"The Universal Resource Locator" is "a combination epistolary-journalistic account of the upheavals that took place in Russia in the last two decades of the 20th Century. The letters tell a fragmentary story (both in Russian and in English) of an American woman living in St. Petersburg from 1981 to 1999. Her letters are set against the rush to exploit the resources of vast Russia during the breakup of the USSR.
The narrative was inspired by a stay in Russia as a visiting scholar – and the continuing friendships I developed with women there.
The work uses text, image, sound, Flash panels, and a structural space to allow the story to unfold.
The narrator, at the end, says: Between the lines of a few simple letters, a story of love. The news reports a country in decline, rumors of government chaos, abandoned hidden cities, economic boom followed by unexpected collapse.But I have been distracted, ill for much of the year. You may judge for yourself." -- Marjorie Luesebrink
1 COPY IN THE NEXT
Published in 2000 by The Iowa Review Web in Volume 2.
This copy was given to the Electronic Literature Lab by Lynne Nugent at the Iowa Review in Summer 2016.
PUBLICATION TYPE
Journal
COPY MEDIA FORMAT
Web