Discussion → Poles in Your Face
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Thanks for starting this group, Susan. There's this thing on hypertext fiction I wrote a long time ago.... It's fairly critical and has been quoted around a bunch -- I don't know that I still agree, but I might as well post the link here as a way to start the conversation. Would love pointers to some recent hypertext fiction to see how it compares.
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I'm excited to see any interest in this and I'm going to be reading your article today.
It's still a tough sell, but I believe hypertext is right in keeping with today's web presence and things have changed a bit since 1995, though many of your points (scanned quickly, will read with more focus later and comment) are still valid.
Just as an example--not meaning to push my own work--I'll link here to one of 100 hypertext stories I wrote as part of an artistic group project in 100 days over this past summer.
Oaks and Acorns: http://tinyurl.com/yzve3fz
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Well, just finished reading your '95 "Poles in Your Face" review of hypertext and actually, I'm sure I've read parts of this a few years back.
I really can't argue some of your points because I would think that they are opinions and have much weight, even if they don't represent or apply to all readers. Some things haven't changed; there is that "shoot, I've gotten into the wrong lane again" feeling when first reading hypertext. There is also some new writing available that is less interested in the underlying structure and "jeepers this is neat" aspects of hypertext and use the medium solely because it suits their narrative, not the other way around. I'm neither academically inclined to care about links and nodes for their own sake nor attempting to get in on the new media wave by forcing story to fit mold. I'm also not the best writer--never mind, hypertext writer--so that my examples may not have shown the skill and ease of use that other new writers have accomplished. And I do agree--many of the early writings in hypertext were a show of form and exploration of a new genre rather than focusing on story.
In a workshop presentation at Hypertext 2008 my underlying point as a writer was that story seeks its own form. That's why some are flash, some are novels, some are plays and movies. I think that storytelling is one of man's greatest achievements and gifts; new packaging doesn't make the difference unless it enhances--not confuses the narrative.
I think that with the advent of online writing and reading, hypertext is already a common force and using it to its potential and ability is something I encourage more writers to at least explore.
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thanks for inviting me here, susan, i'm pleased to see this group (grow). i am also going to take a look at jurgen's article...
my own involvement with hypertext dates back to the end of the 1980s when, as a graduate student of physics at CERN, i got involved in the development of the WWW. (my real self, that is, not flawnt, my writer's avatar). days of the dinosaur ;-)
something you said, about hypertext being hard on the reader, resonated with me. now i wonder why i never took it very seriously and i'm curious and will give it a second look. as soon as november is over, that is, because i'm going to trip on NaNoWriMo and i don't think i'll have tons of time to comment or read other stuff during that period.
i looked at oaks and acorns and i found myself getting involved instantly. there also was a sense of frustration...that i remember from another early hypertextual novel (long before the web and HTML), which has always been one of my favourites: julio cortazar's RAYUELA.
...if john gardner is right, literature needs to involve the reader in a continuous dream. for me, the big question is if hyperfiction can deliver on this, or not. and i'm looking forward to explore!
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ps. interesting that jurgen also mentions john gardner (different quote, and mine wasn't a quote but a paraphrase). overall, great article.
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Surely, Gardner's perfluent dream is a red herring.
Gardner's (rather mild) objection is not to hypertextuality, of course, but to metafiction specifically and, when you come right down to it, to Modernism. He objects to writing that calls attention to itself. to writing that can be noticed.
But of course Fauth knew this when he wrote the paper so many years ago, and surely he expected the reader to see through this surface as well. Indeed, _seeing through the surface_ while also _seeing the surface_ is at the heart of what Lanham called the Postmodern oscillation (in The Digital Word, which is even earlier than Fauth's piece).
Gibb writes that "many of the early writings in hypertext were a show of form and exploration of a new genre rather than focusing on story." This argument, even true, begins by privileging "story" over all the other things that literature might do -- and, significantly, ignores what the writers were trying to do (not to mention the literary tastes of the entire 20th century). To complain, for example, that Shelley Jackson's storytelling in _Patchwork Girl_ is fragmented is to complain that "Woman Descending The Stairs" has faulty perspective. (And what about _Victory Garden_?)
A difficulty in this conversations (and, if I might make so bold, a weakness of "Poles In Your Face") is that we're generalizing about essential properties of media, that old, discredited pastime of Modernists, without reference to actual work. Is _afternoon, a story_ engaging? Is "Lust" difficult in a way that "Prufrock" is not? Is "Lust" too long, or too short? These are questions we can hope to address, though I think they are difficult enough. To argue about essential qualities of the medium when we cannot confidently answer these questions about specific works is, I think, a stretch.
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It seems I'm likely the "newest" to this form so I won't pretend to know what I'm talking about in the historical growth of hyperfiction. And yes, Mark, it does seem that 'story' is merely one aspect of literary effort and I would certainly agree that a hypertext fiction should be as studied and analyzed as any other form of literary effort being held to perhaps the same standards of expectations (as well as diversity of exploratory techniques) as all literature.
Language, diction, pace, arc, conflict, etc., are still your basics, regardless of form.
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Is it possible that hypertext fiction in its most sophisticated (and yet-to-be-determined form) will require the talents of a new kind of literary artist, or that even the term ‘literary artist’ will be less apt than the term ‘visual artist’ or ‘collagist?’
I suppose I am thinking of all the different resources the web has to offer – sound, video, and text – and that such a suggestion might constitute a different art form all together.
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Good question. When I see the melding of graphics and audio and text being used so effectively to tell a story I do wonder if it needs to be a team effort or if a single artist can coordinate and have the skill in all areas to produce such work.
In many cases, it is a result of collaboration, but even so, the artist would tend to think in all terms for effect. How different is this to include the actual sensory image or sound rather than to merely use words to connote the meaning. Does a writer reading his work aloud not introduce an element of drama into his voice and thus into the reading?
In the hypertext work I've done so far, the visuals have been mainly restricted to color enhancement and font styles to emphasize tone and mood as well as occasional static images. But there is so much being done beyond these basics and I'm doing my best to attain the skill and incorporate these into the work.
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I think you’re right, Susan, in suggesting that hypertext fiction as a conglomeration of sound, graphics and text could either be the result of collaboration or the work of an individual artist.
What’s most important, regardless of the number of artists involved in the production of any one work, is that the work itself has unity of effect – that its overall impression is not diluted by competing or separate impulses.
In this sense, hypertext fiction as a collaborative endeavor might require a director in the same way that cinema requires a director – the artist to whom all the other artists involved in the project (actors, cinematographers, costume designers, etc.) defer.
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Lots of great discussion in this thread, though I feel like so many issues are brought up by "Poles in Your Face" that each deserve discussion separately. To me the paper is most interesting as a snapshot of time, as a record of what concerns people had at the onset of literary hypertext (is that a safe description for the 90s?) and whether they still apply.
Re: Gardner, I had always read his dictum as being against bad writing, period, not postmodernism. I've had dreams where I am conscious that I am dreaming, and that didn't make them any less vivid or continuous. But maybe that's because I grew up in a world rife with postmodernism.
I think that hypertext requires more than just someone who can use Word *and* Photoshop (I know I'm being a little glib here), though those are useful skills. morpheus11.com, for example, is a really neat bit of multimedia, but I wouldn't call it hypertext.
Hypertext seems to me to require a different way of thinking about narrative structure, one that hasn't really been expressed yet in a book like "The Art of Fiction." Mark's "Patterns of Hypertext" (http://is.gd/4N7P8) and Deena Larsen's "Rhetorical Devices for Electronic Literature" (worryingly awol, used to be at deenalarsen.net/fundamentals/) are good examples, though.
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In line with what Edward is saying -- and I think I was at least approaching that point in "Poles" -- it strikes me that hypertext may have more in common with today's video games than with novels or short stories. I don't want to get into the tired discussion whether video games can be art (of course they can) -- but hypertext has a level of interactivity that's more akin to a game. In a game, there's usually less of a choice to follow one node or another -- there's skill involved, usually of the finger-twitching kind -- but if you diagrammed paths through some of the more sophisticated games, it would look a lot like a hypertext.
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I would think that the more obvious evidence of text being the only method in which a narrative is presented and read is the common feature that ties hypertext indelibly to printed or 'text' version of novel or literature.
That's certainly a much closer relationship than the fact that you click on something to move forward. And the diagrammed path of a sophisticated game would naturally look like a hypertext because, well, they're both stories.
Maybe interactive games aren't games at all--consider what they may (or may not) have in common with games prior to computer playing--and instead are based on stories as their core.
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Re: games and hypertext, I think Markku Eskelinen draws a useful distinction by describing games as primarily driven by configuration -- i.e. at the beginning, Mario is in a field many miles from the castle, and at the end Mario is reunited with the princess. Manipulating the rules that allow you to change the state of things from start to finish is what makes games fun.
Literature, on the other hand, is more about interpretation. i.e. You comprehend things happening, whether it's through text or some other medium, and decide what it means to you.
Obviously there are configurative aspects to hypertext -- e.g. Choose Your Own Adventures are pretty much entirely configuration. I think each work falls in a different place on this spectrum. But, at least personally, I think hypertexts make for poor games... though I think this is not exactly the point you're trying to make.
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I like the way Chris explains interpretation as the necessary difference between our experience of literature and our experience of games. What his explanation implies to me is that if there is nothing to interpret, there is no art. Yet what Jurgen says about games and art (that games can be art) also seems valid. The two positions are not necessarily oppositional, but, to me, they seem to beg the question - what is art?
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Art is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away. :)
Group Description
While many are introduced to hypertext fiction in contemporary lit or new media college courses, the general reading (and writing!) public seems to still be unaware or reluctant to explore this form of narrative.
In this age of electronic reading, hypertext--which is simply clicking on links to discover different paths within a story--is particularly well-suited to the medium.
If you have written in the hypertext format, are curious about it, or have some thoughts or questions about its emergence into mainstream reading, this is the place to be.
This is a public group.
Anyone can see it and join.