Overview

Living Will: by E.R. Millhouse is an electronic literature piece by Mark C. Marino, created using the Undum interactive hypertext program and first published online in 2010. It is an Interactive Stretchtext that focuses on the ever-shifting contents of the ‘living will’ of E.R. Millhouse, who is an example of a Conversational Character. Since Living Will is a second-person narrative, Mr. Millhouse appears to be speaking with the reader (referred to as ‘you’ throughout the narrative), who will adopt the role of the incapacitated man’s son, daughter, errand boy or gardener. The reader’s interaction with the story plays a role in it’s construction as the ‘role’ he adopts and the links that he clicks on will determine which how Mr. Millhouse will interact with him and what information he will give to him, among other elements. In addition, an adjacent sidebar keeps an ongoing record of the legal and medical costs incurred by the will, and these costs increase with each link selected and explored. This directly impacts the monetary rewards the reader can potentially ‘win’ at the end of Living Will, and some may treat it as a Game with the goal of making as much money from the fictional legal document as possible. This is also one of the worst possible ways for the reader to approach the text as he will inevitably pass over the most interesting parts of it’s narrative in the process. As well, these interactive elements are  the only Multimodal Elements in Living Will as it mainly relies on its text to construct its narrative and meaning. This is a good decision on Mr. Marino’s part as incorporating sounds and animation into this piece would have been a detriment rather than a boon.

Analysis

In her book Electronic Literature: New Horizons for the Literary, M. Katherine Hayles notes that in the early days of electronic literature, “the most obvious way to think about screens was to imagine them as a book that one turned the pages of by clicking” (Halyes 60), and in regards to the  ‘multiple streams’ format of Michel Joyce’s Twelve Blue states that the reader who approaches the piece “with expectations formed by print literature will inevitably find it frustrating and enigmatic” (Hayles 64) and that the appropriate approach is “with a leisurely embrace that wants to learn everything it can about this textual body” (Hayles 64). This point can also be applied to Living Will, which is presented in an ever-shifting script format that will frustrate anyone who tries to read it as a traditional novel, and in order to understand the piece the reader must read it multiple times and with the mindset of an explorer uncovering new story details at a leisurely pace.

Fortunately, the shape that Living Will‘s narrative takes leaves the reader compelled to engage in this re-reading process. To begin with, the aforementioned format of the piece is used as a framing device for this narrative, with Mr. Millhouse outright stating that it is the result of new technology developed by his company, Droxol Vox, and is designed to be a reflection of his own ‘will’. Aside from being a plot element that explains the text’s format, it also gives the reader a sense of control over his interaction with Mr. Millhouse. In turn, we see how interactive electronic literature can create a sense of culpability within the reader as his choices suddenly take on more significance. Another piece that featured this effect was the interactive piece Deviant: the Possession of Christian Shaw by Donna Leishman. At the story’s climax, the player must click on several people hiding in a grassy field, an act that will see them imprisoned inside a cage. And when the press of a button burns those same people alive shortly afterwards, the player finds themselves feeling guilty, having unwittingly played the role of judge, jury and. This piece invokes similar feelings in the reader, but also creates the impression that he is talking to a real person who will display approval or disappointment towards the choices he makes in the story. And since the reader is adopting the persona of a family member or other associate in the process, Mr. Millhouse will frequently make allusions to past events that the reader involved in, giving enough information to hint at these events but leaving much unsaid. This creates the feeling that the reader has known Mr. Millhouse for ages, and when some story paths present you with a chance to save him from his condition, the decision becomes a very personal one as you become both the executor of his will and an executor of the kind featured in Deviant. The reader is thus driven to revisit Living Will multiple times in order to get a full picture of Mr. Millhouse’s life and his relationships with the other characters. In this way, format and narrative combine to create a brilliant piece of electronic literature that both requires and compels the reader to adopt a ‘deep reading’ approach to fully understand and enjoy it.

Biography

Mark C. Marino is the author of numerous electronic literature pieces, short stories, essays and nonfiction books. He “holds an MFA from Notre Dame and a Ph.D. from UC Riverside” (USC Bio Page), where he specialized in various forms of new media. He is currently working as an Assistant Professor of Writing at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, CA. His most recent completed works are Reality: Being @spencerpratt, a three-week long ‘netprov’ about what happens when an anonymous British poet hijacks the account of Reality-TV Star Spencer Pratt, and Occupy MLA, a year-long ‘netprov’ about a trio of faculty members fighting for tenure positions. The latter piece has also caused an ongoing controversy in the wake of the Conference of the Modern Languages Association in Boston as many felt that the ‘cartoonish’ voices of the main characters were mocking the serious academic issues being raised at the event and the people discussing them. His personal blog is Writer Response Theory, which contains interviews with other academics, meditations on writing electronic literature and other topics.

Bibliography and Assorted Links

Works Cited in Text

“Mark C. Marino (University of Southern California).” EDUCAUSE Homepage. EDUCAUSE, 2013. Web. 23 Mar. 2013. http://www.educause.edu/members/mark-c-marino

Hayles, Katherine. “Intermediation from Page to Screen.” Electronic Literature: New Horizons for the Literary. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame, 2008. 43-85. Print.

Works Mentioned in Text

Marino, Mark C. “Living Will.” Living Will. Mark C. Marino, 28 Jan. 2013. Web. 23 Mar. 2013. http://markcmarino.com/tales/livingwill.html

Leishman, Donna. “Deviant: The Posession of Christian Shaw.” Ed. N. Katheryne Hayles et al. Electronic Literature Collection 1 (2006): n. pag. ELC Vol. 1. Web. 23 Mar. 2013. http://collection.eliterature.org/1/works/leishman__deviant_the_possession_of_christian_shaw.html

Joyce, Michael. “Twelve Blue.” Ed. N. Katheryne Hayles et al. Electronic Literature Collection 1 (2006): n. pag. ELC Vol. 1. Web. 23 Mar. 2013. http://collection.eliterature.org/1/works/joyce__twelve_blue.html

Additional Links

Mark Marino’s Online Portfolio – http://markcmarino.com/

Mark Marino’s Personal Blog – http://writerresponsetheory.org/wordpress/

Reality: Being @spencerpratt Tweet Archive – http://storify.com/tempspence

Occupy MLA Twitter Site – https://twitter.com/occupymla

Article about the Controversy caused by Occupy MLA – http://chronicle.com/blogs/profhacker/occupying-mla/45357

The Program that Mark Marino used to create this piece – https://github.com/idmillington/undum