Comments on: >CRY LOT 49

By: Post Position » IF in College Education?

Post Position » IF in College Education? — Wed, 19 May 2010 01:52:58 +0000

[...] Utah State’s Voices of Spoon River and Myth Mechanic. I know right off that Jeff Howard has taught The Crying of Lot 49 using IF, and that students read IF and create it as a digital literary practice in two of my [...]

By: Grand Text Auto » Jeff Howard’s Quests

Grand Text Auto » Jeff Howard’s Quests — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 14:26:24 +0000

[...] book Quests: Design, Theory, and History in Games and Narratives is now out from A K Peters. Jeff’s dissertation was discussed on here, and he sent us a writeup of an ACM symposium. The book is a very nice contribution which I [...]

By: Grand Text Auto » Insert Quarterly

Grand Text Auto » Insert Quarterly — Thu, 05 Apr 2007 17:24:02 +0000

[...] Howard explains and develops some of his work in teaching postmodern novels via quests, as described before here on GTxA. In “Reading Potential: The Oulipo and the Meaning of [...]

By: Grand Text Auto » How ACM Sandbox Shaped Up

Grand Text Auto » How ACM Sandbox Shaped Up — Sun, 06 Aug 2006 19:39:10 +0000

[...] oward (whose dissertation on contemporary American fiction, with a chapter on IF, has been discussed on here) sends a report from the ACM Sandbox Symposium, which featured contrasti [...]

By: William Wend

William Wend — Wed, 10 May 2006 14:06:27 +0000

Thank you!

By: nick

nick — Wed, 10 May 2006 01:06:00 +0000

Thanks, Jeff! I updated the post so that people won’t miss the link. And, I like that Grand Text Auto gets its own edition with a custom filename.

By: Jeff

Jeff — Tue, 09 May 2006 15:16:06 +0000

Just in case anyone is still interested in reading this, here is a pdf copy of my dissertation online.

http://www.cwrl.utexas.edu/~howard/dissertationGTA.pdf

Chapter four is the one about IF that Nick posted about.

By: Jeff

Jeff — Wed, 12 Apr 2006 18:49:05 +0000

And let’s not forget “Fail Pyre,” the novel about a grad student who leapt onto a pile of
burning dead trees out of shame from not having put his dissertation online after successfully defending it. Seriously, though, I will try to sort out the red tape so that maybe I can have it online before I officially graduate. The last chapter wouldn’t have been written without the online work of Nick Montfort, Dennis Jerz, Andrew Plotkin, and others in the works cited, so it’s only fair that they not have to accumulate pile fare to read it.

By: Dennis G. Jerz

Dennis G. Jerz — Tue, 11 Apr 2006 02:33:29 +0000

Then there’s Pile Fare, which is a stack of receipts for paying for traveling to libraries to check out the copies of dissertations that ony exist in dead tree form.

By: nick

nick — Mon, 10 Apr 2006 14:19:06 +0000

Pale File is a special imaginary book for tax time. I replaced that with the title of the actual book, Pale Fire. Just be glad I didn't mention the more perverse version of the book, Pale Fur.

By: andrew

andrew — Mon, 10 Apr 2006 14:12:32 +0000

I noticed that presumable typo too, but thought it was an interesting typo so didn’t speak up ;-)

By: Corvus

Corvus — Mon, 10 Apr 2006 10:12:54 +0000

The title you referenced, Pale File. Do you mean Pale Fire, by Nabakov? If you do mean Pale File, who is the author?

By: Jeff

Jeff — Mon, 10 Apr 2006 02:10:01 +0000

Hi everybody. Thanks for taking an interest in my dissertation, and thanks to Nick for posting his comments and quotations about it. I will do my very best to get a copy online in the near future and to post the location of it and information for downloading it. I have defended it and all committee members have signed it (so it does exist by those criteria). But I am also in the position of having defended rather early in my program, which means that I still have funding if I don’t fill out the paperwork for graduating by submitting my dissertation. I belong to the school of thought which says that if I don’t have funding, I will not exist because I will die of starvation. :)

So, that’s the situation and I’m sorry if it causes anyone frustration. In the meantime, I’m very happy to answer any questions that you might have about the quotations and ideas that Nick kindly posted. Mostly, I’m just happy to be a part of the Grand Text Auto community. Have a good day, all.

By: mark

mark — Sun, 09 Apr 2006 18:41:43 +0000

That may be true for the person getting the PhD, but for everyone else, if you have to write to the department, pay a fee, and wait six months to get a copy mailed to you through the post, it might as well not exist!

In any case, you’d think people who think they have ideas worth disseminating would want to make their work as widely and easily available as possible…

By: nick

nick — Sun, 09 Apr 2006 18:03:07 +0000

There is a school of thought that if it doesn't exist on the Internet, it doesn't exist. I think the counterargument for a dissertation would go like this: if your committee signed it, it exists, whether or not it's online; if not, not.

By: michael

michael — Sun, 09 Apr 2006 17:55:18 +0000

The obvious question: how does one get hold of the diss? As I repeatedly tell Ian, if it’s not online, it doesn’t exist.