Patchwork Girl-Putting the Pieces Together with Hypertext

“Patchwork Girl” is a hypertext by Shelley Jackson that talks about the creation of a “monster” by Mary Shelley, the author of “Frankenstein”. This hypertext is an interesting combination of authors, ranging from the narrative and perspective of Mary Shelley, Shelley Jackson and the “monster” herself.

One of the most interesting things about Jackson’s piece is that she takes from Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein” but doesn’t recreate it. As Carazo and Jimenez said, “Patchwork Girl can be defined as a work that is essentially a rewriting of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, a novel in which two of the dominant themes are fragmentation and resurrection. However, Patchwork Girl’s most outstanding quality lies in the fact that it is organized as a special kind of text, which, just like Victor’s creature, is the end result of certain technological developments (116).” By this, they are speaking of “hypertext” which is “text composed of clocks of words (or images) linked electronically by multiple paths, chains, or trails in an open-ended, perpetually unfinished textuality..(Carazo, Jimenez 116),” as defined by George Landow. In other words, hypertext, like IF, relies on interaction from the reader. Unlike interactive fiction, it doesn’t rely as heavily on the reader but it does leave options for the reader to make their own story.

As discussed above, themes of “Patchwork Girl” stem from Shelley’s “Frankenstein” but it embodies a feeling entirely of it’s own. A perspective that I found interesting was that of Jackson’s take on Shelley’s life. It’s known that Mary Shelley couldn’t originally publish this work under her own name because in her era, a book wouldn’t be read as avidly if it were written by a woman so she put it under her husband’s, Percy Shelley, name.  I find the relationship that Jackson portrays between Shelley and her husband interesting. It’s as if she can’t really say or do what she wants. For example, in the screenshot “female trouble” her husband wonders what’s wrong with her and she has to excuse it by “feminine trouble”. Also, she has to hide from her husband that she wants a piece of her to go with her monster when she travels abroad. The stifling of the female presence is imminent in this work.

As well as seeing the relationship between man and woman during this time, we also see Shelley’s interesting relationship with her monster. In many lexia, it’s almost as if Shelley is attracted to the monster. In this lexia, “appetite”, she seems to look at the monster as her child. She is constantly comparing herself to the monster saying, “she is moody, and quieter than I” and speaks of how she doesn’t look like her. Of course a person created of different person’s body parts wouldn’t look like you but here is where we see that Shelley has attached a bond stronger than creator to this monster. In “I lay” she talks about touching her monster and revels at how her monster could be so strong but tremble at her touch. She is amazed at how contradicting her body structure is to the how she reacts. I interpret this, as Mary Shelley wants to act out in a way that is not appropriate of the time or her gender. Women were supposed to be seen, not heard, and I think there is longing to be odd and different like her monster mixed with a bit of jealousy.

At the same time, her monster is not thrilled with how she looks. In the lexia “I am” she tells the reader how many take her as a transsexual because of how tall and broad shouldered she is. She even tells us that she has the “tell tale Adam’s Apple” that is a mark of a man’s body. The most moving idea is at the end of this lexia when she says, “I belong nowhere. This is not bizarre for my sex, however, nor is it uncomfortable for us, to whom belonging has generally meant, belonging TO.” The reader can tell that the monster isn’t totally comfortable with who she is. She doesn’t like how her body reacts to things and isn’t comfortable in the “drawing rooms or the pruned and cherished gardens of Mary’s time and territory.” She never felt welcome or whole in the time and place that she was born of Mary’s hand and scalpel. In “Story” she sets out for America. She wants to find herself and not through identification of her body. If she went that route, she would be many different people as her body is made of parts from different bodies. For example, in “trunk” she talks about how her truck is from a dancer and how this has had an impact on her body, making it “insinuating and naïve”.  Since she can’t define herself by her body, she decides to take a different route. Patchwork Girl finds it more fulfilling to define herself by experiences and this is what she gets when she travels abroad to America. She chooses America because of the booming industry and says, “There everything was probably monstrous and everything monstrous had a backer who preferred to remain anonymous, a lawyer, and a publicist.” The anonymity of such a large country that was undergoing change was attractive to her. A place where she could be seen as maybe a tranny but others may see as a man dressing as a woman. America would be a place where she could discover who she truly was. In “passing” she describes how she found an apartment, a job and was able to cultivate “preferences to found a personality on”. Here is where she begins to make her discovery. I find the narrative of the monster to be interesting because it is a coming of age story, with a few twists of course. Although she is a monster made up of different body parts and isn’t relatable to the average reader in the sense, she still shows many things that young adults go through, like feelings of not knowing your body and not knowing who you are. Self-discovery is something almost every young adult must do and Patchwork Girl’s discovery is a reflection of that.

The other narrator of this piece isn’t as easily seeable but can be discerned. Shelley Jackson throws in lexia that is undeniably from her hand. In “written” she says, “I had made her, writing deep into the night by candlelight, until the tiny black letters blurred into stitches and I began to feel I was sewing a great quilt.” It seems to be that she is describing the process of writing “Patchwork Girl”. This work features so many perspectives and possible themes that it’s not hard to imagine that Jackson felt she was making a quilt of stories and themes. Another lexia that could be told from the perspective of Jackson is “birth”. Here she tells us that she has multiple births. She says, “But if I hope to tell a good story, I must leapfrog out of the muddle of my several births to the day I parted for the last time with the author of my being, and set out to write my own destiny.” This can be taken as Patchwork Girl setting out on her journey, which I think is the purpose, but I see glimpses of Jackson in this. She wants to give her readers a good story but she knows she must break free of certain molds and ties that keep writers within a certain genre.

Additionally, hypertext elements in this piece help give further depth to the theme and characters. By intermixing each character’s story, it can seem like each narrator makes up one character. I think the purpose of Jackson’s work was to do just that: to so intermix the three narrators that they were one in the same. I think Jackson sees part of herself in the characters of Patchwork Girl and Mary Shelley. She has dealt with the oddities of her body and feeling out of place like Patchwork Girl and she has battled the oppression of women and female sexuality, which is evident her other works, like “My Body: A Wunderkammer”. Another element from hypertext that adds to the depth of this work is the reader’s ability to mold the story. For example in the lexia “sight”, when the reader clicks on the text, another window pops up giving the reader the option to either go to the lexia “written” or “sewn”. This choosing of what order the user reads the lexia determines what they take away from the work. In many ways, the reader becomes the writer in “Patchwork Girl”.

In writing my own hypertext, I found it difficult. As I have said before, I am more of a traditional writer and it’s hard for me to write something designed for the complexity of hypertext. I find that my lexia weren’t all relevant to the theme or story. It’s easier for me to write in a more linear fashion. When it comes to comparing this work to other hypertexts, I find that Jackson’s other hypertext work “My Body-A Wunderkammer” is very like “Patchwork Girl” but with some differences. It goes through each body part, much like PG, but instead of defining one’s self on life experiences, it defines one’s self based on the body.

Works Cited:

Jackson, Shelley. Patchwork Girl. Watertown, MA: Eastgate Systems, 1995. CD-ROM

Carazo, C. & Jimenez M. "Gathering the Limbs of the Text in Shelley Jackson's Patchwork Girl." Atlantis, 28.1, 115-118. June 2006.

Jackson, Shelley. My Body-a Wunderkammer.

http://collection.eliterature.org/1/works/jackson__my_body_a_wunderkammer.html

Interactive Fiction: Literature or Not?

When discussing Interactive Fiction, it’s important to know that it isn’t and shouldn’t be judged in accordance with traditional textual fiction. It has similar aspects while having characteristics that make it individual and unique. Although many people have argued that interactive fiction shouldn’t be put in the same category as works of literature, it does feature similar literary elements. A few are the presence of a main character, a plot, setting and a purpose or goal. The main character is what is known as a “player character” as described in Nick Montfort’s article “Twisty Little Passages: An Approach to Interactive Fiction”. The player character is the character in the story that the player who is interacting with the story becomes. It then becomes the player’s purpose to fulfill whatever the player character’s purpose is. The plot is not normally found out until a while into the story when the player has interacted with the story. The setting is normally told in the beginning of the IF before the player character is even able to interact and may be further elaborated as the PC plays. The purpose or goal may also be elaborated as the player character continues to find out information about the situation and what is necessary.

            In contrast with the elements of IF that are similar to traditional textual literature, there are also things that make it very different. A good definition by Dennis Jerz in his Weblog “Interactive Fiction: What is it?” he says, “The classic IF interface is a command based textual feedback loop: the computer displays a few lines or paragraphs of text; the interactor types a command; the computer describes what happens next, and then waits for additional input.” In other words, IF is very much like a game. In order to get further in the story and find out more about the character(s) and plot, the user must interact with the story. A lot of times there are puzzles included in the story. For instance, in “All Roads” by Ingold, there are many puzzles that must be figured out. One of the puzzles is that the user must find out a way to get down from being hung in front of what we assume are the citizens of Rome. 

Another puzzle in this very same IF is the need for the user to find out how to get the player character’s hands untied. This is accomplished by the player character finding out that the pile of dust in the corner of the room can be blown away and revel an empty wine bottle. This then must lead the user to figure out that this must be broken and the broken shards must be used to cut the ropes around the player character’s wrists.

            Although I enjoyed my time played and interacting with Interactive Fiction, there are elements that I believe to be conflicting with what the user takes away from the story. For instance when playing Ingolds “All Roads”, I got stuck in the very beginning and couldn’t seem to find a way to get out of the scene of the hanging. At first, I thought that this was it; this was to be the fate of my character. Then output said something about a darkness finally showing up and that I should follow it so I typed go which brought me to an empty room. The problem I see here is that many users may get discouraged, like I almost did, and give up entirely. In the end, I got further than I thought I would in the story but got stuck in a similar place that many of my other classmates did. When it came time to get past the guard, I just couldn’t do it and gave up. It wasn’t until we discussed in class later that I found out what I could have done and where I could have gone in the story. I was disappointed that I hadn’t gone as far and felt like I missed out on something. I also wouldn’t have been able to take away any kind of theme if I didn’t get that far, which was that no matter how many times you try to outsmart your fate, you will always end up in the same place, as the player character kept getting caught and eventually killed over and over again. I think IF is a unique form of literature and is not meant for everybody. While playing, I took it as more of a video game and forgot that the purpose was to learn and story and take away a theme from it. I treated it as when I was playing James Bond when I was in 3^rd grade and all I cared about was entering the next level. Although, I think that this form of literature is good for people who get bored flipping pages and lose excitement in a story that lays it all out for you. I think people who enjoy figuring out puzzles may have much to gain from a story that calls for the user to put work and effort in.

            Now to discuss my own experiences in writing IF, which I absolutely detested. I am not the kind of person who finds joy in puzzles and I have always found making my own a hard thing to do. Although it may sound as if I am going to completely bash my experience in making Interactive Fiction, I am actually going to start it out by saying some good things. I think Interactive Fiction can open many doors within the creative process. For people like me, who find pleasure in simple, systematic things, this creative process can be frustrating because perhaps we lack this kind of creativity. But for people who excel, they can find many doors open. The ability to create a story that the user interacts with allows the writer a satisfaction when the user figures out the puzzle that they set for them. Something I enjoyed about the creative process was the satisfaction of putting information into Source area of Inform7 and seeing it translate into the story when I hit “Go!”. There was an immense satisfaction and wave of relief when this occurred but contrariwise, I was disappointed when I got an error message and a feeling of impending stress set in because I knew I had to find out a way to correct a problem. This forced me to rely heavily on both the manual given to us in class and the documentation provided in Inform7, as I’m sure many new users of this software do. I found that I was more fully able to express the mystery of my story because it required the user to find out what was going on in the room . On the opposite side of the spectrum, I found my creativity to be stifled as I was moving forward in the creation of my story. I had the basic gist of what I wanted to occur down but I’m the kind of writer that will have a basic outline but let the rest of the plot line come to me as I’m writing. This was hard to do when I had all the limitations and errors I was receiving from the software. For instance, all I wanted to do was have my player character take a note that had fallen onto the floor but I had the hardest time getting the software to do what I wanted it to do and had to read through the manual several times. 

            Whether or not I think my story would have been better expressed in IF or in text is a hard thing for me to say. My story was a mystery one of sorts where the player character came back to her dorm room to a bloody scene (I wrote this right before Halloween) and found a hooded figure standing in the room and suddenly disappeared. She then finds a note from her roommate saying that she made a horrible mistake and doesn’t think anybody can save her. There is where the user finds out his/her “mission” of sorts. They must try to save her roommate wherever she may be. I think they fact that it was a mystery plotline and the basis of IF is to work with it to find out what is going on. In this way, I think IF better suited my storyline because it matched the whole spirit of a mystery. In a different way, I think it would have been easier for me to formulate my story if I could use fully descriptive sentences and paragraphs and didn’t have to worry about what the user would need to say to advance in the story.

            I think I was inspired differently if I were to sit down and write a traditional textual story versus an IF. I’m not used to writing a story like this and it was a weird experience. I’m not the best writer, but I have enjoyed writing ever since I was in elementary school. I remember when it was first required for us to turn in papers that were typed on the computer and I couldn’t stand it. To this day, I still prefer to start writing with pen and paper and then retype it into a word processor. Because of this, I didn’t have an enjoyable experience writing my own IF. I was frustrated and quickly lost sight of what I was aiming for.

           Writing my own IF has given me great appreciation for the feats and successes of Interactive Fictions like Emily Short’s “Galatea”. The amount of information and twists and turns in that IF is enough to win Short a Pulitzer prize in my eyes after seeing how difficult it is to create.

Electronic Poetry: Discussing and Creating It

Out of all the choices that I had this year for classes that would fulfill one of my Tier 2 requirements, this was my first choice. I’ve always enjoyed English classes since I can remember. It seems there was a division in my family as to who was good at what. I was always better at English classes and my brother was always better at Math ones. But in the first class of this semester, I quickly learned that this course was not what I thought it was going to be. It was going to be a challenge because electronic literature was something I had never even knew of.

            Throughout this class, I’ve realized a couple things about electronic literature and digital poetry. One is that the text of the poem or literature is reliant on the illustration, movement, symbols and overall interaction with the reader. This is described as “symbiociation” by Deena Larsen in her article “A Quick Buzz Around the Universe of Electronic Poetry”. What she means from the term sybiociation stems from the scientific term symbiosis, which is a mutually beneficial relationship between two animals that do and provide things for one another. What that means in terms of e-poetry is that the text and “sensory information” are like the animals and work together to create something with a deeper meaning. Without the other, the result wouldn’t be as great and as significant. Another thing I’ve learned about e-poetry is that it is hard to define. I really enjoyed Memmott’s reasoning in his article “Beyong Taxonomy: Digital Poetics and the Problem of Reading”. He reasoned that e-poetry is like an instrument. I agree with this because in order to make the beautiful sound that an instrument is capable of, an educated musician must interact with it; the same goes for e-poetry. And educated user must react with it because if they don’t find all the little hidden surprises that lie within some digital poetry, they won’t get the full aspect of it. Memmott says, “The potential of digital poetry resides in its computational aspects: its conditions of interaction, playability, and environment. It is an operational interface for a system of signifying harmonics (294).” In other words, the greatness of e-poetry lies in what kind of interaction it asks of its user.

            In discussing actual e-poems and my own attempts to write it, I’ve found that I enjoy the poems that open up more to you as you go on with the poem. One of the poems from our syllabus that I chose to discuss is “Firefly” by Deena Larsen.  The poem starts with a lot of greenery in the background and a very “nature-y” scene. It then tells us that it’s “a tale told in 180 degrees of separation.” In order to start the poem, the user must click on the word “firefly” in the bottom right hand corner. This is where the idea of an educated user becomes necessary. If the user doesn’t know or use their skills of investigation to figure that out, they’re going to have no idea how to interact with the poem in order to get to the next stanza. When first reading this poem, I went with the logical route of clicking the arrow in the bottom right hand corner to get to the next stanza, therefore reading it in a more traditional stanza-by-stanza form. I didn’t find out until we discussed in class that by clicking each line of the poem would turn up the corresponding line in the next stanza, therefore eliminating the arrow at the bottom. This may be a more interesting way of reading the poem but I couldn’t help but realize that the user misses something but doing so. Without clicking on the arrow, the background scenery doesn’t change and I think that adds something to the poem. The changing elements add meaning to what the author is trying to get across. In this way, I’m not sure this was a good choice by Larsen, unless all of her readers are investigative enough to find what other ways the poem could be read.

            In terms of what these elements add to the poem, the pictures are a giant piece of it. As one reads on, the picture in the back changes and the reader realizes its not just green scenery but someone’s memorial. This adds to the poem as the reader realizes that the author is not just talking about a firefly but about loss. As the firefly crawls on her finger as if it’s “home”, she and the firefly have a connection that is deeper than most people have with insects and then as he flies away, she feels a sense of separation. It’s important to read it also by clicking each line because it gives another feeling to the poem that one doesn’t get by reading it by stanza. When read line by line, it creates a feeling of fleetingness and mystery or elusiveness. When this way of reading it and feeling is put together with the pictures, the reader may take away that the author lost someone important, as happens to almost everyone at some point in their lives. The meaning I took away from this poem is that the people we love in our lives will not always be here.

            The other poem I am choosing to discuss is “Dear E.E.” written by Lori Janis and designed by Ingrid Ankerson. It starts as a square that houses the movement and text. The title of the poem then starts to move slowly back and forth. As time goes on, the poem reveals more. The first line sounds kind of nonsensical, but the reader soon realizes that it’s because the narrator is in a dream and dreams tend to be that way. The narrator says that she dreamt that someone came into their apartment, even though they didn’t have one, to rearrange it. The narrator says that she had no recollection of what the apartment looked like before this person was there. Everything up until this part in the poem moves on its own and requires little to no interaction from the user. The next part requires the user to use their mouse to move over different images and objects to show the next part of the poem. The poem then says more nonsensical things, like how the refrigerator is in front of the window blocking the sunlight and the sink is by the door. The narrator sounds confused as to why this person who came into the apartment moved things around like they did and doesn’t understand it. There is also fast-paced, but at the same time ethereal music that accompanies this. Then, in the upper right-hand corner, there is a button that says wake-up. When clicked on, the reader seeing a little autobiography about the writers. Lori Janis’s is extravagant, saying that she lives with many animals and wants to be strange things like a jedi, monk and political activist. Ingrid Ankerson’s is far simpler and says that she only wishes to find a matching pair of socks. What I take away from this is satire. Janis is going above and beyond reality and Ankerson is far simpler, just wishing to find some socks. What I take away from the poem is that someone’s world feels upside down because someone else has entered it, maybe a significant other. They feel like their furniture has been placed in odd places and perhaps more symbolically, they feel their life has been led into a strange direction and now that person is gone, they realize how weird it makes them feel. I feel all the elements that are added to the poem, like the weird, almost seizure-like, movements of the words and images of the poem add to the surrealness of the poem. The poem aims to make things seem odd and off and the effects are and enhance that feeling. It also influences the reader’s adeptness for discovery. You have to move the mouse around to see what else the poem involves, and that is what gets a reader hooked and interested in any poem or work of literature. The way the poem is constructed almost makes it feel like a dream and that helps the reader understand that the narrator feels out of sorts, which is something many people can relate to, especially after a break-up.

            After reading and interacting with all these forms of electronic literature, I was curious as to how they accomplished this and what it was like. When I started playing around with Powerpoint to create my own electronic poetry, I quickly learned that it is not as easy as it looks. I spent some painstaking hours….just to get one sentence how I wanted it. After watching it back, I realize that my work isn’t even half as good as those we have read. Although I don’t blame myself because I’m new at this kind of thing, I know have a heightened respect for those that do this.

            Doing this opened up a world of possibilities. I chose to animate some lyrics to one of my favorite songs because I thought it would be easier to start out with that to practice and then try it on one of my own poems. I saw that I was able to give all new meaning to a word or sentence just by changing the color or the way it moved. For example, I was able to make the sentence, “Mosquito, mosquito, buzzing around” look as if it were flying around by using the effect where I create the path of the animation.

            I also made words come in differently to give it a different effect. Like in the line “Wouldn’t you love if I fell like Snow White”, I had the word “fell” literally fall into place. Also in that line I turned the word “White” white. Little things like this give the poem heavier meaning.

            What frustrated me was that I had a hard time thinking of ways to make it convey what I wanted to convey. The ability to put word and sensory images together and have them fit in a way that is beneficial to what you want the work to say is hard. I was constantly second guessing what I was doing because I wasn’t sure if what I was doing was conveying it the way I wanted it to.

        (I had a hard time with this part because I had the words come in different directions and then wiggle around. This was a tedious part of the process.)

            I would say that if I were to write a poem that I intended to be turned into digital poetry, I don’t know if I would write the poem as I went. I think I would first write the poem with pen and paper first but to spur that creativity, I would keep in the back of my mind how I intend to later present it to a reader. The process of animating a poem is frustrating because it can be very tedious and if you’re writing it while you’re animating it, your frustration can get in the way of creating a good poem.

            In general, I’m glad I took this course. It’s exposed me to something I never even knew was out there. I hope that it will spur my own creativity to create poems, even if it’s just for my own enjoyment.