Untitled - witz cultural

217RECONFIGURINGNARRATIVE"With a bomb l" said Dwight."You need to love me a lot more," said Johnette.And so it goes. Each variation introduces a different weapon, a different betrayal,as Utrarnundane explores how "a fictional text must be stretched,skewered, and sliced if it is to exploit the freedoms and accept the responsibilitiesoffered by hypertext technology and its new writing spaces." Thus, onthe first Tuesday a friend stands at the foot of their bed with a gun, on the firstWednesday the hero's hair has all fallen out, and on Sunday Dwight returnsto find their home on fire. Like afi.emoon, The Late-Nite Maneuvers ofthe Utramundanecombines into different naratives, many about sex and violence,producing effects according to the route one follows through it. Otherwise,this web, whose tone and content suggest the influence of Coover's print fiction,contrasts entirely with ]oycek work. My point here is not that one shouldprefer either the crystalline richness and emotional intensity of aftemoonto McHarg's PoMo playful, removed sense of literature as its own laboratoryor that Ultramundane is in some way more hypertextual. Rather, I wish toemphasize that, like print fiction, that produced in the form of linked lexiascan take many forms.In some the author compounds her or his power; in others, such as thatexemplified by Carolyn Guyerk Quibbling, the author willingly shares it withreaders. Similarly, in some fictional webs, such as ofiemoon, readers constructor discover essentially one main narrative; in others, like Semio-Surf,Freak Show, or Ultramundqne, one comes upon either a cluster of entirely separatestories, or else one finds narrative segments out of which one weavesone or more of them. A third opposition appears between those stories that,however allusive, consist largely of fictional lexias, and those like PotchworkGirl and Semio-Surt that weave together theory and nonfiction materials withthe narrative. A fourth such opposition separates fictional hypertext entirelyderived from the author's "own" writing and those, like Patchwork Girl andStuart Moulthrop's Forking Paths,that their authors wrote to varying degreesin the interstices of other works.Hypertext narrative clearly takes a wide range of forms best understoodin terms of a number of axes, including those formed by degrees or ratios of(1) reader choice, intervention, and empowerment, (2) inclusion of extralinguistictexts (images, motion, sound), (3) complexity of network stmcture,and (4) degrees of multiplicity and variation in literary elements, such as plot,characterization, setfing, and so forth. Following the lead of Deleuze andGuattari, I prefer to think of the organizing strucLures in terms of ranges,