Essay 1.2

I chose to read "A Woman Stands on a Corner Waiting for a Stranger", a collaboration between Linda Carroli and Josephine Wilson. This isn't really a story (at least in my opinion), as the name would suggest, about a woman standing on a corner, waiting for a stranger. It did not seem much like a normal story one would find in a novel or fiction book. While I was reading the hyperfiction, I felt as if the authors were sitting next to me, as I wasn't reading somebody else's story; I was reading what someone felt about certain issues and ideas. Of course, the authors wrote something on this woman standing on a corner, waiting for a stranger, but in between the story, they would inject their own opinions regarding certain issues into the whole piece, just like what you would expect when someone tells you a story, live. He would inject his or her own views, biases etc into the story, wouldn't he? For example, when I was reading something on what happened to the woman while she was waiting, I clicked on the word "waiting" that was hyperlinked, and I was brought to a page where the authors expounded their ideas and views on "waiting" i.e. how they felt waiting should be like, could be like, and probably was like, for somebody, especially a woman, in wait. Hence, this became a kind of a personalized fiction I was reading. Even though it was supposed to be fictitious, there was something about it that made it feel closer to reality. It was the injection of the authors' opinions.

At the same time, I was overwhelmed by the variety of choices that I was presented with as I navigate through the pages. I was determined to follow the story so as to make sense of the story, but I found that the more I tried to do that, the more impossible it seemed, for it did not take long before I was completely lost in the web of links! The pages that the links took me to either did not have connections or have little connections with the previous page. Thus, it was so easy to get lost. I realized very much later that I have to give up the conventions of print text reading in order to be able to enjoy this hyperfiction. I could not expect the story to follow any logical sequence; neither could I expect it to have an end. There was no beginning to begin with! Having read printed text for the last 21 years of my life, I was, of course, disoriented by this strange, new, limitless, borderless, centerless, shifting, and yet, captivating hypertext. Very soon, I was even inspired by this piece to write a creative piece.

1 | 2 | 3 | 4