The very first aspect of this hypertext (Victory Garden) is the method in
which we read it. Whatever the implications, it seems fairly apparent that
reading text from paper (book) and reading from the screen are different. To
what degree ... I can't specifically say. Information is disseminated in a
number of different ways, and the different influences range from cultural
to social to economic. Certainly the printing press was a technological
influence and the beginning of the book as a method of saturating a society
with information, or at least standarizing a method. The same is and will be
true of hypertext.
Anyway, the first aspect of Victory Garden that struck me was the
fact that the fiction was not all that was presented. In a sense, the
fiction was only a piece of a larger frame, which also included all the
commands of the browser (Netscape). Additionally, the fiction itself was
presented by Eastgate and also had a number of icons at the bottom,
copyright, commands etc. all of which must have acted to distract me. This
is not identical to a page where everything printed on it is at least a
creation of the author (we suppose) and involved with itself specifically.
The hypertext fiction is part of a larger space rather than whole within its
own space (the page).
There is also the aspect of pace. The reader, although able to
control links, cannot actually control the amount of time between the
individual links. At certain times I did not notice, yet at others the
amount of time intruded to truly divide the links in separate spaces. This
could be compared to the way the eyes rest between flipping pages so that in
a sense you could see a book as reading separate pages and placing them
together in your mind (but I don't). The way that even individual words and
sentences "run" onto the next page helps to unify the physical separation of
the pages. With links, this does not necessarily occur, or the spearation
occurs in a more obvious (to us now?) manner, as the screen becomes blank
and the reader waits for the next page to load. Links themselves create a
greater signifigance to words in a hypertext document. Its not just that the
color makes them stand out (it does, but that could be done on paper) but
also that following a link creates an illusion of movement in the readers
mind. Links become important because they have the ability to open another
space, to "move" the reader.
In general, a printed book has a fairly finalized form. The book
comes printed and the reader can be fairly sure that any other copy of the
book is, if not identical, then at least fairly similar. A printed book
standarizes an authors work. This is not necessarily true with hypertext
fiction (to what extent I can't say) which is alluded to in Victory Garden:
"I have no idea how you have set up your browser." This is Victory Garden
aware of its own malleability, a maaleability that is based on a lack of
standarization. Victory Garden does not appear the same way to everyone, the
progression of its narrative is never identical. "You can never link to the
same place twice. You only think you can" (VG). This is true, and again
Victory Garden is giving the reader more of a sense that it is self-concious
of itself as a hypertext fiction. If the reader goes back through screens
(follows links) that they have previosuly seen, the knowledge of the rest of
the fiction makes it impossbile to view the language of that screen in the
same way that it was when it was first read. The memory of the rest of the
fiction lingers in the readers mind (ghosts?).
Just some beginning thoughts. Maybe some questions:
How does a browser effect the reader?
Joyce claims hypertext has always existed. A different take on this, is
hypertext merely the cuomputerization of the book? Birket points out that
there are differences in reading a Dell paperback and a finely bound book,
there are different editions of the same text, different sizes of prints
(just as there are different browsers for example). Hypertext can often be
seen as analogous to the printed word (book). Is reading hypertext all that
new? What's so modern about it?
Joyce right when he says that text on the screen (because it's light) is
"unheavy, undark, dry, unimprinted, prone to sailing off"?
James Mulholland.