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as well as my examinations, tries to regard hypertext as a principle, as a possibility of
organisation of textual ideas, be it in print or on the screen, rather than the actual
implementation of the concept in digital form; a principle which can be found
underlying many fictional print texts as well. It has been the aim of this study to move
away from the artificial dichotomies held up by early hypertext theories, dichotomies
described in earlier chapters, such as screen vs. print, non-linearity vs linearity,
interactivity vs. passivity, and to re-historicise hypertext fiction by putting the recent
developments on screen into an evolutionary rather than revolutionary context.
Aarseth takes a similar approach; but where his study falls short is in the actual
examination of these printed texts. It is my belief that the strong emergence of new
textual media gives us a new frame of reference, and with it a new vocabulary, to look
back on some ofthe literary experiments ofthis century and read them again in another
light. Respectively, a closer look at these texts can help clarify the position of "hypertext
fiction" (in the sense of electronic fictional texts in hypertext format) in a literary
tradition.
In one respect hypertext fiction can be regarded as a failed project, an experiment too
self-consciously based and dependent on a theoretical framework and thereby
'exhausting' itself in the sense ofthe word suggested by]ohn Barth', and too much ofa
hybrid form. Written often by established print authors or literary scholars, read by
readers used to print, judged against the same print standards and conventions it wants
to oppose, it becomes what Myron Tuman calls "a new kind of book, written by a new
kind ofauthor, despite the widespread agreements that the genre destroys our notion of
text and author."
But in this hybridity, in this simultaneous rejection ofthe old while being firmly rooted in
it, lies also the success and the importance ofhypertext fiction. Success comes here not
as a literary form in itself and also not by establishing a theory of itself, but by
representing a bridge, a necessary step from the world of the dominant print text and
7 John Barth, "The Literature of Exhaustion", The AtlanticMonthly, VOLz20, nO.2 (1967), 29-34·
8 Myron C. Tuman, Word Perfect: Literacy in the Computer Age (Washington, D.C., London: Falmer
Press, 1992), P.78•
Chapter 6 - page 208