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But how do readers engage with the text? How do they cope with this "field of
possibilities that Moulthrop describes above? Jane Douglas describes frustration,
confusion and a computer room ringing "with a continuous cacophony of Macintosh
beeps?" as her readers, admittedly young and new to the medium ofelectronic text, were
trying to make sense of the narrative, to extract out of the multiplicity of narrative
possibilities the one "true" event, to construct through their accumulated understanding
an overall metaphor ofthe text.
As readers read, as they begin to construct a virtual text of their oum, it is as if they were
emharking onajourney without maps. (Jerome Bruner)"
Stuart Moulthrop argues that readers of print narratives read towards a final
understanding ofthe narrative as a whole, a metaphor ofcompletenessand refers to Peter
Brooks who, drawing onJacobson and Todorov, writes in ReadingforthePlotthat:
we read the incidents ofnarration as 'promises and annunciations' offinal coherence,
that metaphor may be reached through a chain ofmetonomies: across the bulk ofthe
yet unread middle page, the end calls to the beginning, transforms and enhances it."
Out of the multitude of confusing and possibly contradictory narrative events, readers
move through the text andgradually narrow down the narrative possibilities to extract the
final metaphor of the text as a whole. Readers ofprint fiction map out the narrative space
gradually. The physical presence ofthe whole text gives readers initial information on the
meta-textual level (length and density). In their reading they constantly switch between
the microstructure of the text and their evolving understanding of the macrostructure to
eventually grasp the overall metaphor (the map) ofthe text.
Hypertext fictions begin with the map. It is the framework within which readers read
and individual elements are interpreted against. Moulthrop argues:
The map, which represents the totality or metaphor,was not something to be reached
[...), rather it was the conceptual framework, providing essential categories of 'right',
'left' 'up' and 'down' bywhich the readers orient themselves.
21 Douglas, Print Pathways, P.94.
22 Jerome Bruner, Actual Minds, Possible Worlds (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1986),
P·36.
23Peter Brooks, Reading for the Plot: Design and Intention in Narrative (Cambridge, MA and London:
Harvard University Press, 1992) , PP.94-95.
Chapter 2 - page 3I