Of Forking

http://www.cyberartsweb.org/cpace/theory/canete2/garden.html

This site, aptly titled "Navigating in the Garden" is interesting because while it doesn't display the story in hypertext narrative form, it discusses it as such. The author states that "Rather than over accentuating a specific writing technique, Borges couches the concept of hypertextuality within his own linear narrative." I find it fascinating that Borges was writing about something that didn't even exist yet... that is, not in the form that it now exists, with websites, and hotspots, and links, and browser windows.... And yet, you cannot read "The Garden of Forking Paths" without considering how brilliant Tsun's great grandfather's novel would have been if it had been able to be displayed in this way. It was the limited choices the reader had in the linear work that made the novel seem so "incoherant" to those who read it... Like the author of this site states, it was impossible to read the story in any other way than by turning the pages, proceeding from paragraph to paragraph according to the authors preconceived organization of the work, and then close the book. But the web, the hypertext narrative as my generation knows it, makes this preconceived organization unnecessary. The story can unfold as the reader wants it to.

On a side note, over and over throughout my years of schooling I've been so impressed with how the lessons in two seemingly unrelated courses would overlap. For example, in 10th grade, when I was learning about dominate and recessive genes in biology, we were using in grids to chart the probably of say, brown eyes vs blue eyes depending upon the parent gene. In math around that same time, we were also using the same grids, albeit numberically, the chart the probability of certain numbers. Anyway, the other course I am taking this semester is "Experimental Forms". Many of the works we are reading in this course were designed by the authors so that they could not read conventionally. In fact, in my last class, we discussed "Encyclopedia" and many of the student admitted to reading it backwards or from random places in the middle as it made it easier. Interesting...