Farinsky Blog Post 2: Hypertext 1

Hypertext fiction is a genre which celebrates non-linear story telling, and narratives that embrace being told in randomized orders each time a user clicks on them. Robert Coover’s “The Babysitter” is an excellent example of this form based upon the criteria of segmented, and distorted, storytelling.

“The Babysitter” is a collection of over 100 fragments that focus on the male fantasy looping, and seemingly folding upon itself, as the babysitter interacts with young children while their parents attend a party nearby. Between 7:40 and 10:00pm the narrative cleverly avoids labeling one section of events as exactly what happened or which interpretation of the fragments is “correct”. Each segment adds to the complexity of the story and tangles the overarching narrative further by layering fantasy on fantasy giving shockingly detailed glimpses of the character’s thoughts.

Despite the victories within the genre this work achieves, the content of the story is hard to get through without feeling disgusted at the characters, and the blatantly sexual plot which verges into pornographic. 

The extreme closeness of which the male fantasies are presented along side the more reality based segments makes it hard to distinguish not only order, but coherence on the whole. This story does not spread its branches far- or in a manner which makes one version of events more distinctively accurate. It is hard to even grasp the basic underlying narrative through alienating sexualization of the babysitter constantly repeating itself or the repetition of the television entering the space.

While one should appreciate the structure and genre refining tenants this work created, the content within can be hard to talk about because of the cultural differences between original publication and current views on exercising sexuality or sexual fantasy.

Reading “The Babysitter” is a comparable experience to reading a Choose Your Own Adventure Book like a regular book. Hypertext Fiction however, differs from a Choose Your Own Adventure book, in the sense that it’s not trying to tell one linear story in specific places of the text but rather telling multiple stories within the one singular piece. You get different pieces of differing stories all related to the same subject. “The Babysitter” does this extremely well. By mixing slightly comical, dramatic and most of the time very dark storylines all together, it sets the reader loose on a literary rollercoaster that whips around wildly and changes speed at unexpected times. This leads to a confusing experience overall with each separate section resembling less of a puzzle piece and more of a loose magazine clipping. This piece could have a huge influence on the hypertext fictions written after it, not only because of its use of form but because of the overall weight of its subject matter. The intense happenings, both good and bad, within the story are what keep the reader engaged and willing to tangle with the multiple storylines. The topic must be great enough, to be able to generate multiple different outcomes of the same emotional caliber. For example a topic I see working in this format is a story of being lost or stranded. There is a lot emotion that can be connected to the feeling of being lost and isolated that would resonate with lots of readers. The separate sections could contrast the feelings of being hopelessly lost with the feeling of being saved much like “The Babysitter” contrasted innocence and goodness with evil and greed. I would like to read another piece in this form with different subject matter.

In reading the chapter this week I enjoyed reading the different approaches taken by authors to produce hypertext. Though, in reading “The Babysitter” I found it a little challenging in following the story.

It could be that is the author’s intention, to make it jarring so the reader is unsure and reads on to figure out the conclusion.
However, through the use of these “fragmented narratives,” The Babysitter is able to take the reader on not just one linear story, but instead the multiple paths of different characters(Rettberg, 84).

The author doesn’t give any instructions in reading the short story, in contrast to something like a choose your own adventure, which leads to a specific piece to make the story flow in a way. In reading it paragraph by paragraph, it jumps to another story, or a new character quite frequently.

In this way, it follows a pattern that Rettberg talks about in the more recent uses of hypertext. I would say Coover’s story is similar to some of Moulthrop’s work discussed in the book. Moulthrop’s pieces dealt with “the conflict between conventions of reading fiction and the fragmentary nature of attention online”(Rettberg, 76). I feel The Babysitter is much like this, with the constant switch in redirecting the reader’s attention to a new plot line, each one seems to get darker than the last.

Personally, I can’t say I enjoyed The Babysitter. I didn’t like the way the author sexualized most everything and everyone in the story.
Still, I’m interested in reading more hypertext literature. Possibly some of the ones Rettberg talked about in the chapter. There were some really interesting plots that I think fit well with the format of hypertext.

During the reading of Robert Coover’s “The Babysitter” I couldn’t help but feel just a little confused to the fact that So many things where happening at once I couldn’t necessarily keep track of who’s doing what. I felt like this should be a way not to use Hypertext Fiction because even though this opens up the story to more possibilities instead of just a singular, linear path, to me, I just could not follow so parts of the story.

The definition of Hypertext Fiction, to me, is a great way to express a much broader and open storytelling experience for all of the readers by giving different conclusions just by the smallest decisions. Like in Scott Rettberg’s book “Electronic Literature”

“The development of hypertext fiction include a shift away from linear storytelling toward a multi-threaded approach”.

I still believe that this is Hypertext Fiction but it’s Hypertext Fiction that is still being developed, that is still trying to go into a different way than linear storytelling and instead gives us a lot of different perspectives that contributed to the ending in one way or another.

In conclusion, “The Babysitter” really does contributed well to the Hypertext Fiction category because, even if it is a little bit confusing at first, it still has those branching paths that make you think about what could possibly happen next.

Sources:

The Babysitter by Robert Coover

Electronic Literature by Scott Rettberg

Initially when I read the first couple of paragraphs in “The Babysitter” I didn’t expect the story to take the disturbing turns that it did.

The story appears to be about a babysitter who is watching Mr. and Mrs. Tucker’s little ones while they are off at a party. The babysitter at first appears to have a pretty typical night, she takes care of the young kids who are being as rowdy as could be expected from children their age.

In this story, there are a few characters outside of the babysitter who are important. Mr. Tucker is the father of the children, and is incredibly attracted to the babysitter, in certain paths, he ends up putting himself on her. Mrs. Tucker, is the mother of the children, and appears to be somewhat suspicious of Mr. Tucker and also incredibly unhappy as indicated on page 4.

Then there is Mark and Jack, who have plans to rape the babysitter. The easiest way to describe the story is that the babysitter has the worst night imaginable.

Also, while the story is called “The Babysitter” it does not solely focus on the babysitter, but rather it gives incredible attention to all of the characters, which appears to be influenced from modernist writing. (Rettberg 56)

The story is a bit hard to follow on the PDF but the strong writing helps, “Although chronological progression takes place in the story, as we move from 7:40 p.m. into the late hours of the night, the distinction between objective reality and fantasy falls away as we read the fragments, and every possibility has equal opportunity to be visited.” (Rettberg 58)

Coover’s approach through fragmentation may at first seem to be an annoyance as the reader has to pay incredible attention to what is happening, but I view it as a strength of the story. The fragmentation encourages the reader to fully involve themselves by looking at each fragment and looking at which match together and which don’t. It felt like I was piecing together the story, and just when I thought I had it pieced together, there are additional fragments that lead to other paths in the story as certain fragments have fragments that can go into different directions.

While reading the story, I made highlights as a way to indicate fragments that I was piecing together. I only wish that the story wasn’t on a PDF file so I could actually move the fragments around.

This “fiction of possibilities” allows for a level of engagement that cannot be achieved in traditional storytelling. In a way, it allows the reader in a limited capacity, to be the author of their own narrative.

Coover’s influence can be seen clearly in hypertext fiction, which have experimented and explored the idea of multilinearity for many years. An example can be seen with the story of Uncle Roger by Judy Malloy which contained seventy-five lexia, which was in a database structure. (Rettberg 69)

Sources:

Electronic Literature by Scott Rettberg

“The Babysitter” by Robert Coover