Untitled - witz cultural

230Choo$e a link ond proceed to its destinationnoz -> nooctopi -> octopiues -) ues f,ruinter -> rxinterpoetrg -> poetruessence -> lhe e$sence ofru...shrapnel -> shrapnelmonning neu -> moaningf try to recall winter. < As if il were yesterday? > she says, but I do not signify oneway or ilother.By five lhe sun sets ffid the afternoon melt freezes atain mross the blrcklop intocrystal octopi md palms of ice- rivers md continents best by futr, md we walk oul tothe c*, the snow moming beneath our boots ild the oaks exFlodint in 3eri.es alonE th€fenceline on the horizon, lhe shrapnel 3ettlint like relica, the echoint thundering offfur ice. This wtr theessenceofwood, thBe fra8ments say. And th$ dtrkness ir air.< Poetry> she saJF, withoul emotion, one way or mother.Do vou wffil lo heil about it?Figure 27. The StorysPace Page Reader: Michael Joyce's afiernoon.The Page Reader, one ofseveral ways ofdistributing a system'swebs to readers without the authoring environment, has a moveable palette providing access to five functions: the arrow at leftprovides a backtrackingfunction, and clicking on the book icon produces a menu ofall links from the current lexia, such as appearsat the left. In addition, readers can respond positively or negatively to questions in the text, such as we encounter here, by choosingthe appropriate button, or they can search for links relating to a specific word by typing it in the space at right. Finally, readerscan print individual lexias by using the icon at far right. (courtesy of Eastgate systems.)narrative placements, so that one assigns particular sections to a provisionallysuitable place-some lexias obviously have several alternate or rival formsofrelation. Then, having assigned particular sections to particular sequencesor reading paths, many, though not all, of which one can retrace at will, onereaches points at which one's initial cognitive dissonance or puzzlement disappears,and one seems satisfied. One has reached-or created-closure!One might describe Joyce's hypertext fiction in the way G6rard Genettedescribes "what one calls Stendhal's oeuvre":a fragmented, elliptical, repetitive, yet infinite, or at least indefinite, text, no part ofwhich, however, may be separated from the whole. !(hoever pulls a single threadmustake the whole cloth, with its holes and lack of edges. To read stendhal is to readthe whole of Stendhal, but to read all of Stendhal is impossible, for the very good reason,among others, that the whole ofStendhal has not yet been published or decrphered,or discovered, or even written: I repeat, all the Stendhalian text, because tne