I had chosen to conclude our semester with a hypertext
novel for several reasons. First, I had themed the course around what
seemed to me some of the critical markers of twentieth century artistic
creation: fragmentation, collage, the eruption of silenced voices,
abstraction, and multivocal narration. Both in form and content, Patchwork
Girl seemed a culmination of those themes.
The novel is created from several hundred individual
text blocks of varying length. They collage together into multiple
interlinked narratives which tell the stories of a 'monster' and its
creator(s) through a chorus of 'I's who range from
historically minded
body parts to someone very like a Shelley Jackson, author, herself.
Second, the traditional text novel, play on the page
or even poem peddles the intimidating illusion of completion without
effort, of the text spewed whole into the reader's backpack. It seemed
to me, from my limited experience in teaching literature, that close
textual reading and analysis foundered as the tight continuum of text
blocked not only the students' understanding of "What is the meaning?"
but also pushed tantalizingly beyond reach a full response to the
question, "How is that meaning created?"
The previous semester, I had discovered with an English
101 class that the writing of hypertext had fragmented the seemingly
seamless essay, and allowed students to break down its construction
into manageable purposes and segments. Drawing on my own experience
reading hypertext, I hoped that the medium might similarly disintegrate
the process of reading, and create spaces where readers might constructively
intervene in the text.
Third, I wanted to suggest to students a model for
hypertextual reading and writing which might shift their focus from
the technology to the creative opportunities it might offer. I tried
to prepare the students for reading a hypertext novel by working throughout
the semester from a simple web page, where I posted a syllabus, study
questions for our readings, essay assignments, and ancillary hypertext
readings, all only available electronically. I also scheduled assignments
on developing a personal web page, which led to the final project,
a hypertextual critical essay.
This method of organizing classwork gave students
much more responsibility for assignments and readings (I was no longer
distributing handouts and photocopies in a class with injunctions
to read and write) and made reading hypertext, however simple, a daily
presence throughout the semester. I hoped this immersion would naturalize
the technology (it did) so much that by the end of the semester the
class might be ready explore hypertext as
a medium (it was not).