Self Reflection: When I first began brainstorming for this assignment, my mind immediately went to my fourth essay, “All Hail the Hypertext.” The subject of whether or not a hypertext can be considered legitimate literature or not is such an interesting topic and I believe that in the future it will become a more wide spread controversy. I felt as if my original essay was good but given more time could be better. To strengthen my previous argument, I began searching for information on the author of the hypertext, “My Body,” Shelley Jackson. If we can find out why an author chooses to publish a hypertext over a book, we could then distinguish the differences between literature and hypertext.
Author of “Patchwork Girl” and “My Body- a Wunderkammer,” Shelley Jackson has had plenty of experience with hypertext. After reading through several interviews in which she discusses her work and the medium in which she publishes it became even more clear to me that there in a huge difference between hypertext and literature. Shelley herself recognizes that there is a vastly different process in writing a novel and writing a hypertext. The two processes create products that seemingly are nothing alike. The use of Jackson’s viewpoint helps to strengthen my argument and give readers an inside view as to why hypertexts cannot be considered a legitimate form of literature. Going back to the first essay we wrote in this class, I have also decided to incorporate my own views of reading into this final project. Discussing my own experiences with reading helps readers understand why it is so difficult for me to understand and accept hypertexts. I think in lines and in straight paths which is probably part of the reason that hypertexts are confusing to me.
Over the course of the semester I have been able to check several items off of my writing to do list, including being more creative in writing, having better opening paragraphs and improving organization. In the future I would like to work on improving my conclusion paragraphs, as I have tried to do in this essay.
All Hail the Hypertext
In the recent years text has jumped from the printed page over to the screen. Whether it is a novel, an encyclopedia or a magazine, the content can all be accessed by way of screen. There are dozens of websites which entertain online content such as this as well as an even more recent form of online text, the hypertext. What is hypertext you may ask… and to be honest I had to ask the same thing. To define this mysterious word, hypertext (noun): a method of storing data through a computer program that allows a user to create and link fields of information at will and to retrieve the data nonsequentially. So basically, it’s the storage of data within a network. Author of several hypertexts, Shelley Jackson, views hypertext as more of an online novel or an enhanced form of literature as opposed to plain data. She has published several hypertexts including, “My body – a Wunderkammer,” and “Patchwork Girl.” Both publications are filled with directional links, sounds, graphics and utter confusion and focus on the human body and gender. How can literature be taken seriously if its environment draws readers away from the work and leaves them wandering through an array of links? Jackson admits that, “I’ve never written anything in a straight line from beginning to end, but always in the round, or in snatches that I later stitched together into a pattern” (the Hypertext Author). Spoken by the author herself, hypertexts do not travel in a linear direction; they send readers side to side and in circles. Due to their confusion, distraction and misdirection I believe that hypertexts such as “My body – a Wunderkammer” should not be considered literature. Critic, Sven Birkerts would have much to say in opposition to Jackson’s hypertexts. To borrow from him, literature is “linear,” with a direct path. How can a hypertext be literature if it only sends readers in a circle?
Jackson’s, “My Body” begins with what looks like a table of contents but then sends readers into a dizzying array of words and pictures. I began by clicking on the link for hands, from hands I went to nose, then to hair, then back to hands. There was no clear order; I was more focused on trying to make sense of its organization than on the actual text itself. The links navigate followers through the body in no exact order. Two sentences through learning about her hands was the link for her nose. In cases like this the reader chooses to either keep reading about hands or go on to the next mysterious body part. The confusing set up seems to be symbolic of Shelley Jackson’s view point towards the human body. Jackson states that, “Hypertext doesn’t know where it’s going. It’s got no through-line. Like the body, it has no point to make, only clusters of intensities, and one cluster is as central as another, which is to say, not at all” (The Patchwork Girl). Here, she relates the pieces of the body to the pieces of a hypertext; each piece stands alone, independent of the other. While some people may enjoy this chaos that she has intertwined into “My Body,” I like organization. I want to read with no distraction, why should I have to choose where to go next? It is the author’s job to lead, not the readers.
As I began to closely look at Shelley Jackson’s online text the beginning was clear, there was a large click stating “BEGIN,” almost begging me to click it, but after that first click I had no idea where in the story I was. For the purpose of this online text, we’ll call each different screen a page. Within each one of these pages were several links that would take me somewhere else, but where I was going I could not be sure. As I said before, I was going from hand to nose to hair, and then back to hands again, just one big circle that I couldn’t escape. There was no definite middle, nor a definite end. Everything about the text was so ambiguous that it drew my attention away from the words and focused it on everything but. Jackson stands by her stylistic approach to writing, believing that, “Hypertext makes it easy to place things side by side, rather than one after another…guess you could say I want my fiction to be more like a world full of things that you can wander around in, rather than a record or memory of those wanderings” (the Hypertext Author). Here, we have Jackson claiming that hypertexts are like an open world and an open world is much better than a narrow path. A book is a solid, yet narrow path, you know when you’ve reached the middle and you must use your memory to piece together each event within your mind. Hypertexts do not allow for that, as Jackson says, you simply wander through the text. Online text is like a ghost, how can we know that it exists if we can’t see its form?
It’s becoming clear that hypertext and novels are certainly two different mediums and one is not even a legitimate form of literature. Jackson claims that hypertext allows the author to write a better story, “I think in things: complicated ideas come to me in flesh, concrete metaphors with color, heft, stink. So it is easier and more pleasing for me to think of text as a thing or things, arranged in a place, than as a story told by a storyteller…”(the Hypertext Author). Instead of placing events one after another, the hypertext gives the author the ability to add more than simple, linear paths. Hypertext authors do not have to focus on placing events in sequential order or making sure each even connects to another. It seems as if an author of a novel would have difficulty writing a hypertext, the drastically different set up makes it seem like an even less form of legitimate, linear, literature and more like fragmented pieces. Jackson herself admits that, “A mass conversion to hypertext fiction would mean a mass relinquishing of treasured habits, and that’s not going to happen all at once” (the Hypertext Author). In response to that, I’d like to ask if that transition will ever happen at all. You can’t expect people to give up tradition. Hypertext will always be evolving while books will remain a constant and stable tradition in the world of literature. The two different forms of text will have to coexist in order to survive in today’s society.
As much as I have disagreed with the opinions of critic Sven Birkerts in the past, in this case I believe that we have very similar ideas. He also believes that “Words read from a screen or written onto a screen- words which appear and disappear, even if they can be retrieved- have a different status and affect us differently from words held immobile on the accessible space of a page” (154). Words on a screen and words on a page are completely different. While many might argue that words are words and will have the same meaning no matter where they are located, I beg to differ. Words get lost on a screen, in the case of Jackson’s, “My body,” it’s impossible to intentionally go back to the “page” before; in fact it’s almost impossible to intentionally do anything. Words on a page can be touched while words on a screen simply lie there, moving from screen to screen. The surprise factor of the links on each page leave readers lost and confused within the story, a story that gets so lost that it might as well just be data. While it may seem like the reader has complete control of the text because he chooses where to go, maybe it can be argued that they have less control. If the reader can only move forward, do the words before even exist anymore?
But wait, am I being too skeptical? Author, Katherine Hayles claims that, “The MINDBODY is engaged, not merely mind or body alone…material metaphors, for they control, direct, and amplify this traffic force between the physical actions the work calls for and structures and the imaginative world” (48). Hence, she feels that readers are more connected to the story when they are given the chance to interact with it on the screen. Instead of simply reading the story, they are choosing it and they are playing with it. Readers can better place themselves in the story when not only their mind but their body is involved. I realize that many people will agree with the views of Katherine Hayles, believing that hypertext’s allow readers to become so intensely involved in text that they get lost within it. That’s the whole point of reading a novel anyways right, to just get lost in it? A reader can easily become so absorbed in the navigational links located within “My Body” that they forget about the rest of the world. But, on the contrary the reader isn’t actually lost in the text; he’s lost in the environment. He’s lost in the links and the circles, in the data and in the ambiguity. How can this be considered real literature if all does is lose readers to its own environment? Some may argue that “My Body” was not created to be literature, it was merely a project meant to be shared via the World Wide Web. After all, the text does include legitimate words and stories compiled into many parts. I recognize that this assumption is highly possible but we aren’t looking at Jackson’s intent right now or her story telling capabilities, we are more focused on the experience of reading the hypertext. Many of us can agree on the fact that multiple links and nonlinear paths distract us from the words and do not enhance our reading experience.
My personal experience with reading is very traditional. I have read books ever since I can remember. This long connection I have with the printed novel makes it difficult for me to except anything but books as a form of literature. I remember being 5 years old reading Dr. Seuss books with my parents; I could feel the pages between my fingertips and touch the letters on the page while sounding out each consonant. Thinking back to this moment, if this had been an online hypertext my experience as a reader would have been completely different. Pages would have been traded for screens and page turns would have been sacrificed for clicks. As Birkerts argues, there is a loss of intimacy that comes along with reading from a screen. Because I grew up holding books and turning pages, I feel that loss of intimacy with every click I take through a hypertext. It’s hard for people to give up tradition and accept change. While I recognize that hypertexts exist and now, always will, I will not recognize that they are literature.
Hypertexts may just be defined as the storage of data but they offer much more than that. While they offer stories and descriptions they also offer distraction and confusion. The environment in which Shelley Jackson’s text, “My body – a Wunderkammer” is in draws readers away from the text and focuses their attention on the links and the style. Readers become lost when little or no direction is given by the author. Within a hypertext, reading instantly becomes more difficult than simply turning a page, readers must choose which links to follow and hope that they can make some sense of the information. Judging by the viewpoint of hypertext author, Shelley Jackson, hypertexts are completely separate from the traditional novel and may never be accepted in the same way that books are. The difference is in the fragmentation. Books provide a whole, linear story while hypertext provides side by side, parts of a text. Literature is not data on a screen and links that take you in circles. It is a linear surface; a middle, a beginning and an end, it is solid and it is clear.
I pledge that I have abided by the Washington College Honor Code while writing this essay.
Literature Cited:
Birkerts, Sven, The Gutenberg elegies: The fate of reading in an electronic age, New York: Faber and Faber, 1994
Hayles, Katherine, Writing Machines, Massachusetts: MIT press, 2002
Jackson, Shelley, Stitch Bitch: the Hypertext Author Cyborg-Femme Narrator, Amerika Online, http://www.heise.de/tp/r4/artikel/3/3193/1.html
Jackson, Shelley, Stitch Bitch: The Patchwork Girl, MIT communications forum, http://web.mit.edu/comm-forum/papers/jackson.html
