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uniqueness, they all have in common the underlying discussion of different aspects
(multiplicity, simultaneity, choice, and organised as well as random collage) ofwhat can
be summarised as non-linearity, which raises the question of the value of a repeated
exploration ofissues such as non-linearity in hypertext.
While hypertext is arguably better suited to represent a non-linear arrangement of text
elements, I have to disagree with hypertext theorists who conclude that the new medium
therefore devalues previous print experiments for two reasons. Firstly, I believe that itis a
fallacy to conclude that hypertext can automatically generate meta-statements about the
conventions of literature similar to those print texts can make. The second fallacy in
discussion of proto-hypertexts is to assume that they want to solve the problems that
they discuss on a meta-textual level rather than using the inherent contradiction between
the surface and the deep structure ofthe narrative.
Language experiments function only in opposition to conventions; it is because they are
firmly rooted in a print tradition that they can defamiliarise them. This therefore both
forces and allows them to express theoretically what hypertext wants to realise. A text
like Robert Coover's "Babysitter":", with half a dozen mutually exclusive versions of a
Babysitter's evening that are presented in an arrangement that is inevitably linear but in
effect parallel, is often quoted as one of the print proto-hypertexts that is "straining at
the typographical leash"'" and that might benefit from conversion into a hypertext. But
would it? For me it is a text that works well because it is in print, not even though.
Readers can recognise their confusion and the contradictions in the text as a deliberate
technique used by the author to make complex comments on narrative reality and
temporal simultaneity and exclusiveness offictional events, rather than an accidental lack
of coherence. The implied statements about the instability of logical and temporal
relations in fiction and our assumptions about them, is supported (and not contradicted)
126Robert Coover, "The Babysitter", in: Pricksongs andDescants (London: Picador, 1973) pp. 165 - 193-
127 Jane Y. Douglas and Gordon Howell, "The Evolution of Interactive Fiction", Computer Assisted
Language Learning: An Intemationalfoumal, vol. 2 (1990), 93-109 (P·96)·
Chapter 2 - page 84