Northrup Frye holds that a critic "mediates between the artist and the public" (Frye 1994:34). With this view, the critic is necessary to help readers understand what is in the work. Here, Frye's view is not out of keeping with that of Matthew Arnold (1865) when he states that "the endeavour in all branches of knowledge, theology, philosophy, history, art, science, [is] to see the object as in itself it really is". Of course, we can question if there is actually an "object" than can be viewed as "it really is". This is especially true with hypertext. As Bolter has pointed out, with hypertext we do not have a text from which individual performances are versions. Instead, "there are only readings" (Bolter 1991:124).
Nevertheless, Frye warns about art that attempts to disregard criticism. He states that there are two fallacies into which art can fall:
One is the attempt to reach the public directly through "popular" art, the assumption being that criticism is artificial and public taste natural [. . . .] The opposite fallacy is the conception of art as a mystery, an initiation into an esoteric community. Here criticism is restricted to masonic signs of occult understanding, to significant exclamations and gestures and oblique cryptic comments. This fallacy is like the other one in assuming a rough correlation between the merit of art and the degree of public response to it, though the correlation it assumes is inverse. But art of this kind is cut off from society as a whole, not so much because it retreats from life--the usual charge against it--as because it rejects criticism. (pp. 34-35)Is it possible that hypertext has already succumbed to these fallacies? On the one hand, there are attempts by hypertext authors to add more "flash" to their text by incorporating more multimedia. Is it possible that this is an attempt to reach a popular audience by making the experience of hypertext more audio-visually stimulating? On the other hand, hypertext has also been accused of being elitist. Miller (1998) states: "What the laboratory of hyperfiction demonstrates, though, is how alienated academic literary criticism is from actual readers and their desires." She also claims that, "what is most remarkable about hyperfiction is that no one really wants to read it, not even out of idle curiosity". Finally, she declares, "it's the very concept of hypertext fiction that strikes readers as dreary and pointless". While these criticisms were leveled at the field of hypertext itself, by looking at them through the lens of Frye's words, we can see them as validating his point about literature that attempts to forgo criticism and instead just reach an elite audience.
What seems to be lacking is the critic who can help explain the work to the readers. Frye states that this is the role of critic as critical reader. Here, one needs to understand that Frye views art as "a continuously emancipating factor in society" (Frye 1994: 35). It is the critic, then, "whose job it is to get as many people in contact with the best that has been and is being thought and said, is, at least ideally, the pioneer of education and the shaper of cultural tradition" (p. 35). Miller seems to be reacting to the concept of hypertext. What she had to work with was mostly a body of abstract theory along with a number of works of hypertext fiction. What is missing, however, is a large body of critical works that would help guide readers, like Miller, through an application of theory by looking at individual works. Thus, a critic would explain how such hypertext works illustrate certain ideas and concepts. That is, a critic helps explain to readers what they may not initially perceive. Had there been such a body of work to help guide Miller, she might not have found the experience so "dreary and pointless".
Yet we are still left with the concern that hypertext presents us with texts that resist being objects. How can critics illuminate works that do not present an illusion of sameness?
Bolter, J. D. (1991) Writing Space: The Computer, Hypertext, and the History of Writing (Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum)
Frye, Northrup (1994) "The Function of Criticism at the Present Time". Contemporary Literary Criticism: Literary and Cultural Studies, 3rd edition, edited by Davis and Schleifer (New York: Longman), pp. 34-45
Miller, Laura (1998) "www.claptrap.com". The New York Times Book Review, 15 March, 43