• Questions We Ask of a Hypertext Work (A Handlist)
• Claude Lévi-Strauss on the Oedipus Myth
• Espen J. Aarseth on "Aporia" and "Epiphany"
• J. Yellowtree Douglas on Closure
• Janet H. Murray, from Hamlet on the Holodeck
• Marjorie Luesebrink ("M.D. Coverley"), from Califia
• Works Cited

Questions We Ask of a Hypertext Work (A Handlist)

Claude Lévi-Strauss, "The Structural Study of Myth," Structural Anthropology, trans. Claire Jacobson and Brooke Grundfest Schoepf (New York: Basic Books, 1963), pp. 206-31 (cf., Janet H. Murray on computer games as "symbolic dramas" in Hamlet on the Holodeck, pp. 142 ff.)

        The [Oedipus] myth will be treated as an orchestra score would be if it were unwittingly considered as a unilinear series; our task is to reestablish the correct arrangement. Say, for instance, we were confronted with a sequence of the type: 1, 2, 4, 7, 8, 2, 3, 4, 6, 8, 1, 4, 5, 7, 8, 1, 2, 5, 7, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8 . . . , the assignment being to put all the 1's together, all the 2's, the 3's, etc.; the result is a chart:

        We shall attempt to perform the same kind of operation on the Oedipus myth, trying out several arrangments of the mythemes until we find one which is in harmony with the principlies enumerated above. Let us supposed, for the sake of argument, that the best arrangement is the following (although it might certainly be improved with the help of a specialist in Greek mythology):

        We thus find ourselves confronted with four vertical columns, each of which includes several relations belonging to the same bundle. Were we to tell the myth, we would disregard the columns and read the rows from left to right and from top to bottom. But if we want to understand the myth, then we will have to disregard one half of the diachronic dimension (top to bottom) and read from left to right, column after column, each one being considered as a unit.

        All the relations belonging to the same column exhibit one common feature which it is our task to discover. For instance, all the events grouped in the first column on the left have something to do with blood relations which are overemphasized, that is, are more intimate than they should be. Let us say, then, that the first column has as its common feature the overrating of blood relations. It is obvious that the second column expresses the same thing, but inverted: underrating of blood relations. The third column refers to monsters being slain. As to the fourth, a few words of clarification are needed. The remarkable connotation of the surnames in Oedipus father-line has often been noticed. However, linguists usually disregard it, since to them the only way to define the meaning of a term is to investigate all the contexts in which it appears, and. personal names, precisely because they are used as such, are not accompanied by any context. With the method we propose to follow the objection disappears, since the myth itself provides its own context. The significance is no longer to be sought in the eventual meaning of each name, but in the fact that all the names 'have a common feature: All the hypothetical meanings (which may well remain hypothetical) refer to difficulties in walking straight and standing upright.

        What then is the relationship between the two columns on the right? Column three refers to monsters. The dragon is a chthonian being which has to be killed in order that mankind be born from the Earth; the Sphinx is a monster unwilling to permit men to live. The last unit reproduces the first one, which has to do with the autochthonous origin, of mankind. Since the monsters are overcome by men, we may thus say that the common feature of the third column is denial of the autochthonous origin of man.

        This immediately helps us to understand the meaning of the fourth column. In mythology it is a universal characteristic of men born from the Earth that at the moment they emerge from the depth they either cannot walk or they walk clumsily. This is the case of the chthonian beings in the mythology of the Pueblo: Muyingwu, who leads the emergence, and the chthonian Shumaikoli are lame ("bleeding-foot," "sore-foot"). The same happens to the Koskimo of the Kwakiutl after they have been swallowed by the chthonian monster, Tsiakish: When they returned to the surface of the earth "they limped forward or tripped side ways." Thus the common feature of the fourth column is the persistence of the autochthonous origin of man. It follows that column four is to column three as column one is to column two. The inability to connect two kinds of relationships is overcome (or rather replaced) by the assertion that contradictory relationships are identical inasmuch as they are both self-contradictory in a similar way. Although this is still a provisional formulation of the structure of mythical thought, it is sufficient at this stage.

        Turning back to the Oedipus myth, we may now see what it means. The myth has to do with the inability, for a culture which holds the belief that mankind is autochthonous (see, for instance, Pausanias, VIII, xxix, 4: plants provide a model for humans), to find a satisfactory transition between this theory and the knowledge that human beings are actually born from the union of man and woman. Although the problem obviously cannot be solved, the Oedipus myth provides a kind of logical tool which relates the original problem—born from one or born from two?—to the derivative problem: born from different or born from same? By a correlation of this type, the overrating of blood relations is to the underrating of blood relations as the attempt to escape autochthony is to the impossibility to succeed in it. Although experience contradicts theory, social life validates cosmology by its similarity of structure. Hence cosmology is true.

Espen J. Aarseth on "Aporia" and "Epiphany," Cybertext: Perspectives on Ergodic Literature, pp. 91-21:

What we identify as fragments (what looks like fragments of a narrative), or rather the act of (false) identification itself, makes us look for a whole even, if there is no evidence that the fragments ever constituted such a whole. This kind of impasse is a main trope of Afternoon's literary machine: an aporia in a very literal sense. In contrast to the aporias experienced in codex literature, where we are not able to make sense of a particular part even though we have access to the whole text, the hypertext aporia prevents us from making sense of the whole because we may not have access to a particular part. Aporia here becomes a trope, an absent pièce de résistance rather than the usual transcendental resistance of the (absent) meaning of a difficult passage.

Complementary to this trope stands another: the epiphany. This is the sudden revelation that replaces the aporia, a seeming detail with an unexpected, salvaging effect: the link out. The hypertext epiphany, unlike James Joyce's "sudden spiritual manifestation" (Abrams 1981, 54), is immanent: a planned construct rather than an unplanned contingency. Together, this pair of master tropes constitutes the dynamic of hypertext discourse: the dialectic between searching and finding typical of games in general. The aporia-epiphany pair is thus not a narrative structure but constitutes a more fundamental layer of human experience, from which narratives are spun.

J. Yellowtree Douglas, " 'How Do I Stop This Thing?': Closure and Indeterminacy in Interactive Narratives," in George P. Landow, ed., Hyper / Text / Theory, p. 185:

Our sense of arriving at closure is satisfied when we manage to resolve narrative tensions and to minimize ambiguities, to explain puzzles, and to incorporate as many of the narrative elements as possible into a coherent pattern—preferably one for which we have a script gleaned from either life experience or encounters with other narratives. Unlike most print narratives, however, interactive narratives invite us to return to them again and again, their openness and indeterminacy making our sense of closure inevitably simply one "ending" among many. It is often impossible to distinguish between explaining a work and exhausting its possibilities in the sense of an ending we experience when we finish reading The Good Soldier. My readings of Afternoon and WOE, however, explain the versions of the texts I have experienced without exhausting the number of other versions and explanations I might experience on other readings. If we as readers truly do long for a sense of an ending as we might for loaves and fishes, it is not necessarily the definitive, death-like ending foreseen by Benjamin—it seems that merely a plausible version or versions of the story among many will suffice equally well.

Janet H. Murray, Hamlet on the Holodeck: The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace:

(p. 128) When we are placed within a simulation environment and allowed to experiment with changing a set of parameters as we see fit (more nitrogen, less algae), we are acting more like the leading partner in a Cajun dance, The crucial difference, however, between folk art rituals and computerbased interactions is that on the computer we encounter a world that is dynamically altered by our participation. On the ballroom dance floor, we can at most influence our partner, but the musicians and the rest of the dancers remain relatively unaffected. Within the world of the computer, however, when the right file opens, when our spreadsheet formulas function correctly, or when the simulated frogs flourish in the model pond, it can feel as if the entire dance hall is at our command. When things are going right on the computer, we can be both the dancer and the caller of the dance. This is the feeling of agency.

(pp. 133-35)
        But the unsolvable maze does hold promise as an expressive structure. Walking through a rhizome one enacts a story of wandering, of being enticed in conflicting directions, of remaining always open to surprise, of feeling helpless to orient oneself or to find an exit, but the story is also oddly reassuring. In the rhizome, one is constantly threatened but also continuously enclosed. The fact that the plot will not resolve means that no irreparable loss will be suffered. The narrator of Afternoon (discussed in chapter 2) will not have to confront the fact of the morning's fatal accident so long as the afternoon's evasive wanderings continue, and the reader of Victory Garden does not have to accept the death of an appealing character so long as there are multiple paths to explore, including some that lead to alternate realities in which she comes back home from the war. In both stories the reader is protected from feeling the irreversibility of death by the fact that the stories do not have to end there. [ . . . ]

        The rhizome has the same message. As we navigate its tangled, anxiety-laden paths, enclosed within its shape-fitting borders, we are both the exasperated parent longing for closure and separation and the enthralled child, lingering forever in an unfolding process that is deeply comforting because it can never end.

Giving Shape to Anxiety

Both the overdetermined form of the single-path maze adventure and the underdetermined form of rhizome fiction work against the interactor's pleasure in navigation. The potential of the labyrinth as a participatory narrative form would seem to lie somewhere between the two, in stories that are goal driven enough to guide navigation but open-ended enough to allow free exploration and that display a satisfying dramatic structure no matter how the interactor chooses to traverse the space.
        The key to creating an expressive fictional labyrinth is arousing and regulating the anxiety intrinsic to the form by harnessing it to the act of navigation.

(pp. 136-37) These violence-hub stories do not have a single solution like the adventure maze or a refusal of resolution like the postmodem stories; instead, they combine a clear sense of story structure with a multiplicity of meaningful plots. The navigation of the labyrinth is like pacing the floor; a physical manifestation of the effort to come to terms with the trauma, it represents the mind's repeated efforts to keep returning to a shocking event in an effort to absorb it and, finally, get past it. The retracing of the situation from different perspectives leads to a continual deepening in the reader's understanding of what has happened, a deepening that can bring a sense of resolution but one that allows for the complexity of the situation and that leaves the moment of shock unchanged and still central.
        A linear story, no matter how complex, moves toward a single encompassing version of a complex human event. Even those multiform stories that offer multiple retellings of the same event often resolve into a single "true" version—the viewpoint of the uninvolved eyewitness or the actual reality the protagonists wind up in after the alternate realities have collapsed. A linear story has to end in some one place: the last shot of a movie is never a split screen. But a multithreaded story can offer many voices at once without giving any one of them the last word. This is a reassuring format for encountering a traumatic event because it allows plenty of room for conflicting emotions. It lets us disperse complex, intense reactions into many derivative streams so that we do not have to feel the full flood of sorrow all at once. The multithreaded web story achieves coherent dramatic form by shaping our terror into a pattern of exploration and discovery.

(pp. 161-62) [referring to a student hypertext story] We see this tiny moment of connectedness from three points of view: the mother's, the daughter's, and the cat's. This is an intimate moment that might be presented in linear fiction, as a domestic stream-of-consciousness narrative in the style of Virginia Woolf. It could also be done as a telling dramatic gesture on the stage or on film. But in digital form it takes on a different power. The act of navigating from one consciousness to the other reinforces the separateness of the three fragile creatures and reenacts the gesture of connection. We are in the apartment with them; we see them with the exterior clarity of a film and the interiority of a novel. Such an expressive moment marks the emergence of a new narrative convention, which we might call a panoramic close-up (building on film techniques) or a composite epiphany (building on short-story aesthetics). By rotating our point of view at a single moment of dramatic illumination, we capture both the shared reality and the separate experiences that compose it.
       The kaleidoscopic power of the computer allows us to tell stories that more truly reflect our turn-of-the-century sensibility. We no longer believe in a single reality, a single integrating view of the world, or even the reliability of a single angle of perception. Yet we retain the core human desire to fix reality on one canvas, to express all of what we see in an integrated and shapely manner. The solution is the kaleidoscopic canvas that can capture the world as it looks from many perspectives—complex and perhaps ultimately unknowable but still coherent.

(p. 178-79) [referring to a hypothetical hypertext story about a suicide:] Only after viewing all the stories, after repeating the mourning process from each of the several viewpoints, would we feel a larger catharsis: not an acceptance of Rob's death, not an understanding of a single consistent composite explanation, but a pervasive sense of an interrelated community with multiple truths. After tracing the multiple contexts for a single act of suicide, we would be left with a tragic vision of the many Robs who had been lost. [ . . . ]

What is more, a digital narrative could capture something we have not been able to fix as clearly in linear formats: not just a tragic hero or a tragic choice but a tragic process.

Marjorie Luesebrink ("M.D. Coverley"), Califia:

JOURNEY NORTH

(To the Reader—Part III)

Our search for the Treasure of Califia continues.
Journey North.
Things fall apart, things fall into place.
As we find new material, updating the old version is a challenged. We have decided to present the details we are finding in the order we discover them. Here in the Night of the Bear, for example, the account of Rosalind Summerland changes a bit—but what can we expect, memories are always in the process of revision. As Kaye is quick to point out, a composite version of the same event is as close as we might come to truth. Even so, the contour of reality is as elusive as the Terrestrial Paradise. —Augusta Summerland, Kaye Beveridge, Calvin

(Augusta's Path > Paradise Loss 5)

[ . . . ] Her death [Violet Summerland's] brings the past alive again, as if her being, possessed once more of its recollections, were free to wander through those spaces once more. She has left the dark tangles where time did not exist, where the past was as obscure as the future. Now, her soul can reclaim its history.

(Kaye's Path > Kaye's Voice 3)

It is not the silence when the train comes to rest that holds the terror for us—out on the high plateau of the Tehachepi. Not the indifferent wind sifting through the ashes. Nor even living amidst the outfall of such events.
        It is the evidence of invisible intersections, star-crossed roads, nexus of unsuspected faults, the probability of earthquake.

Calvin and Kaye alone to Tejon (Calvin's Path: Calvin's Back Yard 5)

The Rock Baby's Works:

All the Sky Coyote's signs were there: the star headdress, the shaman hands, the mirror-image dipper. I think no one was more surprised than Kaye to find this synchronicity of Dance, Data, and Spirit.

The Mystery of the Lost Mine 1 (Kaye's Path > The Lost Mine 1)

        Whenever I awake in the night to the star patterns, I'm always trying to reconcile the evidence with the legends. I have a literal faith in the rumors, anecdotes, innuendoes, and an equally abiding trust in the data and documents. Earthquakes happened. The letters and journals from the Summerland study tell a part of the tale. Spirits talk. As long as they don't contradict each other, is it possible to weave a story that accounts for everything?
        And when we can do that, do we have the truth?

JOURNEY WEST

WindPower Shows (Augusta's Path > Windpower Shows 3)

Calvin knows that if he drew a picture of the years of accident and intrigue, the tragedies of death and deception, the whole long history of the families—after all that, Kramer Milton would only say, so friend, what's your point?

Spirit Steps in the Water (Augusta's Path > Spirit Footprints 2)

        Maybe I need to consider another line of work.
        I did not expect that Calvin would suggest to Kaye that she move in with him. I did not expect that Kaye would mention the words adopting a baby.
        I did not expect to see Mother's footsteps forming in the sand and walking into the surf. I did not expect to understand the way the spirit of the past is always with us.

Spirit Steps in the Water (Augusta's Path > Spirit Footprints 4)

        We stand at the edge of the ocean—no gold, but we are all Coronado's Children.
        Granted we did not find the riches of which we had been told, we found a place in which to search for them.

Braudel, Fernand, The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II, trans. Siân Reynolds (New York: Harper Colophon, 1976)

Hartman, Geoffrey H., "The Voice of the Shuttle: Language from the Point of View of Literature," in Beyond Formalism: Literary Essays 1958-70 (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1970)

Ronnel, Avital, The Telephone Book: Technology, Schizophrenia, Electric Speech (Lincoln: Univ. of Nebraska Press, 1989)