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narrative possibilities, whereas the map / metaphor ofthe linear print narrative represents
one actual narrative realisation ofthe text.
However, while Brooks' theory offulfilment, reading for closure and final metaphor works
well with certain types of text (such as detective stories and most of nineteenth century
fiction" ), it has subsequently been undermined and can be far less easily applied not
only, as Moulthrop argues", to hypertext fiction but also to modernist and postmodemist
fiction, not least to Borges himself.
Forking Paths is a narrative about its own structure. But so is Borges' "The Garden of
Forking Paths", and I would like to argue that it is so in a equally elegant and revealing
way. Borges realises that the infinite network ofpossible parallel developments can never
be realised in any text in perfection (even Ts'ui Pen's manuscript is no more than a failed
attempt to embody his philosophy) and opts to convey the concept in theory through his
discussion of it and through the very linear and excluding structure of his text that
contradicts its contents uncomfortably and therefore thoughtprovokingly. Moulthrop, on
the other hand, wants to realise a version of this infinite network in his hypertext and
wants readers to experience it in their readings. He writes that:
Dispensing with the elegant detachment of a purely theoretical deconstruction, a
hypertextual fiction would take it upon itself to explore {...} excluded possibilities,
along withvarious networks ofnarrative that might pertain to them."
Borges writes a description of the "garden of forking paths", Moulthrop tries to achieve
its embodiment. But here lies the problem with Moulthrop's approach and is where the
discrepancy between hypertext theory and practise in hypertext fiction can be
identified. When Robert Coover argues that the "hypertextual storyspace is now
multidimensional and theoretically infinite", he unintentionally touches the core of the
problem. What is a theoretical strength of hypertext is its practical weakness, since no
author, even in collaborative effort, could ever realise this infinite network; Moulthrop's
26 A point Brooks himself is acutely aware ofin his discussion of, amongst others, Borges in his book.
27 MOUlthrop, "Reading for the Map", p.I 29. Moulthrop does accept the limitations of Brooks' theory
("t,his theory is admirably suited for the interpretation ofconventional narratives [...}''' he then contrasts
it solely with hypertext fiction ("but it probably does not hold for hypertext"), leaving out again a whole
history of modernist and postmodernist fiction.
28 Moulthrop, "Reading from the Map", p.I 24.
Chapter 2 - page 33