The students felt able to move freely around the text to follow a
thread that interested them, to end a boring thread, or to stop reading
altogether. The realization that neither I nor they could identify
a definitive beginning, middle or end crystallized a freedom in the
form which clashed provocatively with the unchanging text of the lexias
"Even although the author surrenders to the reader's exploration,
all of Jackson's text is already created." (CR) The text was both
fixed, and unfixed, at the same time.
For some readers, ranging from those pulling As to
those struggling for Cs, fluidity dominated. They felt the freedom
to 'do what I wanted with the text' (O.) gave the piece its power,
even if it came close to the precipice of 'losing its way.' For others,
again ranging across all grade levels, the illusion of freedom masked
a more subtle servitude.
R, a sophisticated writer and thinker who had found
the use of technology-enriched reading and writing alienating, summarized
many of the more inchoate classroom comments in her final exam. essay.
Discussing the reading of hypertext, she wrote:
...the power the authors are giving to the readers
allows for the readers' own creativity to interact with the work,
and in a sense the reader becomes a kind of author…The once definite
line between the author and the reader is growing more vague, but
this is done deliberately by the author…It's not a questions of
who has the power, but who controls the power, who delegates the
power, and in the case of hypertext, it's the author.
On the whole, the classroom consensus echoed R. If
Shelley Jackson were a 'dead' author, the students of 201 had no doubts
about her supernatural control over the living. But they also believed
the text triggered the reader's creativity,
a discussion which led slowly to a new definition of the relationship
between reader, author and text.