Okay, I’m two minutes into the reading of The Jew’s Daughter, an example of hypertext fiction for my Writing for Electronic Communities class, and I’m already mad. So far, the piece reminds me of the reason I was not an English major. Already evident are four things: 1. This writer cannot get to the point. 2. This writer is in love with the sound of his own words. 3. This writer is self-indulgent. 4. This writer is confusing the reader on purpose in order to maintain a certain kind of power or dominance over the reader.
Let me explain.
“…her affirming flesh beached in bed as the windows begin to turn blue. And what can now be said about this sleeping remainder? Her face is a pale round moon. Her hair like southwestern wheat. Her hands pale and delicate, her palms tough and dry.” Pleeease. You can find this stuff on the rack at the airport newsstands. Maybe that’s why the text changes so fast.
Audience awareness? It appears this author writing solely for an audience of one–himself. I was lost on the title page for five minutes (what happened to the principle of never loosing the back button?) If that is what the author intended, shame on him. It sort of reminds me of the doctor who keeps you waiting in his office for hours. The message? Your time is not important to me.
George P. Landow writes in Hypertext 3.0 that disorienting fiction (ala The Sound and the Fury) is pleasurable to readers because it is like a game that surprises; it offers the reader a sense of satisfaction when he or she figures it all out. I get that. I felt that way with Faulkner. I am not feeling this with the writing of Morrissey, with whom I have little patience as he rambles incessantly around whatever it is he appears to be writing about.
If Morrissey’s sole purpose is in confusing the reader, the question becomes, why? Is it to establish a kind of intellectual dominance (if you can’t figure this out, than I must be smarter than you), to delight in the thought of confusing the masses, to assert a kind of power (sort of like the tale The Spider and the Fly)?
I’m opting out of this game.
Why does the author have to “get to the point”? This is a hypertext story, not an academic essay. Would you say that Melville has to get the the point? Or, Faulknor? Or Stephen King? Why create an antagonistic relationship between writer and reader right off the bat? As Landow suggests, there is more going on here than words on a screen and links on a page. Blandable has located one of those things; there are many others.
I suggest that your reaction to the story indicates that the author has “gotten to a point” on the first page: to ask the reader to question the medium of writing, the goal of sentences, the structure of narrative, etc. In this sense he is hyper-aware of his audience, attempting to anticipate exactly what their reaction will be.
Release the constraints that years of reading and schooling have placed on you (and all of us) with regards to the order of things, take more than a few minutes to consider what he is doing with the links and how the narrative is flowing, appreciate the beauty of his prose and dialgue (which gets quite wonderful at points) and see where it takes you.
Will do!
Take a deep breath. Relax. You don’t have to read it ever again. That’s got to count for something.