As someone who has studied a lot of literature, I found Shelley Jackson’s article interesting. While I do recognize parts of it were hard to follow, Jackson makes some interesting suggestions regarding storytelling. Maybe it helps that I am familiar with Mary Shelley and the idea of nested and non-linear storytelling. Hypertext engages a reader much like a mystery. Except instead of waiting for the character to find the clue or open the door, the readers are the ones who much explore the remaining of the text and put it together. In a way, it is an advanced and modernized ‘chose your own adventure’ book. How much one gets from the hypertext is up to them.

There are some advantages and disadvantages of this. Because the writer has chosen to take an interactive approach to their story, they run the risk of readers becoming disengaged and unmotivated to follow the ongoing narrative. Jackson certainly recognizes that this is a risk but doesn’t really care. In her mind, this type of interactive fiction is the best way to share a story and ultimately motivate someone to break from her work to create something inspired from it. Jackson even goes as far to suggest traditional novels and storytelling can be hurtful to the reader. I feel like the following quote best summarizes her argument for this style of writing:

“This is the old kind of interactive writing: writing so dense or so slippery that the mind must do a dance to keep a grip on it. I am interesting in writing this way for two reasons. One, because language must be teased into displaying its entire madcap lavish beauty. If you let it be serviceable then it will only service you, never mast you, and you will only write about what you know, which is not much. Two, because the careful guarding of sense in language is not just analogous to but entirely complicit in the careful guarding of sense in life, and that possibly well-intention activity systematically squelches curiously, change, variety, & finally, all delight in life. It promotes common sense at the expense of all the others.”

Is Frankenstein a man? Is Patchwork a female? Yes and no. Is Hypertext literature? Good question. Jackson puts forth a compelling and cautionary argument for interactive storytelling. As we spend more and more time online, hypertext and its alternatives must be considered by storytellers. The risk and benefits it offers are ultimately something a creator must explore before investing their message in that media.

For what it’s worth, I think Mary would have been into it.