The landscape of hypertextuality
has presented new ways that we as readers interact with and respond to texts.
The non-linear and open-ended narrative style is enough to push many readers
and bibliophiles away. Many readers have trouble navigating through a hypertext
narrative, because of their conceptions on what constitutes a narrative.
However, I believe that the style of the memoir has benefitted from the emergence
of the hypertext; the memoir may have found its niche medium. Shelley Jackson’s
My Body: a Wunderkammer is a prime
example of what happens to a memoir when it is crossed with hypertext.
Jackson’s work became so much more than just a journey through the life of the
author. Given the medium of hypertextuality, My Body: a Wunderkammer was transformed into a tour of one woman’s
life, body, and mind. I felt that I was better able to know and interact with
my new friend Shelley Jackson, because the texture of a hypertext allowed Jackson’s
memoir to be idiosyncratic and uniquely formatted, while maintaining the
ambiguity necessary for reader interactivity.
The idiosyncratic and associative
relationships between Jackson’s vignettes creates a strong bond between the text
and the mind of the reader. Jackson’s memoir connects separate vignettes via
hyperlinked text. If a word, phrase, or idea causes her to recall another
memory or bodily account, then she makes those words a clickable link. In her
own words, Jackson describes her brain as, “something like a burrow, a
labyrinthine system of contorted tunnels with hairpin turns” (My Body). By conceding to Jackson’s order, the reader
is able to journey through these “contorted tunnels,” giving the reader access
to the interiority of her life and mental processes in a way that would have
never been possible in static print. The access that we are granted and the way
we move through the text feels natural. According to theorist Scott Carpenter, memories
are recalled in an associative manner:
“If I attempt to
dredge up some memory of my year in the third grade, knowing how to spell ‘third grade’ is of very little
use: my memories have not been filed in alphabetical order. Instead, my route
will be more circuitous and idiosyncratic, moving perhaps, from a visual memory
of my classroom, to an aural memory of the recitation of the Pledge of
Allegiance, to an olfactory memory of that kid who sat next to me.” (Carpenter 137)
Carpenter proves to us that we do
not think in easily structured terms. We think and recall thanks to series of associative
connections that we have produced in our minds. Jackson has found a way to
solidify and publish these connections. By having clickably linked memories,
the reader is able to traverse many stories in the ways that Jackson associates
them. In Carpenter’s words, “network[s] of hyperlinks [are] associative, and
thus more akin to the structure of imagination, it is not my imagination that is reproduced: the links I follow will always
reflect the logic of the author’s
associations, and the possibilities he has created.” Thus, Jackson’s memoir is
intensely organic and reminiscent of personal thought. The reader is able to jump into the mind and the body of the who he/she is reading.
This style of relating ideas is not
at all linear. It does not follow the chronology of Jackson’s life story.
However, it is organic. Life – and especially the ways in which we recall life
– is anything but linear; it is textured – thick and meaty in some places, thin
and stretched in other places. It is idiosyncratic and follows no established
order. Jackson’s hypertext allows the reader to experience all the dimensions
of her recollections, which is something that would always be completely lost
in a printed and tangible medium.
The way Jackson decided to format
her hypertext plays a huge part in the way the reader is able to connect with
the text. When first entering into the digital world of Jackson’s My Body: A Wunderkammer, the reader is
introduced to the sketch of a woman’s body. From there, the reader is able to
click on any part of this body to get a vignette from Jackson’s life. As
mentioned, the reader can choose to click on hyperlinks throughout that
vignette to be transported to other vignettes, but at any point they can return
to the safe and familiar sketch and begin anew. The participatory artwork on
the homepage that she provided for the navigation of her text truly reinstates
her “focus [on] the relationship between human identity and the body's
constituent organs, fluids, connective tissues, and other parts” (My Body),
because it literally connected her memories and stories – her human identity –
with these images of her body parts. While the same artwork, in a static form, could
have been added to a print rendering of her memoir, its potential would have
been completely lost, because although the interactive art is recognized as a
signifier of the body – not the body itself – it brings with it a sense of
literalness that would be absent in print. The reader of this hypertext is
almost literally able to jump inside the body of the character he/she is
reading.
From my description thus far, it
may seem as though Jackson’s text is too explicit - that we as readers are
claustrophobically obliged to follow Jackson’s supposed intentions. This is not
so. Because Jackson’s memoir is nothing but vignettes, it is full of gaps that span the distance between these memories.
Reader-response theorist, Wolfgang Iser claims that the meat and meaning of
literary works comes from the animation that the reader produces in the gaps
between storylines: “for this bringing to fruition, the literary text needs the
reader’s imagination, which gives shape to the interaction of correlatives foreshadowed
in structure by the sequence of sentences” (Iser 282). Jackson’s wunderkammer, on the surface,
appears to be a collection of stories, but, as it is the telling of a life and
a body, it must also be recognized as a story of gaps. One can’t help but
notice that the stories of the body that we are privy to are only a fraction of
the stories that make up a life. Her life is more than how she reacts to her
forming breasts, or why she got her tattoos. It is about the life that is built
around that body. The readers see this life primarily through gaps in the text.
I concede that hypertext does not
lend itself to all types of literary works, and there are many readers who
would be lost while navigating the links; however, the ways in which Shelley
Jackson’s My Body: a Wunderkammer is
read proves that hypertext may be the perfect medium for some memoirs. One
cannot step back from Jackson’s wunderkammer to see the actual story web that
maps out exactly which lexias are connected given which links. However, given
the organic and idiosyncratic way in which Jackson tied her life/body story
together, I have no doubt that the story map, when observed at a distance would
look like the image of her body. Mission accomplished.
Works Cited:
Carpenter, Scott. “Click Here:
Hypertext and Reader Response.” Reading
Lessons: An
Introduction to Theory. NY: Longman
1999. 135-49. Web. 6 July 2015.
Iser, Wolfgang. “The Reading
Process: A Phenomenological Approach.” New
Literary History
3.2 (Winter 1972):
279-99. Web. 6 July 2015.
Jackson, Shelley. My Body: a Wunderkammer. Electronic
Literature Collection Volume One.
Web. 6 July 2015.
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