Further Forms

Traditional forms (such as the sestina), constraints on the composition process itself (seen in 20 Lines a Day) and constraints that operate on levels other than that of the letter were also employed by Mathews. His story "Their Words, for You," for example, is composed entirely of the words from 46 proverbs.

In the type written notes at left (fig 1), Mathews listed words that could be written upside-down using normal, right-side-up characters. In Tlooth, the narrator and lover Yana use a “code” (made up of these words) to communicate and avoid the prison camp authorities. At the end of the passage in which an exchange is related, the narrator notes: “It would have vexed the local cryptologists to learn there was no true cipher, only simple inversion.”

The transcript of an online interview of Mathews by Invisible Seattle [Rob Wittig] on the electronic bulletin board system IN.S.OMNIA (fig 2), notes that "By prior verbal agreement, all of Mr. Mathews' entries will begin with either a letter H or a letter M, all of Invisible Seattle's with and I or an S." Wittig, a pioneer of online writing and author of the book Invisible Rendezvous: Connection and Collaboration in the New Landscape of Electronic Writing, writes:

The thing that is missing from this transcript is the timing. In these very early days chat programs simply took each keystroke from either end of the line and threw it up on the screen immediately. Words could get intermingled. Our standard greeting in those days was HOIK—unsure of a connection, one person would type HI and the other OK, and it came out HOIK.

During this chat with Harry we had the spooky pleasure of actually watching him write in real time—where he paused, where a phrase would come quickly, where he would launch into a sentence, reconsider, backspace and start again on a different track.

It made me realize how rare it is to actually see someone write. The words, not the body, trial and error, weighing choices, waiting for the right word.

It was very intimate.