Another interesting point brought up at yesterday’s Writers’ Festival, and clearly evidenced by these last three posts, is the mechanical orientation of reading text.
Brought up in his lecture on Hypertext Media, Steve Ersinghaus once again displayed his ability to twist your head loose a bit just when you thought it was screwed back on tightly. Using a children’s picture and text book as an example, he illustrated both the normal manner of reading a book following pages in a left to right progression, and the normal child’s tendency as well to go back and forth following memorized pages of higher interest. Linear progression is often not as vital in children’s literature, but while we may flip back in the midst of a novel for clarification—was that Bruce who raped Wendy back in high school or was it Randy, his buddy?—and discounting those who simply must read the last couple pages or dabble nosily within the middle seeking just a taste to tempt the mind, the sequence is the intent of the author. Flashbacks are carefully planned within. Hypertext, on the other hand, leads you off into a direction other than your fellow readers, and my fear of missing something or not being able to assemble the parts into a whole is one of the reasons I may be muleing around about the method.
But with the weblog, right here, every day, millions of people globally are sometimes being forced to read differently than we’ve been taught in our childhood. While every site, as John Timmons pointed out, is hypertext in action as we click away on links, weblogging presents another format, and I must admit, one that has kind of irked my natural sense of order since blog day #2. Reading from top to bottom, and scrolling rather than flipping a page, we are also subject to the disruption of storyline in the way posts are entered. Latest post on top, reading down, and then STOP! We’ve read the next one already. If you follow a particular topic covered by many posts, it would be a case of scroll down, find a starting point, read top to bottom, scroll up a post, read top to bottom, scroll up a post, etc. Likewise, every time we return to a particular weblog the first “page” has changed, leaving us with a new beginning point every time, even though it is the starting point. Flipping back (there is no “ahead” from this starting point) is a process of going through archives or categories, where again, page sequence follows an upside-down kind of chronology.
Sounds like a simple thing, and yet, if you think about it, it has overturned centuries of tradition. Who’da thunk that reading would be open to change?
The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology
Sepaking of hypertext, Charles Deemer at The Writing Life has been into this for quite a while. Here’s a list of his hypertext works, and if you click on the bio, there’s a little more info on the form.
festivals
So, the festival is completed. Ernie Dorling had some nice grit and a strong messages about truth in non-fiction. Colin McEnroe gave a splendid talk on memoir with engaging and sincere discussion, and Professors Hamilton, Brown, and Abbot gave each…
Thanks Joe. I do go into The Writing Life but oddly enough never checked the hypertext. I’ve bookmarked it for closer inspection.
Very interesting point. Certainly isn’t anything that I’d thought about. Like many internet junkies I read quite a bit online. Whether it before for work, personal research, pleasure, etc. I have noticed that I’ve become more accustomed to reading it bits and pieces. It now takes a huge concerted effort to sit still long enough to read page after page in a book. Hmm.