The Existence of "I"

Of the quotations to choose from, the one that stood out to me, even before reading the chapter, was the idea: "Innovative work avoids the personalized, egocentered position of the romantic, realist, or modernist 'I.' Such a sentimentalized 'I,' often concerned with its own mortality, can be considered as having passed away. Innovative practice is practice that often overcomes the 'I' to explore material dimensions of the text" (174). Although Glazier goes on to say that "I" can exist in digital literature, he suggests that it is used differently.

I feel that this notion of "I" being absent from innovative electronic works is related to the idea of electronic writing being part of a larger network. As Glazier notes on page 175, "Writing can be seen, not as an individual personalized achievement, but as a series of strands in a larger social-spatial textual fabric (the network)." Instead of being a piece of literature that is only accessible through a book, electronic literature is immediately available to anyone in the world with an internet connection. This allows for a much broader audience that must be appealed to. It is possible that Glazier is saying that the use of "I" makes that message seem less universal, and therefore less effective.

However, although this quote interested me, I confess I do not entirely agree with it. Glazier proposes that the "I" exists "not as an omniscient narrator, raconteur, or master of things to unfold" but rather, "an initiator of a process that, once begun, 'takes over' the way a process executes" (sic). I think this can be true, but does not necessarily need to be. Literature has always been about a character or set of characters that are not the readers themselves, but are someone with whom the readers can identify. The use of "I" has not served to distance readers from such works; they don't pick up books hoping to read about themselves. Rather, they hope to read about the things that make us all human. Indeed, it is more often the second-person form of address ("you") in literature that distances readers from what they are reading. I feel as if a piece that uses "I" can be just as universal in this new digital world as in the world of print.

Of course, it is possible that Glazier is not saying electronic literature that utilizes "I" is not effective, but rather that it is not innovative (innovation is, after all, the subject of this chapter). If that is the case, then I would heartily agree that works that do not use "I" (or a similar "I"-based third-person narrator) are indeed innovative. However, this leads me to ask if all innovation is good. Perhaps I am simply unable to picture what sort of piece Glazier is speaking of, but I guess my thoughts are that innovation for innovation's sake is no better than animating texts for animating texts' sake. I think that texts without "I" could definitely be interesting, but to say that a piece is automatically innovative for not using "I," or is not innovative because it does use it, is a little unrealistic.

Glazier speaks of the way these new innovative "I"s take over the way a process executes, but I feel as if the reader has the ability to "take over" the way a poem or story is read, regardless of the formula. I feel as if all writing should be a springboard for thought – that the author presents an idea that, in turn, sparks new ideas in the reader. I do not feel as if such an "I" failed to exist before, or exist any differently now, at least not if the literature in question is effective.