Week 3 Blog Post: A Summarized Essay on Hyperfiction

Where is all the Hypertext Fiction in this Digital Age?

A Hypertext Essay by Nicole Basaraba

Last term (Fall 2013) I wrote a paper titled “Where is all the Hypertext Fiction in this Digital Age?” because looking at the potential of current multimedia technologies and the increased market for e-books, I wondered why is hypertext fiction not dominating at the bestseller lists?

Our reading this week by Jill Walker Rettberg gives a nice overview of the history of electronic literature. She outlines five categories of e-literature and my paper was inspired by the “canon”, which is hypertext fiction repeatedly taught and cited in colleges and universities.

Through my research for the paper, I found several reasons why hypertext is not more prominent in e-books today including: technical design issues, copyright laws, digital rights management, and issues with ‘stocking’ e-books. But there are also more foundational issues, which are:

·     the phenomenological experience of reading print books,

·     remediating the book metaphor & the web space, and

·     issues with narrative form (e.g. plot).

The phenomenological experience

People often state that they prefer to read print books because of the feel and smell of the book – the phenomenological experience. Publishers have mastered the print format. The act of clicking when reading hypertext impacts the phenomenological immersion in narrative fiction and it results in impatience often experienced when surfing the Internet (Mangen, 2008). We have yet to discover the best way to give readers an equally pleasant phenomenological experience with e-books.

Remediating the book metaphor & the web space

Historically, the word “book” meant the collection of papyrus and so how can we define an e-book when there is no paper?

Hypertext books are “an attempt to overcome the limitations of paper books by adding a series of useful features made possible through the nature of the electronic environment” (Crestani, Landoni, & Melucci, 2005, p. 193). The book metaphor has been used for e-book creation because it is already familiar to writers, readers and publishers. The book metaphor includes having a linear structure, page numbers, margins, covers, and other qualities of this universally recognized format.

Hypertext writers went beyond the book metaphor by introducing chunk-style or puzzle-like stories. Wardrip-Fruin (2004) says that the definition of hypertext has become synonymous with “chunk-style media” because most authors of hypertext fiction and poetry used link-based formats. Thus, there is a need to distinguish the hypertext not only from the book metaphor, but also from the conventions of the World Wide Web.

Issues with narrative form

The hypertext book with its deviating linear structure can cause the reader to get lost and decrease their investment in the story. It can leave the reader feeling fatigued and unsatisfied at the end (Landow, 1992). Non-linear hypertext writing was also a challenge for authors. Coover notes that, “the author has a fear of loosing control of the story because it becomes an obligation to write so many different directions of the story” (as cited in Landow, 1992, p. 119).

One of the well-cited examples of a hypertext narrative is Patchwork Girl by Shelly Jackson published in 1995 by Eastgate Systems using Storyspace software. The narrative offers two paths that the reader can move back and forth between, “until finally the narrative settles into a long sequence of lexias, each with only one possible link” (Hackman, 2011, p. 94). Hackman (2011) argues that even as a hypertext book, the story relies on print conventions: “characteristics of wholeness and permanence associated with paper and print, and the materiality of paper as a metaphor for the patchworked body of the creature” (p. 102). Therefore, one of the first-generation examples of hyperfiction does not go too far beyond familiar linear narrative convention of the print book.

The new medium calls for new literary forms. In this case, would the hypertext book become more successful if new narrative conventions were established for the digital medium?

Concluding thoughts

Landow (1992) determined that hypertextual narrative’s defining qualities are: “its non- or multilinearity, its multi-vocality, and its inevitable blending of media and modes, particularly its tendency to marry the visual and the verbal” (p. 103). So far, instead of concentrating on the multimedia aspects, most authors have concentrated on the effects the hypertext format will have on the linear narrative (Landow, 1992).

The hypertext book has not yet been able to embrace the new digital media in a way that offers added value for readers. Writers, publishers and e-books designers need to look beyond the non-linear and hyperlinking aspects to find the best ways to create a narrative and design a hypertext that results in a positive phenomenological experience for readers.

If you're interested, you can read the full paper (including supplementary videos and complete reference list) here: http://nicolebasaraba.com/hypertext-fiction-digital-age/

Please be kind in the comments, this was an exploratory paper.

Crestani, F., Landoni, M., & Melucci, M. (2005). Appearance and functionality of electronic

books: Lessons from the Visual Book and Hyper-TextBook projects. International

Journal on Digital Libraries, 6(2), 192-209.

Hackman, P. (2011). “I am a Double Agent”: Shelly Jackson’s Patchwork Girl and the persistence of print in the age of hypertext. Contemporary Literature, 52(1), 84-107.

Landow, G. P. (1992). Hypertext: The Convergence of Contemporary Critical Theory and Technology. Maryland: The Johns Hopkins University Press.

Mangen. A. (2008). Hypertext Fiction Reading: Haptics and immersion. Journal of Research in Readings, 31(4), 404-419.