Hypertext...

is anything but effortless. Just take a peek at Michael Joyce's Afternoon or Stuart Moulthrop's Victory Garden.




These hypertext giants require serious concentration on the part of the reader. Victor Nell seems to be demonstrating a link between the effortless nature of reading the novel and the entrancement that follows from this effortlessness. Is this possible in hyperfiction?

The Active Reader

"Hypertext, which creates an active, even intrusive reader, carries this convergence of activities [reading and writing] one step closer to completion; but in so doing, it infringes upon the power of the writer, removing some of it and granting it to the reader." (Landow, 1992, p.71)

Simply, the reader can no longer sit back and let his eyes lazily drift across the page. Or the screen. Of course, certain book-based novels have never allowed such an effortless reading on the part of the author (Joyce's Finnegans Wake, for example).

Where does fictional hypertext fit in? Or perhaps more importantly, does it have to?