Believe I may have finished Afternoon, A Story, the hypertext by Michael Joyce. I say "may have" because in truth I do not know. Every now and then a new line comes up, and I follow it until it circles around again.
I am not a good reader of this sort of interactive novel. My natural mode is directionally dysfunctional so I never know just where I am, or where I am heading. I roll along. When the familiar becomes too much so, I flee.
The prose is lyric quality. Fragments just like those I spoke of earlier this morning; turning to poetry. Time transcended by clicks that bring me forward, backward, deeper, then pull me out and back into the diner having coffee with Werth. I don’t think I ever know exactly what has happened, except there is a lot of pain.
What then, is my understanding? I think it is that I may never, and Joyce’s characters may never too.
The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology