I find it funny that Shelly Jackson even talks about “the project of writing.” Because I don’t think she quite gets it. Moreover, I thought her comment about hypertext being schizophrenic was ironic, considering that’s what I thought of her writing. The best? “In hypertext, you can’t find out what’s important so you have to pay attention to everything.” Well, Shelly, that’s how I felt reading this. It was all over the place.
I think what she’s trying to do is “beautify” the concept of writing in hypertext language. I’m all for analogies, symbolism and a good working vocabulary when it comes to reading literature, but I’m just not sure I see all the dots connecting with Jackson’s piece. (And maybe that’s the whole point.) I did like how she says:
“Works of words are self-portraits too, substitute bodies we put together, then look to for encouragement.”
I think she’s trying to say that anything we do can be a form of art (including perhaps this article?). So even though we may be using words, or hypertext, we are forming it ourselves to design something even bigger and hoping to get praise from others for our talent. So I get what she’s saying. But I think she may need to take her superfluous comparisons and vocabulary somewhere else, NOT in an article that tries to describe hypertext language. Your imagination is great, Shelley, just not sure if this is the place for it.
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