“Stitch Bitch” by Shelley Jackson from “Rethinking Media Change” was an interesting piece of reading. From all the comments I heard and read about I thought it was really going to be a pain in the butt having to read this chapter. But I must confess that it was indeed an interesting read. Jackson’s “essay”,(though the author may not like to call it that, being so traditional a term) was a roller coaster.
Right at the outset I got a feeling that there was something schizophrenic about the whole thing. But as I read through it became clear to me that there was more anarchy than just schizofreny there. In fact I would think of hypertext as anarchic writing than “normal” prose. Jackson makes no bones about that in the essay. She states that boldly when she says: “Hypertext is non-linear almost by default”, and “Write about anything that interests you, no matter how sniffy the world gets.” I read in between the lines that there is no need to respect the feelings of other people, but just express yourself. Self-expression, therefore is the maxim, the ultimate goal. I find it difficult to accept that – may be because I tend to be a self-disciplined person, living within the boundaries, wanting to live in a disciplined world. Is that limiting myself? Not really! It is not that I don’t value self-expression, but what I mean to say is that it should not come at the expense of hurting people. Jackson sounds provocative, and anarchic, to say the least.
My thinking was confirmed when I came across the lines: “Hypertext is schizophrenic: you can’t tell what is original and what’s the reference” But to me it looks like that the form is schizophrenic and the content is anarchic. In this essay Jackson does give us a very good picture of what hypertext is. She says further that good writing is clear and orderly; bad writing inspires the same kind of distaste that bad grooming does, while experimental novels are not just hard to read, they’re anti-social.” And many would consider hypertext to be bad writing. I get a feeling that the section “Writing Mutt” kind of gives you a mug shot of who Shelley Jackson is, or what she is doing while promotes hypertext with “Stitch Bitch”.
Jackson is very precise when she says that hypertext is fuzzy, you can’t figure out what is important and what is not in hypertext. “Normally when you read you can orient yourself by a few important facts and let the details fall where they may.” But not with hypertext. She hits home in describing hypertext, and the comparison she makes with the “normal text” when she says: “There’s no question that hypertext will lose or never acquire those readers for whom a fated slalom toward the finish line is the defining literary experience; hypertext’s not built for that.”
Jackson is an advocate for freedom of expression, flights of fancy. And that is beautifully expressed when she ays that she finds delight in texts that loiter, dawdle, tease, pass notes. She prefers texts that resist the linear, and even pervert it. Further, she says “Language is the Great Unruly, and alphabetical order is a contradiction in terms.” She seems to be like a little kid who has just received the first packet of crayons, and wants to express herself with that no matter where, and not matter what the expression is.
Hypertext apparently is quite anarchic. Jackson further confirms that by saying where her interests lie: “I am interested in writing that verges on nonsense, where nonsense is not the absence of sense, but the superfluity of it. I would like to sneak as close to that limit as possible without reaching it.” However there is good news there in what she says. She hopes and expects to see beauty in hypertextual writing. “Art forms take shape around our ability to perceive beauty, but our ability to perceive beauty also takes shape around what forms become possible. Hypertext is making possible a new kind of beauty, and creating the senses to perceive it with.” May be more reading of hypertext will help me one day to perceive beauty in it. And will I ever start writing hypertext? But I don’t really want to inebriate myself with hypertextual concoctions: “A beaker of imaginal secretions makes us all desire’s monsters, which is what we ought to be”, concluded Jackson. That is not what I want to be!