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| Espen J. Aarseth |
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Aarseth takes our discussion to places it needs to go; the fact that he does so by changing the rules and boundaries of the game I might normally think of as a kind of cheating, but I'm intrigued by what he's doing here; there may not be another way of doing it. Whereas I found Douglas and Johnson-Eola refreshing after Landow and Joyce, neither gave me much new to think about. Aarseth gives me lots of new stuff to think about, partially because he creates lots of new stuff and partially because he combines things in ways I haven't considered before. |
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The idea that hypertexts like Afternoon give us less freedom of choice as readers than the codex, rather than more, is compelling, one of those things that should have been obvious to me but wasn't. | |
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Why, by the way, does he use Afternoon as a prime example? Given his penchant for going where our other readings haven't, I'm disappointed by the time he spends with Afternoon; I kind of expected him to go elsewhere. |
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And why doe he use Moby Dick as the example of a "standard narrative work"? Seems very odd. I can think of dozens of more "standard" narratives. The alternating juxtaposition of chapters in Melville raises its own issues about linearity and writer–reader relationship. Given the number of other "texts" he uses in this study, why only one "standard narrative work" and why this one? | |
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Interesting distincts between fiction and narrative (84-5). | |
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"Some might reject a text like Michael Joyce's Afternoon as a matter of taste, but when it is rejected as a matter of principle, the suspicion arises that Afternoon is telling us something that we do not like to hear and that, therefore, might be well worth listening to" (82). Yup. |
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His discussion of Deadline as "autistic" is interesting; one of the primary theories about autism is what's known in psychopathology as "theory of mind" theory. Aarseth give no indication that he's aware of the prominence of this theory among autism researchers, but much of what he describes in interesting in that context. I have to think about this some more. | |
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"Hypertext is certainly a new way of writing (with active links), but is it truly a new way of reading?"(78). This rings true to me, mostly because of something Chris said several weeks ago about the work he's been doing. |
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For all of his taking others to task for incomplete or self-serving definitions, his seem less than satisfactory in spots. However, I see a lot to build on here; his gaps are promising. | |
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Mar 31 2002 |
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