Writing on specific hypertext titles appears to have commonly confused reviewing with criticism. These are two distinct though complementary genres and each ought to have quite individuated aims and objects.
Reviewing is largely a task of consumer advocacy, it introduces and discusses any particular work in a manner that indicates to possible readers whether or not they may enjoy the work. This reviewing role is the dominant form of arts writing in journalism, in particular the broadsheet press, and generally emphasises the reviewer's opinion of the merits of the work. Unfortunately, this has been the dominant form of 'analysis' in regards to individual hypertext titles in the commonly available nonspecialist literature (books with hypertext in their title), with some notable exceptions, including Gaggi's (1997) chapter on Moulthrop's (1991) Victory Garden, and Douglas' (2000) sustained consideration of Joyce's (1987) Afternoon.
(As a counter example consider Cubitt's (1998) erudite Digital Aesthetics which opens with a discussion of hypertext that also takes Victory Garden as its object. It is quickly apparent that the Victory Garden discussed is not the published Storyspace version but some sort of Webbed avatar. This mars an otherwise exemplary critical text, but the assumption that hypertext is or only appears in HTML is common.)
Criticism, on the other hand, is largely the preserve of academic writing, and in current hypertext practice this rarely appears to focus on an individual text, preferring to make general claims about hypertext and fiction. Where it does deal with specific titles such work tends to offer complex narratological analyses that tell us much about the formal properties of hypertext fiction, but little about what any particular hypertext fiction might be about, what it might mean, or its purpose. (I await the arrival of Hayles and Burdick's (2002) Writing Machines with interest in this regard.)
This is not an argument for legitimating authorial intent, but is an argument for the necessity of recognising that a major problem in the reception and understanding of hypertext has been that there are very few examples of applied critical writing. This means that for the aspiring hypertext critic there are few extant models of what hypertext criticism might look like - for a group of undergraduate students what writing could I show them that illustrates how you can analyse and explore what a hypertext fiction might do and why? This is not an issue when writing about literature, poetry, cinema or television. Rather conservatively I often find myself referring to Auerbach (1974) as an exemplar, or in a more contemporary vein Foucault's (1970) essay on Velasquez. Both examples combine a sustained theoretical contextualisation with an almost Ricourean concern with the horizon provoked by the Other.
As hypertext critics we are hobbled by the lack of examples of such
simple things as what an individual hypertext might mean. This compounds
the problem for future readers, and if we can't work out how and what to
write to model what a hypertext means, in a simple hermeneutic sense, we
can hardly complain that readers don't 'get' it.
Cubitt, Sean (1998) Digital Aesthetics (London: Sage Publications)
Douglas, J. Yellowlees (2000) The End of Books Ñ or Books without End? Reading Interactive Narratives (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press)
Foucault, Michel (1970) "Las Meninas". The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences (London: Tavistock Publications), pp. 3-16
Gaggi, Silvio (1997) "From Text to Hypertext: Decentering the Subject in Fiction, Film, the Visual Arts, and Electronic Media". Penn Studies in Contemporary American Fiction. edited by Emory Elliott (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press)
Hayles, N. Katherine and Burdick, Anne (2002) Writing Machines (Boston: MIT Press)
Joyce, Michael (1987) Afternoon: A Story (Watertown (MA): Eastgate Systems)
Moulthrop, Stuart (1991) Victory Garden (Watertown (MA): Eastgate Systems)