Before the results relating to contents will be communicated, three prior aspects will be discussed: The time spent for reading, language, reading motivation and strategy. The narrative will be demonstrated by two quotations from the text. A few data about the time spent and some subtotals are reflected in Table 1. The 104 hours shown are the time documented; some "off-line time," such as reading on the train, escaped documentation. The 104 hours thus represent a minimum estimate for the total of 17 explorations; on the other hand, this is a relatively high value compared to earlier reading evaluations.

The subtotals for the person boxes cannot be compared directly. Thus, the nine and a half hours for "Heta" include not only the time for getting accustomed to the setup, but also the expense involved in learning to understand the type of narration. Moreover, the style of reading was varied; normally, reading was accompanied by rather close documentation (the 17 explorations gave rise to 36 pages of text); after some familiarization, however, I also deliberately neglected documentation, for normally you read a novel without a memo pad. This is where, in my opinion, a question arises which is critical to "Quibbling," namely whether it is possible to manage the variety of relationships " in one's brain alone."

The extensive documentation, of course, is also owed to the language. With this literary style of American English, any non-native speaker has to overcome high hurdles. Especially for this reason, sufficient time had to be reserved for reading. On the other hand, it is precisely the language, the way in which characters and their relationships are described, and the poetic tone occasionally verging on the hermetic, which sustain reading motivation. Nevertheless, the expense is quite high. The 662 boxes produce approximately 200 printed pages.

The amount of time spent is also indicative of the type of reading; it is not (only) reading for private pleasure, it is not an individual, even personal reading process (which would require no documentation); instead, the reading process is to explore paradigmatic moments of interactive literature, which makes it a piece of comparative media research.

The figures in Table 1 also refer to the reading strategy. As mentioned above, "Heta" marked the beginning; this was followed by the thematic boxes of the other characters and by "lake" and "prairie," and also by the texts in "arcs." Taken together, this represents reading by topics. Next, the other styles of reading referred to above were tried out, namely traversing (guided by the author and self-controlled), and assembling, which was practiced especially with Angela & Jacob (as explained in Section 4.3).

But first of all, I thought, I had to be clear in my mind about the "structure of time and events" of the whole story. Consequently, all boxes were re-read, and their content was fixed in small paragraphs (this was practically the second reading), and these bits of paper were arranged and pasted on to two sheets of kraft paper (75 cm x 100 cm). Establishing this "time structure" took more than fifteen hours; the phase to "mind map" all the parts and their relations, preceding the first "guided tour", alone required nearly an hour and a half.

Grand total = 104 h ->before February 25, 1998 = 53 h; 38 min ->after that date = 50 h; 15 min

Heta (74 boxes)	09 h, 21 min
Hilda (57)	02 h, 05 min
Agnes (31)	02 h, 10 min
Angela (31)	01 h, 46 min
Priam (62)	02 h, 05 min (without the cellaress")
Cy (20)	Not documented
Will (42)	03 h, 52 min
Jacob (26)	not shown separately
"Time structure"	15 h, 25 min

Table 1: Documented amounts of time spent (reading, note taking, analyses).

All this implied that I already knew the boxes and texts marked on the "guided tour;" but I wanted to fully assess the associative leaps, for Carolyn Guyer herself says that the links she had established had resulted from her own repeated readings.  

Thus, one implication of the reading strategy pursued is that "reading by traversing," which is often theoretically claimed for hypertexts because, allegedly, it goes a long way to guarantee the freedom of the reader, in my case was just an excursion on well trodden paths. Although I started the first reading sequence as a "guided tour," I stopped it after approximately one hour because I could no longer manage the large number of characters and relationships.  

At least two quotations from the text will be shown in order to draw attention to the language of "Quibbling" and the tone of narration and, at the same time, lead into the results with respect to contents, which will be discussed below. The first example is one of the four descriptions of Angela's way of moving and walking: "Angela walks" (the title text):

The way she walks, open and slightly flailing, the parts of her flying out and back as she goes. Like an 11-year-old closely anticipant of puberty but still retaining fragments of the thoughtless charm of a 9-year-old. Her children loved her to walk with them, which she did often, shopping, hiking, "chaperoning" field trips with their classmates. Her style was recognizable to them. They knew what it meant to walk like that.  

The other example, the part from the beginning about the story of Margret & Henry ("Impasto"), is a lyrical story the inspiration for which Priam took from a medieval event and which enabled him to consider his own relationships:

It was her sleeve, rolled and secured at the elbow, draping and redraping as she tied the grain upright in bundles. The way the light, in deep afternoon angle, dust-filled from the day's labor, laid bright impasto across the cream fabric, the long, rolling roundnesses echoing her forearm. Henry turned frequently to watch Margaret embrace the grain he cut, pull it to her, holding it in place while she started the wrap. They worked together in long rhythms, not speaking, but occasionally singing some favorite hymn of the lay sisters at the abbey.

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