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Summary 3 From Snyder, Ilana. ‘Reconceiving Reading and
Writing’. Hypertext : the electronic
labyrinth. Carlton South, Vic. :
Melbourne University Press, 1996
Books are written to be read in the order set out by
the author. The author is strictly the producer and the reader the consumer. In
the age of manuscripts, scribes frequently altered what they copied, the
distinction between authors and readers were not so significant. It was the
invention the printing press that strengthened the authority if the author.
Hypertext and contemporary literary theory, however, infringes upon the power of
the writer by removing some of that power and granting it to the reader. The
reader can choose his or her way through the metatext, to annotate text written
by others and to create links between documents written by others. Consequently
the reader becomes an active, independent and autonomous constructor of meaning.
Landow
suggests that there are more than one way to kill an author. Firstly, by denying
autonomy to the text and secondly by decentering the text or by transforming it
into a network. With hypertext, it is the reader who integrates the multiple and
scattered parts into a whole. The process resembles what Claude Levi-Strauss
calls bricolage, which is the construction of something out of whatever
materials are available. It is difficult to read books subversively because the
technology itself works against the reader’s aggressive appropriation of the
text. The computer, however, makes concrete the important act of reading as
interpretation and challenges the reader to engage the author for control of the
writing space.
REVIEW 3 This
article shows how the print media restricted readers to become passive readers.
Now with the electronic era, readers are now able to become active readers and
participate in ‘writing’ the text. This
article was mainly an attempt to show how hypertext realizes the ‘writerly
text’ proposed by Barthes. It brought in theories from many other post-structuralists
such as Foucault, Nietzsche, Derrida, Iser and Fish. All these theorists support
the idea that the production of meaning lies with the reader and not the author.
It is said that the reader can
choose to follow paths that interest him or her and in this way the reader
produces meaning. It can be counter-argued that all the links are provided by
the author himself, therefore the meaning is already there, pre-provided by the
author. The author can also choose
what to hyperlink and this limits what the reader can read. When the author
exerts control over what is read, then the author is present in the text unlike
Barthes idea that the author is ‘dead’ in the text. SUMMARY 4 From Snyder, Ilana. ‘Reconceiving Reading and
Writing’. Hypertext : the electronic
labyrinth. Carlton South, Vic. :
Melbourne University Press, 1996 Readers of print narratives usually begin on the first page and even though they may move backwards and forwards, generally proceed through the text to the end. By contrast, most hyperfiction have no single beginning or end. The possibilities for readers to create their own stories are considerably greater in hyperfiction than when reading a print narrative or Choose-Your-Own-Adventure, both of which have highly visible beginnings and endings, as well as other structural limitations.
There have been literary
precursors of hyperfiction such as Tristram Shandy and Ulysses. Such texts
simultaneously invite and confirm reader-interaction. In Tristram Shandy, Sterne
dislocates and distorts the order in an otherwise simple story to create a
complex plot. He subverts the conventions of printed texts by leaving a page
empty to invite readers to a few words of response to his text. Tristram, the
narrator in the book, thus involves his readers in the very making of the book.
Sterne only pretend to offer his readers the opportunity to take part in the
construction of the book, hypertext can demand that the reader participate.
Bolter notes that the electronic medium gives a stronger sense of the author
‘being there’. The author is present in the electronic network of episodes
that he or she creates. REVIEW 4
This article shows that there have been attempts to deconstruct the book.
However, since books are bounded by the front and back covers, it is difficult
but still possible to deconstruct the book with examples such as Tristram Shandy
and Choose-Your Adventure stories. These books encourage active reading by
providing for missing links, annotating it and choosing your own path to follow.
Hypertext realizes all these to a greater extent because the electronic
environment is not constrained by a front and back cover. It is constrained only
by the hardware or software used. Writers have greater freedom to exploit the
space and they need not limit themselves to a central theme. With decentering
many themes can be written without the text sounding incoherent.
Bolter argues that the author is present in the text. This contrasts with
Barthes’ notion of death of the
author with the onset of a writerly text. The author is still present because
the links or networks are provided and manipulated by the author . For example, Joyce’s Afternoon is not an aleatory, random fiction because
its author exercises control over the choices his reader can make. Afternoon can
be a linear story, because occasionally only one path leads from one episode. At
other times, it gives its reader dozens of choices, although they are far from
random. Therefore, its arguable whether the reader produces meaning when the author manipulates how the text is to be read.
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