You Can Get There From Here

Deena Larsen
Boulder, Colorado
Email: deenalarsen@yahoo.com Web site: http://www.deenalarsen.net
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

There is room enough in the new media/electronic literature/hypertext world for both Dante and Danielle Steele, for Milton and McKuen. There are places for all levels of complexity and simplicity, for a variety of reading experiences. By encouraging a variety of works, the hypertext community can appeal to the variety of readers and writers we need to form the grassroots communities.

To get to Dante, readers take smaller steps to understand the language, the rhythms, the conventions. To understand complicated works like Mez's _][ad][Dressed in a Skin Code_ , readers must first take steps to understand the implications in montage, code language, programming interfaces and literary theory.

To get readers for our complicated works and to develop a community, we need to concentrate on the smaller steps. We need to build bridges between worlds, to explain what we are doing. Works that readers can understand intuitively without a sophisticated working knowledge of hypertext theory are essential to developing a following in the mainstream media, to growing communities of readers and writers passionate about the possibilities in these works, to understanding the foundations of more complex endeavors, to gathering the commitments for reading and writing large-scale works.

Works like Peter Howard's The Rainbow Factory, Robert Kendall's Clues, or Jackie Craven's In the Changing Room are great first steps. The time requirements for these works are small--these are no more difficult than a mainstream novel. We need more works like these, that elegantly show the possibilities of the medium and yet are easily accessible for people who have not previously encountered an ergodic work. Moreover, we need ways to evaluate works that do not leap straight for academic discourses on theory. I can go to Amazon to find reviews from ordinary readers to see what I might be interested in. Where can I go to find what hypertexts people have enjoyed, and what I might enjoy reading? I can get Cliff notes to any complex classic to read a synopsis and structure so that I can better understand my readings. Walker's (1999) close reading of afternoon  provides a wonderful way into this work. Where are the Cliff notes for other classic and complex hypertexts? To understand nuances in Dante's language, culture and story, we have a myriad of commentaries, translations and keys. Where are these supporting works for hypertext?

References

Walker, Jill (1999) "Piecing together and tearing apart: finding the story in afternoon". ACM Hypertext. Also at
http://cmc.uib.no/jill/txt/afternoon.html