Warning: Escaping Tyranny May Lead to Insecurity

Richard E. Higgason
Blue River Community College, Blue Springs, Missouri, USA
Email: rich.higgason@kcmetro.edu Web site: http://www.kcmetro.edu/blueriver/humanities/english/higgason
Key features: References; Author Details

All the nodes in this issue:

Editorial
Bibliography of Hypertext Criticism

Mez Breeze

Julianne Chatelain Richard E. Higgason Deena Larsen Bill Marsh Adrian Miles Jenny Weight

"He is surprised to discover how easy it is. The branches part like thighs, the silky petals caress his cheeks." These words start Roland's [1] performance of Coover's (1996)Briar Rose. Over the next couple of hours or days, Roland will progress linearly, or nearly linearly, from these words towards the last ones in the book, where he'll read "And now, tenderly if you can, toothily if need be, take this spindled pain away . . . " (p. 1). At this point, he will end his initial performance by closing the book. Even though Briar Rose is full of flashbacks, flashforwards and circular plotlines, it is fairly safe to say that the first and last words that I have recorded here will be the same ones Roland reads. Even though Briar Rose attempts to subvert the linearity of the medium, it is still very much restricted by what Coover (1992) calls "the tyranny of the line".

"'She wants to abolish this whole aspect of story, this sequence of chronology, and my heart goes out to her.'" With this quote from E.M. Forester, Maud begins her performance of Cramer's (1993) "In Small and Large Pieces". Or at least, that is where Maud will go if she follows the default link (by hitting enter) at the title screen. She could just as easily see the words ". . . so as not to touch the edges, looking at her reflection . . ." (from clicking on the hand in the title screen), or "Still crying, Annabelle limped into Anna's room" (from clicking on the shoe in the title screen), or "She drew a rose on her notebook with blood dripping from its thorns" (from clicking on the vase in the title screen), or several other lexia. As Coover discusses, hypertext has freed the author from the tyranny of the line and, as a result, it is much more difficult to know exactly where Maud will begin her reading.

Similarly, it is nearly impossible to know exactly where she will decide to end. Even an end-spot (a node without exiting links) may not signal the end to Maud's performance the same way that the last page of the book signals to Roland that the performance is finished. This is clearly illustrated in Phelan and Mahoney (1999-2000). When they encountered an end spot in Victory Garden, they remarked that this spot

offer[s] the reader a choice to continue with the narrative or to end there. If we were to end our reading, we would do so with the knowledge that we had not 'finished' the narrative [. . . .] This description indicates that completing the reading of a hypertext fiction involves more than reading from a clearly marked beginning to a clearly defined endpoint--from the first to the last lexia. (pp. 271-2)
Deciding when the performance is finished--completed--is just one of the decisions that Maud faces that Roland doesn't encounter. Roland clearly knows when his reading performance is supposed to end.

Another feature of hypertext that Maud faces that Roland doesn't is the fact that Maud participates through link selections in determining the order in which the lexia will be presented. Roland could adjust the presentation of lexia in Briar Rose by jumping ahead or jumping back in the text, but there is a preferred order to the lexia already established by the author. With a printed book, restricted under the tyranny of the line, the author is responsible for establishing the presentation of lexia, the start of the presentation, and the end of the presentation. With a text free of such restrictions and expectations, the reader takes on some of that responsibility (as Bolter (1991) and Landow (1997), as well as many others, have discussed). Maud not only determines where the presentation of lexias will end, she also creates the order of lexias, and may even need to "forage" for links (to use Rosenberg's (1996: 23) term).

Maud's ability to seek out links and thereby determine the presentation of lexia is at the heart of many discussions about hypertext. Indeed, there has been much discussion over whether the presentation of lexias truly constitutes a new reading experience. Douglas (2000:58-9) has indicated that it does. In her analysis of afternoon, Douglas demonstrates how one space may be viewed in four different ways depending on the path that a reader took to get there. She states: "What is striking about the way afternoon works is that there is only one passage involved here, and the language within it is as fixed as on any printed page. Although the contexts may alter its meaning drastically with each new appearance, the language itself stays the same".

Phelan and Mahoney (1999-2000) disagree. They state that the main distinction between hypertext narratives and paper-bound narratives occurs in the fact that within hypertext narratives "there will be a great variability in the temporal order in which different readers experience the lexia -- or from one reading to the next by the same readers" (p. 273). This leads to their central question: "does one set of paths through the whole of the narrative create a substantially different reading experience from a different set of paths? Our answer is no". (p. 273)

This is the same sort of conclusion that Aarseth (1994) achieves after watching Zardoz. The reels were mixed up when he viewed the film. Instead of seeing the film in the same order as most audiences, he saw the fourth reel of the film before the third. This, he explains, led to some momentary confusion when the fifth reel began and, he admits, to having a new experience of the film. Yet, Aarseth asks if this was a new film. His answer, like that of Phelan and Maloney, is no:

Because both the original and the heretical sequences are based on the same material potential. In this sense, a text or film is like a limited language in which all of the parts are known, but the full potential of their combinations is not. The mutation of Zardoz was created by a hidden possibility in its channel, not by the introduction of new code or principle. (p. 57)
Thus, because all of the lexia are viewed and it is just the order that has changed, we do not have a "new" film. This view, however, assumes material completeness, which is not a surety in hypertext performances.

Material completeness is also an assumption that Phelan and Maloney (1999-2000: 272) make with their conclusions about hypertext narrative. For them, a hypertext is not complete until one has read "all of the lexias". As previously discussed, Phelan and Maloney describe arriving at a node where the default path had ended. They state: "Unless we have already hit endpoints or eternal loops with all the other possible paths, we also know that our experience of the narrative is not complete". (p. 275) Readers may end with these endpoints, but, for Phelan and Maloney, they have not finished until they have successfully rooted out every stray lexia.

Reading every single lexia sounds good in theory but is often much more difficult in practice. For Roland, he can assume that, when he reaches the end of Briar Rose, he has read all there is to read (assuming he followed the authorial-determined presentation and did not randomly access the text). Maud does not have this assurance. Each link selection may take her far away from the unread lexia or group of lexia. Often it is hard, if not impossible, for readers to know if they have actually read everything that the hypertext has to present. In fact, it is the possibility that a hypertext may have unread spaces rather than the real existence of unread spaces that separates hypertext from other narrative forms. Often, readers never know if they have actually read all there is to read.

Whether there are unread spaces or not, the mere fact that there is the possibility of unread spaces may leave many readers unsure of their conclusions. After all, there is always the possibility of a space that indisputably overturns any conjectures the reader has been made up to that point. This possibility of unread spaces has serious implications for scholarship.

Notes:

[1] Roland and Maud are hypothetical critics used here for the purpose of illustration.

References:

Aarseth, E. J. (1994) "Nonlinearity and Hypertext Theory". In Hyper/Text/Theory, edited by G. P. Landow (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press), pp. 51-86

Bolter, J. D. (1991) Writing Space: The Computer, Hypertext, and the History of Writing (Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum)

Coover, R. (1996) Briar Rose (New York: Grove)

Coover, R. (1992) "The End of Books". New York Times Book Review, 21 June, pp. 1+ (CD-ROM. UMI-Proquest. 1997)

Cramer, K. (1993) "In Small & Large Pieces". Eastgate Quarterly Review of Hypertexts, 1(2)

Douglas, J. Y. (2000) The End of Books or Books without End? Reading Interactive Narratives (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press)

Landow, G. P. (1997) Hypertext 2.0: The Convergence of Contemporary Critical Theory and Technology (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press)

Phelan, J. and Maloney, E. (1999-2000) "Authors, Readers, and Progressions in Hypertext Narrative". Works and Days, 17-18, pp. 265-277

Rosenberg, J. (1996) "The Structure of Hypertext Activity". Proceedings of Hypertext 96 (New York: ACM Press), pp. 20-30