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How Do I Cool Down the Overheated Medium? Reading Stuart Moulthrop's Hegirascope 2, "the most typical hypernovel"
dichtung-digital |
How
Do I Cool Down the Overheated Medium?
Reading Stuart
Moulthrop's Hegirascope 2,
"the most typical hypernovel"
Hegirascope
appears to be structurally disorderly due to its
disorienting hyperlinks and discomforting temporal
pull. We suggest that, to grasp
Hegirascope's structure, the first step is
to stop it from running automatically. Once the
temporal pull comes to a halt, one is able to sort
through the content space for narrative threads and
non-narrative units. The paper also illustrates the
distinctive use of hyperlinks and color tricks,
instances that exhibit the fluidity of digital
materiality. This maneuvering of links and colors
reveals Stuart Moulthrop's meticulous organization,
which further posits that order is buried in
the disorder of the apparent "narrative
confetti." Hegirascope incorporates
non-verbal (visual and interactive) elements into
the narrative, in ways resonating with one of the
print prototype--Laurence Sterne's Tristram
Shandy. Based on this observation, the paper
contends that Hegirascope is "the most
typical hypernovel in digital literature," echoing
Victor Shklovsky's statement that Tristram
Shandy is "the most typical novel in world
literature."
1. "These words
are not the same": A Novel Phenomenon
2. Mis-Reading?
3. "What if the word will not be still?" vs. "How
Do I Stop This Thing?"
Or How Do I Cool Down the Overheated Medium?
4. Bad News or "Good news about the end of the
world"?
5. Distinctive Use of Links
6. Fact-Fictionality
7. The Most Typical Hypernovel
8. The Net-Line Hybridity
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