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4.3. About the Reception The widespread story, which
shows up in many hints, but also in concrete indications and
dates, the detailed, precise and yet poetic language, the
empathy and care the author shows for her characters, the
melodious flow of description - all these are sources of
continuing and, initially, unwavering reading motivation. To
the German reader, the foreign language acts like a veil
which must be pulled away by precise reading and
translation. In toto, this builds up a strange contradiction
between two tendencies: an accelerando of rapid references,
of traversing and wild reading, on the one hand, and a
ritardando of restful pictures and poetic passages unraveled
only in precise discovery. "Quibbling" needs these
qualities, because without such provisions the reader would
soon give up: A lot of patience and reconstruction effort is
required. "If you're not enjoying this, maybe it's because
it hasn't been done very well. Or maybe it's because you
know you could do better," says the author in one of her
footnotes ("arcs/ Jrnls"). "Absolutely not," I would like to
reply, for the separation between authors able to tell
stories and readers liking to read good stories is
preserved, in my opinion. The hypertext theory likes to
refer frequently to the transition of such borders; this may
perhaps succeed in technical and argumentative texts, but in
a literary story? In "Storyspace," there is
the possibility of "linking to the tunnel" by first defining
the point of departure and then the provisional end point
(tunnel) from which the open end may be retrieved later, at
faraway places, and secured at a destination. In
"Quibbling," the reader has a corresponding job: Especially
at the beginning, he or she must store a large number of
unresolved references. We presented some examples, such as
"Cora-come-lately." This means a considerable burden on the
reader, which is aggravated further by the
decontextualization typical of hypertexts, i.e., the
narrative produces a dialog between "her " and "him," or
even without that characterization, without resolving these
contexts later or at all. This gives rise to a cautious,
guessing, groping, reflective type of reading which can be
very tedious in the long run and must be kept going by
surprising details, effects, and linguistic fireworks.
The reader progresses
carefully, reconstructing, carrying along in his baggage the
story he or she already read, and keeping in mind the
unresolved references; in some places he or she gets into
vexing situations, rather similar to the "dazes," and into
sudden reconfigurations, "upside down." Thus, the e-mail
correspondence between Heta and Priam mentions one
"Catherine" (e.g. "Catherine's deep in a project...;" at
that already quoted point where Priam expresses his doubts
as to whether his hypertext will ever be published); she
could be a friend, perhaps another daughter, who knows?
The diligent reader
completing his way through "Priam" will be rewarded at the
lowest level, as we discovered before: Priam, a former
priest, is married to Catherine. However, if one only looks
at the side of the narrative as one would reconstruct it
from the points of view of Heta and Priam, one would never
find out. This reversal of perspective, the front and
viewing side in relation to the side facing away, the side
only implied, constitutes one interesting feature of
reading, perhaps even the philosophy of the whole piece.
In this section about
reception, a comment should be made about the three ways of
reading: Reading by topic and figures, sticking to the given
order; reading by traversing, following the pathways
sketched by the author or the impulses of the reader; and
reading by assembling, which I tested with Angela &
Jacob. The author herself triggers off this experiment
("arcs/ jrnls/ topographic"): "I wonder what would happen to
the story if I changed how I have it organized right now."
So, let us put Jacob & Angela into one box, relinearize
the whole thing into a thread, read and see what
emerges? This is precisely what I
performed; the arrangement, however, was made off screen.
This "joint story" then was subjected to an independent
analysis examining, for instance, what references are
contained in the respective piece of the narrative,
especially whether the respective text furnishes a bracket
combining both persons, a situation or a scene for both, a
description from changing perspectives, such as "Jacob's
hands: So, first of all, the
appearance is described, but then recourse is made to a
sensation which is associated with Angela ("His hands feel
good to her body"); consequently, this text can also be read
as a description originating from Angela. Such
"commonalities" and combining brackets can be found in 29
out of the 44 boxes selected (18 for Jacob; 26 for Angela).
This documents the great extent to which this narrative is a
story about a common relationship; i.e., combining these
person boxes in one relationship box is justified.
But the question raised by
Caroline Guyer went a bit further, asking whether such
pooling would be able to entail a different story. In
accordance with my reception experience, this is not the
case; no other story results, but the resulting story has a
different emotional flavor inasmuch as reading the "combined
version" emphasizes the closeness of the relationships among
persons as well as their limits. For instance, it is
mentioned in "for Jacob" how Angela once wanted to go beyond
the merely purposeful, rational aspects of giving presents,
which Jacob had been satisfied with, and bought him a
necklace made of pieces of horn which had the elegant
movements of a snake. To make her feel good, he wears the
necklace a few times, but that was all the emotion Angela
was able to observe. It's my thesis that the
experience of readers with fragmenting and cutting has
advanced far enough for the text, at least for the case of
Angela & Jacob analyzed here, to be presented also as
one train from which the reader would pick those parts which
belong together. It could even be imagined that all theme
boxes be dyed in some color (suggestions for these shades of
color are found in the "Notes"), that all pieces of text be
written on filing cards, put into a box, and the reader then
literally should pick and read the story. What would be the
result? What would a reader miss in the paper case which a
reader of a hypertext would have? The link. So, what is
furnished by technology? |