HYPERTEXT FICTION
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non-linear
internal and external
perception non-linear
context genre
mutable
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Hypertext fiction, by definition, makes use of hypertext links for the user to travel from one page to another, and usually includes more than one link on most of the pages. For information sites, the pages are often linked in a hieararchy so that the user can quickly locate the relevant page; for story-sites, the links are more often worked into the text, with the total structure of the site hidden from the user. With opportunities to branch off in most pages, the web-site has potential to be non-linear, although this potential is used to greater and lesser effect across a spectrum of sites. Fray, for instance, at one far end of the spectrum, uses hypertext to create a hiearchichal anthology of short stories which are each linear; Hegirascope II, at the other end, offers four links on almost every page and a maze-like structure. In Chasing Our Tails, a hypertext essay on hypertext, Mark Bernstein discusses, among other things, the non-linear structure of hypertext, suggesting a cyclical rather than linear, hierarchical, or maze structure:
Cycles in hypertext create and explain structure. Through measured repetition, we bring order to what might otherwise become an endlessly varied (and thus endlessly monotonous) line of argument.
Unsurprisingly, the usual conservative hysteria about a new medium abounds. "Non-linear" is frequently taken to mean "messy", in that centuries-old assumption that if the young people don’t do it our way, then they’ll do it lazily and badly. Conservative academia seems to live in fear of its imminent collapse, beseiged by television, film-versions of books, spell-checks, grammar-checks, and now an assault on the stronghold of the linear argument. Sven Birkerts places himself firmly into this category when he writes, "Maybe one reason why the news of the change [of telecommunications as the new arterial network] is not part of the common currency is that such news can only be sensibly communicated through the more analytic sequence of print." (Gutenberg Elegies) In two hilarious paragraphs, he attempts to argue this point:
The order of print is linear, and is bound to logic by the imperatives of syntax. ... Print communication requires the active engagement of the reader's attention, for reading is fundamentally an act of translation. Symbols are turned into their verbal referents and these are in turn interpreted. The print engagement is essentially private. While it does represent an act of communication, the contents pass from the privacy of the sender to the privacy of the receiver. Print also posits a time axis; the turning of pages, not to mention the vertical descent down the page, is a forward-moving succession, with earlier contents at every point serving as a ground for what follows. ... The pace of reading is variable, with progress determined by the reader's focus and comprehension.
The electronic order is in most ways opposite. ... Engagement is intrinsically public, taking place within a circuit of larger connectedness. ... Electronic communication can be passive, as with television watching, or interactive, as with computers. ... The pace is rapid, driven by jump-cut increments, and the basic movement is laterally associative rather than vertically cumulative. The presentation structures the reception and, in time, the expectation about how information is organized.
My rebuttal is brief. First, syntax does not make logic imperative; it requires only grammatical not semantic sense. Second, all semiotic systems require "the active engagement of the reader’s attention" and are "fundamentally an act of translation", inasmuch as only the signifier is present. The de rigeur harangue at television as "passive enjoyment" is silly: one television programme may be undemanding; another may require the mental gymnastics of David Lynch’s Twin Peaks. If we do not dismiss novels on account of Barbara Cartland and the like, I fail to see why TV should be represented by its lowest common denominator. Third, distinguishing books as ‘private’ and the internet as ‘public’ is selective blindness. The ‘privacy of the sender’ and ‘privacy of the receiver’ ignores the highly public nature of traditional publishing, marketing, and selling, not to mention the censorship that the web is notorious for escaping. On the web, while in the ‘circuit of larger connectedness’ which Birkerts overlooks in publishing houses and giant bookstores, no-one need watch your selection, and no-one need act as middle-man between you and the web-site of your choice. Finally, his comments on structure confirm Bernstein’s criticism in Chasing Our Tails: "Unfortunately, Birkerts neglected to read the work he intended to study."
If Birkerts had explored the web a little more, he would have noticed that most web-sites are hierarchical, with a "forward moving succession" within sections; that they still have "the vertical descent down the page"; that the pace of reading is still "variable"; and a host of other similarities with ‘traditional’ media. Most web-pages are, in fact, sheep in wolves’ clothing, traditional media disguised in HTML:
The great preponderance of Web-based writing is unapologetically linear. Almost all journalistic stories are single, one dimensional pieces, articles that would be exactly the same were they build out of ink and paper instead of zeros and ones. (Johnson, 128)
Truly non-linear sites are rare, partly because they require more rather than less concentration from the user. Johnson cites Suck as one of the few sites who use hypertext as part of the logic, rather than as a shelving system:
Even the sophisticated Web auteurs offered up their links the way a waiter offers up fresh-ground pepper: as a supplement to the main course, a spice. (Want more? Just click here.) The articles themselves were unaffected by the "further readings" they pointed to... The Sucksters took the opposite tack... They stitched links into the fabric of their sentences... The links were a way of cracking the code of the sentences; the more you knew about the site on the other end of the link, the more meaningful the sentence becomes. (132-4)
This is strongly reminiscent of the work required to make sense of alchemical texts. "One book opens another", said the alchemists, and through negotiating the web of texts and symbols, each one shedding fresh light on the others, one approached a fuller understanding. This manner of interpretation links both with Berstein’s suggestion for hypertext structure, circling a topic and returning to it with fresh insight, and with Roland Barthes’s "ideal text":
To interpret a text is not to give it a meaning, but on the contrary to appreciate what plural consitutes it. Let us first posit the image of a triumphant plural, unimpoverished by any constraint of representation (of imitation). In this ideal text, the networks are many and play amongst themselves, without any one of them being able to surpass the others; this text is a galaxy of signifiers, not a structure of signifieds... (Barthes, 1994: 558, my translation)
The small number of hypertexts that actually use such a structure or attempt to create such an "ideal text" supports Johnson’s proposition that "It may be that readers genuinely prefer the ordered, authorcentric direction of traditional storytelling, and so more complex structures will remain the exception to the rule." (Johnson, 129) A text that relies on multi-faceted interpretation is difficult, as Barthes is prepared to acknowledge (Barthes, 1994: 559). Hypertext has the potential to be the ideal text, the galaxy of signifiers, but most people seem to prefer the more dependable, less demanding, structure of signifieds. I discuss this resistance in more depth in the alchemical process of transformation.
internal and external perception non-linear context genre mutable
Postmodernism
Jung's Alchemy
Western World & The Individual
Hypertext Fiction
Process of Transformation