English 651: Writing Hypertext

Keller's Journal
September 30, 1998

Afternoon

I had the interesting experience last class of feeling an almost warm familiarity as I read the introduction to Afternoon outloud.   I hadn't quite expected this. 

As I read and re-read Afternoon, I found myself beginning to pull together a story, or at least a web of relationships even if the story remained elusive.  I found myself again disarmed by the shift of speakers, by the constant need to contextualize a given lexia.  I neglected, at times, to read the titles of the lexias, missing sometimes essential text or clues to speakers or relationships.

I put together a chart of relationships for myself, but I won't add them here until everyone has had a chance to wrestle these out for themselves.   It took me a while to get clear on these.  And in fact, I wish I had made more notes along the way to make sure of my reading.

My conversation with Cooper about the text seemed to me as much an act of construction and discovery as reading itself as we discussed what information we shared from our varied reading experiences.  I have this experience of construction and discovery  to some extent any time I talk to someone else about a book or movie, but because we don't yet know where the "end" is of this text or whether or not we have experienced the same text,  talking about it is different.

I was stuck in a loop last night that I couldn't seem to break from.  I was furious.  I thought if I had to read those same series of lexias one more time I would burst, trying and trying different words to see if they yielded--and not being sure what words I had tried before.  Then a word suddenly yielded and I felt as it I had gone on to "another level," language I would usually use in an electronic game. So it turns out that what gave me the most frustration about reading hypertext also was the central to the pleasure of reading hypertext.  Finding another path provided a sense of relief and provided the satisfaction of getting more information.  I find now that although I am still, in some ways, a frustrated reader,  I want very much to continue reading and find my path through this story.  I am enjoying Joyce's challenge of   "There we match minds."

I also tried a default reading (return, return, etc.) but found at the lexia "I'll call" I was unable to proceed.  Joyce forces you at this lexia to choose a link. Any of the proper names or the word "Datacom" will take you to other lexias.  The rest of the words are dead, leading you to explore, word by word, other possible links.