Autocento of the breakfast table | Autocento of the breakfast table

Introduction

Autocento of the breakfast table is a hypertextual exploration of the workings of revision across time. Somebody^{[citation needed]} once said that every relationship we have is part of the same relationship; the same is true of authorship. As we write, as we continue writing across our lives, patterns thread themselves through our work: images, certain phrases, preoccupations. This project attempts to make those threads more apparent, using the technology of hypertext.

Process

In compiling the works that make up this text, I’ve pulled from a few different projects:

as well as added new poems, written quite recently. As I’ve compiled them into this project, I’ve linked them together based on common images or language, moving back and forth through time. This should give the reader a fair idea of what my head looks like on the inside.

Technology

Because this project lives online, I’ve used a fair amount of technology to get it there. First, I converted all the articles¹ present into plain text files, which are viewable here. Then, I used John McFarlane’s venerable document preparation system pandoc, along with a short script, to compile the text sources to HTML using this template. The compiled HTML is what you’re reading now.²

To host the project, I’m using Github, an online code-collaboration tool with the version control system git under the hood. This enables me (and you, dear Reader!) to explore the path of revision even more, from beginning to end, based on my commits to the repository. You can view the repository and its changes and files at my Github profile.³

Using this site

All of the articles on this site are linked together hypertextually, that is, like a webpage. This means that all you need to do to explore the creative threads linking these articles together is to start clicking links. However, if you find you’re looping around to a lot of the same articles, you can head back to the index and click through the titles in order—that poem contains the titles of all the other poems in this project.

Alternatively, you can click the lozenge (◊) at the bottom of each page. It’ll take you to a random article in the project, thanks to this javascript.

If you want to experience the earlier projects in something resembling the original orders, previous and next links are provided at the bottom of each page, next to the lozenge. Sometimes, there are more than one of each of these—they represent other work I’ve done with hypertextuality.

Contact me

If you’d like to contact me about the state of this work or my writing in general, you can email me at .

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I’ve decided to use the word article instead of poem, because not all of the texts included are poems; and instead of piece, because piece is vague and, to my mind, pretentious. I’m aware that the true etymology of article does not reflect my use of it, namely “a little chunk of art”, a la the (personal folk) derivation of icicle, treicle, etc.↩
The great thing about pandoc is that it can compile to, and convert between, about fifty formats or so. This means that if, in the future, I choose to convert this project to a printable form (for example PDF, ODT, or even DOCX), I’ll be able to with a fairly small amount of work.↩
For more information on the technological aspect of this project, see the README.md file at the root of the github repo.↩