Reading hyperfictions: exploring the storyweb
Differing from Newton and Schopenhauer, your ancestors did not think of time as absolute and uniform. he believed in an infinite series of times, in a dizzily growing, ever spreading network of diverging, converging and parallel times. (Borges: The Garden of Forking Paths,, p. 91)[13]
Usually an analysis of a literary work would proceed from a summary of the plot or story related in the work. This, naturally, is difficult to do with a hyperfiction product, since in theory there are as many stories as there are readings of them. In addition, with hyperfictions one needs to take into consideration the actual program or authoring tool that has made the rendering of the hypertextual structure possible - in this case the authoring tool and program Storyspace that to my knowledge is one of the most widespread creative writing tools on the hypertext authoring market[14]. Since this program is the physical interface between scriptor and reader, evidently its abilities as a 'storymaker' is put to a test during a reading, as well as its actual 'contents', the storyweb itself.
The references to labyrinths that occur in both afternoon and Victory Garden are appropriate [15]. Moving through these hyperfictions is in many ways like making your way through a labyrinth where you find yourself passing certain 'squares' or key-sequences more often than others, as if all paths in the labyrinth inevitably lead to these, one way or another. However, as in the labyrinth, even though you cross specific places ever so often, no trail or 'square' takes you straight to the entrance - or the exit - of the text.
It is worth noting that a storyweb is just one labyrinth, in the sense that the reader is not presented with a number of stories completely separated from each other, but with a number of optional variations or versions of a core-plot and scenario, some of which exclude each other, since the events taking place in one version will be found to be incompatible with the course of events in other readings. Thus, the reader rather quickly discovers that a few 'miniature-narratives' are embedded in almost every reading, consisting of a number of key-scenes that are comprised in either one lexia or in a number of sequentially connected lexias, key-trails. These key-scenes or lexias present a number of characters whose personalities appear to maintain a certain nucleus of stability (by which I mean that one's impression of their personality does not change significantly from reading to reading).
Evidently, reading afternoon or Victory Garden to the point when one feels that the story-web has been fully explored or tentatively exhausted, takes several readings[16]. Furthermore, both products offer the reader the possibility of a 'linear' reading by providing him with the opportunity of just 'turning pages' by using the 'Return'-key. These readings are supposed to provide the reader with a more 'conventional' story-line and, in addition, visits to some of the 'highlights' of the web.
In whichever way one has chosen to do it, when the reader has worked his way through the key-scenes in the storyweb (once or several times) the reader will eventually end up with a sense of the nature of the relationships between the characters and a sense of 'who' they are. One might say that as reader one has 'exhausted' the storyweb: you have reached a point where you find that you have read all there is to read or all you want to read. Although there is no closure of the narrative fragments found in the storyweb and although no 'conclusion' is possible to draw, one is left with a feeling of having 'closed' the reading(s) in the sense that one feels that the links (between lexias) and relationships (between characters) it is possible to discover have been discovered. In other words, the reader will have drawn a more or less complete (mental) map of the storyweb as the readings of the hyperfiction draw to an end, similar to the way a 'mapping out' of a labyrinth would ultimately make it possible for the lost person to find his way out. Accordingly, towards the end of the reading process, some kind of 'websummary' in the form of a rough 'mapping' of the relations and characters featuring in the storyweb should be feasible.
In other aspects, the exploration of the storyweb initially closely resembles playing a computer game. Commencing a new game often includes a 'start-up'-phase where you become familiar with the structure of the entire 'thing', as you try out the various options provided and generally learn how to 'make your way around things' (using legal and illegal shortcuts etc.). Similarly, the novice reader or first reading is as much an exploration of the possibilities Storyspace offers as an actual 'reading'. Similarly, one spends the first time around 'getting to know' the characters (e.g. figuring out who 'I', 'she' etc. may be), making sense of who is speaking when and who is related to whom in which way. The second and following readings are more focused, as one now quickly recognises the trails one is following and tries to find new ones, that might describe what happens to the characters (or in a story) 'later'; or elaborate on the relationships between 'favourite' characters; or describe events whose consequences have surfaced in previous lexias. In this sense, subsequent readings of a storyweb to an extent also resemble the 'purposeful reading' of a computergame, since you as reader find yourself consciously heading for the places in the storyweb where you can 'pick up' information that can add another piece to the putting together of the jigsaw puzzle (i.e. the final 'map' of the storyweb), employing as many tricks as possible on the way to avoid visiting the same lexias as before.
afternoon is one of the earliest pieces of hyperfiction writing and as such has acquired an almost transdiscursive status, being one of the first works of fiction that tried to translate into practice the emerging 'poetics' of hyperfiction writing [17] . Elsewhere Joyce himself says of this work, that
I wanted quite simply, to write a novel that would change in successive readings and to make those changing versions according to the connections that I had for some time naturally discovered in the process of writing and that I wanted my readers to share. (Joyce, Of Two Minds, p. 31)
In the storyweb of afternoon, one encounters Peter (a sensitive writer), Wert (a company owner, 'a man of the world'), Wert's wife, Lolly ('the unhappily married psychiatrist') and Peter's and Wert's shared mistress Nausicaa ('the mysterious woman'). Peter's ex-wife also appears at random, although mostly reflected through Peter's point of view. Scattered throughout the lexias of the web, the reader meets the voices of all these people and through this polyphony of voices, their thoughts about themselves or others, their reflections on or descriptions of the events taking place in other lexia; the reader is able to draw his 'own' mental map of the way these people are related to and feel about each other.