It strikes me that in this novel and probably others of the hypertext format are written (or read?) in a stream of consciousness manner. Not only the randomness, the flow of the choice of the paths from one text box to another, but each text box itself seems to be a self-standing thought.
(Ham on arrows)
I stood on empty unprecedented ground. On the journey here, I’d tried to mark my mother’s driving for landmarks, but signs were rare, vague. I looked up, down. There is only one direction: the one followed, spacetime’s direction, the one pointed at (to) by the tips of your shoes. I could take ten steps, circle back, go the other way, but either case, that way is always ahead of me along the world line of time’s arrow.
I felt the enormity of space, the enormity of fear. I learned then that absurdity (illogic) had size, a spatial quality. I felt the earth and time clicking under my sneaker soles. A distant crow’s call tunneled through space, becoming a thick and exotic projectile. I had the urge to duck.
As part of the narrative structure (at least the story line I followed), these are Ham’s thoughts as he is left on his own in the woods, his mother having driven away. But it is also a commentary on physical space, a question of our concepts of measuring space and time, and movements within it. This text box has then, two questions: 1) what does Ham do next, and 2) what is real, what is not, can we decipher it given the tools we know how to use.
Of course there’s the nature of hypertext in that both questions are in reality, an and/or problem, as with the ability to backtrack we can take a path, change our minds or follow it to a point, go back, follow another, therefore, following both.
I’m reading for story (and damned glad I have a couple Faulkner’s under my belt) and yet the possibilities still whisper "me, me!" "no, me, take me!"
The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology