." Another reader wants to know how to keep her boyfriend's cat from sitting on her head. "Motor oil," he suggests. "Works every time."

Welcome to Planet Pinkwater, where real estate agents are extraterrestrials, chickens sing and avocados are capable of simulating intelligent thought. In this world, Pinkwater, the author of more than 60 books for children, has all the answers -- many of which have practical applications in our world as well.

"I am the guru for those who don't listen," Pinkwater tells me in a telephone interview. He has a voice that makes you want to listen, though: not exactly the gorgonzola of voices, but definitely the cambozola -- smooth, rich, laced with pockets of something sharp, dark and very odd. This voice has served him well in a parallel career as a radio personality. He is a regular commentator on NPR's "All Things Considered." And his Chinwag Theater, which features reviews of current children's fiction and Pinkwater reading from his own work, airs on public radio nationwide.