Afternoon and its Lexia

The four lexia that I picked to analyze were Lolly’s Monologue, 1/, 2/, and exploding.  To get from Lolly’s Monologue to 1/ I clicked on the word "accident".  Lolly’s Monologue is discussing the accident that the story begins with, discussing how it came about.  The word accident doesn’t seem to really have any relation to the title of the lexia, 1/, but it does have a large relation to the content of the lexia. 1/ details exactly what took place, or at least what Lolly thought took place.  From that lexia, I clicked on the word "truth".  This brought me to 2/, which discusses the history of some of the characters, as chronicled by Lolly.  Again, the word which brings you to 2/ doesn’t have anything to do with 2/, but the content of 2/ has everything to do with the word which brought you to the lexia.  2/ is talking about the truth behind what Peter and Wert know.  Moving on from 2/, I clicked on the word "entropy".  Clicking on entropy led me to the lexia titled "exploding", which contained the single word "exploding".  Here, there is an interesting link between the word and the lexia.  Entropy has a secondary meaning of a measure of the disorder or randomness in a closed system.  An explosion can be very disorderly and very random, and it’s interesting that the word entropy would link to a lexia titled explosion.

Lolly’s monologue
I decided to begin with the page titled "Lolly’s monologue."  This lexia almost seems to be a beginning to an end, a starting place to summarize the accident.  Prior to getting to this lexia, I had clicked through several lexia’s being narrated by Nausicaa, who was one of Peter’s lovers.  However, at Lolly’s Monologue, we see a shift from narration by Nausicaa to narration by Lolly.  Lolly is telling of her interpretation of Nausicaa’s words, breaking down what she said about the accident.  As a lexia, this relates to most of "Afternoon, a story".  When you begin the story, you come across some discussion of an accident, possibly involving the ex-wife and son of the narrator, Peter.  Lolly’s monologue analyzes what Peter’s lover said about the accident. 

1/
In this lexia, we continue to see Lolly narrate.  She is analyzing the accident, trying to come up with a reason as to why it happened.  Again, this relates back to the beginning of the story with the discussion of the accident.  Also, this lexia ties in several different characters of the story, namely Peter, Wert, and Lisa.  In that way, it relates back to the previous lexia, but also to lexia throughout the story. 

2/
2/ is really about history.  It is about stating facts about Wert and Peter, and facts of life.  There are two lines in this lexia that read "There are forces which we can call evil." "There are powers which we can call good."  With these two lines, this lexia is basically saying that throughout the story you come across good and evil powers and forces, and that they are what drive life and the story.

Exploding
This is an interesting lexia because it so subtly relates to the previous lexia and to the entire story.  The previous lexia were discussing the accident, discussing the relations between Peter and Wert and Lisa, and analyzing what Nausicaa had to say.  In a way, the previous lexia were discussing an explosion between the lives of several individuals.  They were discussing several different lives coming together at one exact moment, an explosion.  Similarly, the accident could be looked at as an explosion between two automobiles.  So, it’s interesting that the previous lexia led to a page with one word, explosion, on it. 

The overall theme of these Lexia seem to be about the accident and what caused the accident.  All of them, with the possibly exception of “exploding”, seem to be narrated by Lolly.  These specific lexia almost give an answer as to what happened in the accident, but it’s only part of the answer.  As seems to be the case throughout “Afternoon, a story” you are given a small piece of the puzzle but must continue to read on to fill in the rest of the puzzle.

Afternoon, A Story

When I first read this novel, I was reading through it by simply clicking on the white-space somewhere on each screen.  After reading through a few pages, I accidentally once clicked on a word which showed up as a hypertext because the word became surrounded by a rectangular box.  I then began to click on different words, but found that they all took me to the same pages, so I didn’t think twice about it anymore.  After class last week, we discovered that different words — however few — on the page take you to different places. 

The second time I went through this novel I took my time in reading the pages and then seeing where the words are linked to.  Just as before, the majority of the words are linked to the same page — what seems to be the next page in line.  To begin with though, I am choosing to start with the page titled, "What I Say."  This page has the narrator talking about trying to get a hold of his wife — Lisa — by calling her office.  Her secretary apparently hates the narrator and has said that she isn’t available.  On this page, while all the words are ‘hot,’ only one word is SO hot that it takes you to a different link — the word Desmond.  Desmond is the man that the narrator’s wife is now involved with.  When clicking on the white-space or any other word on this page, it takes you to a different page, which seems to go along with the story that was being told on this page.  The following page seems to flow smoothly with this page as if I were just turning a page in a book.  When I click on "Desmond," however,  I am taken to a page that discusses Desmond and tells a little bit about him.  It’s as if "What I Say" is hyphenated at the end of the page, and we get "ax player;" a page that supports what we were talking about in the previous page. 

"Ax player" talks about Desmond and how he is now intimately involved with the narrator’s ex-wife.  You can tell that the narrator is quite jealous of this because of the line he writes, "A half-blind classical saxophonist and Professor of Theory, rebound lover of the world’s most stubborn woman, he whom my son calls Thisman Larry."  The meaning behind the link that brought me to ‘ax player’ is the name of the man who is now with the narrator’s wife.  On this new page, if you click on his full name "Desmond Larry," you are taken to a different page which then pretty much trashes Desmond and really displays how little the narrator cares for him.  He calls him a ‘frigging moo-sician’ at one point, and insults his disability — he’s blind.  I find it kind of interesting that I click on two seperate links that have the same name in them, but they take me to two different places.   When I clicked on ‘Desmond’ in the first page, it took me to a page where I thought all the description of Desmond would take place.  But on the second page, when I clicked on his full name — Desmond Larry — I’m brought to yet another page which discusses him.  Not only does it discuss him, the narrator insults and cuts Desmond down for obvious reasons.  The very last line of this page, he comments on how Desmond’s voice sounds like a "hornpipe Irishman." 

From this lexia, I clicked on the word "Andrew" and it took me to a different link than the rest of the words on the lexia did.  "Andrew" took me to a page titled, "Thisman."  Andrew is the son of the narrator.  In the lexia titled, ‘ax player’ the narrator says that his son — Andrew — calls Desmond "Thisman Larry."  This is pretty interesting because I noticed that this lexia would have been reached in "Ax player" had I clicked on the word "Thisman Larry."  I found my way back to this page by clicking on Andrew in a different lexia.  This particular lexia is different than the previous three because it is spoken by Andrew towards the narrator.  You can tell this because Andrew says, "I told him (Desmond) he should know you and he said he’ll take my word for it."  The tone is immediately different; it is more playful sounding and innocent (like a child).  Andrew says how funny Desmond is and the things they like to do together.  This was a bit of a twist since I was used to reading from the point of view of the narrator, rather than someone else, let alone his son. 

All of these lexia connect together through words that are used among these four pages.  The titles of three of them are pretty straight forward — Thisman, What I say and Desmond — but ‘ax player’ was a bit of a stretch for me.  The only thing I can think of is how the third party, in this case Desmond, is coming between a family and is the axe that is cutting them apart.  That particular lexia is about Desmond, spoken from the point of view of the narrator, so it is a rather sour, partisan description.        

Afternoon a Polish Family

Afternoon, a story

 

I begin by clicking on the beginning page; I logged name in parenthesis in the title bar; then I assessed the page links that was derived from the pages that I choose and the text was as follows: 

The beginning page titled [begin] had 13 relevant links with different textual story lines, all the other words on the page linked to this text:  “I want to say I may have seen my son die this morning”.  I found that each page’s words linked basically to the same storyline except a few words, but most if not all of the words linked to the same story.  The begin page’s story implies an unyielding lifecycle without joy or maybe a little joy that come from melting noonday ice, which only melts at noon and freezes in the evening. 

The begin page relevant link starts with [winter] where the narrator is still a woman, she says that tries to recall winter and the story tell about watching a snowmobile burning while the other riders hopelessly watched.  The second link [she] brought up the lexia that implied a meeting between a man and a woman and he asked “what shall I call you”. She gives him the name Nausica.  The third work on the beginning page that I clicked was [blacktop] where you get the impression that the narrator is speaking about summer road conditions when heat waves rise from the paving.  The fourth link selected was {crystal, but in the title brackets the word [lethe] was there and not the clicked word crystal.

I fond that the pages all followed the story from the original page, especially the link that I choose, it was just from a different point of view. The point depended upon who was speaking and the subject matter that they were speaking about. The storyline that my text revealed was in Poland during the economic reformation with a few post hippy elements thrown in.  The text linked to crystal spoke about how a person feels when they get high for the first time on hard drugs, after which, you have a continual longing for that feeling.

A couple living or trying to relive the heated passion that the once shared, but finding it necessary to move on.  Once younger living free like hippy they now have responsibilities and must conform to some different social standards to raise their children.  The wife who once expressed love for her husband now choose a younger man to feel the passion and completeness she once felt with her husband.   Trapped in the new economy the husband looses his son and can not bare to know the truth so he evades the sense of the inevitable.

The words were found some wherein the page text, they related to the story, and connected the story of a relationship between people in their every day lives;, in there Polish community and show that their live were the same as many other families in other provincial economic developing societies. 

Writing about Afternoon

  1. Reread afternoon, a story from the beginning
  2. Pick any series of four linked story “spaces”
  3. Keep track of the words that take you from one lexia to the next. What is their “texture” and what is their relationship to the title and text of the lexia they yield to?
  4. Analyze the lexia themselves: who is speaking, what is the context, what is the theme of the lexia? How does these lexia relate to each other and to the greater meaning of afternoon?

Afternoon

The textual media Afternoon, a Story by Michael Joyce has some elements that resemble the other texts that we have discussed in class.  I has text where the text implies that the story is going to give you closure, but does not; It has a narrator that maneuvers the reader into the plot in a way that you do not know who is telling the story or who is being told the story; and new character are interjected into the story line in the same manner that Calvino presented his characters.  

He connected is story text and pages more like that in the novel Choose Your own Adventure, but set the text links more like the textual media in Hegirascope.  It conveys a sense of the mind filling the stories gutters and seen in Understanding Comics.  The way the story was structured made you fill-in a lot of gutter space, especially with the text on his conduct about the accident.

afternoon thoughts

Afternoon opens with the casual, brief exchange between a character and his or her thoughts. I stare at the page, and conclude that I already like this story. Continuing to read the still screen- it is still by the manner of descriptive words such as cold, and winter, and ice- I frame the fragmented scenes as a collage of war- instilled by the lines that read, “By five the sunsets and the afternoon melt freezes again across the blacktop- into crystal octopi and palms of ice—rivers and continents beset by fear, and we walk out to the car, the snow moaning beneath our boots and the oaks exploding in series along the fenceline on the horizon, the shrapnel setting like relics, the echoing of far ice. This was the essence of wood, these fragments say. And this darkness is air.”

 

 I found that instinctively I had placed the setting of this story in the arms of a courageously cold and bitter war. How interesting that this mode, this present scene, is introduced in thought by a series of terms and descriptive terms. Beset by fear, conjured shots of fearful trance, projected by faceless expressions of soldiers sprawling the fields of ice and heavy snow.

 

 A war in winter-

 

Which is carried by the line, “snow moaning beneath our boots”- almost an immediate mental depiction of these soldiers that I have so vividly pictured in my mind, certain that this is the tale the author intends to share. The depiction is of moaning fighters, trucking upon bitter cold snow, trampled on by heavy boots- military, most likely. The terms shrapnel and darkness did aid my erratic assumptions, either. For shrapnel is in war, used for battle. And the darkness speaks of billowing smog of artillery smoke and gun powder, canons, and whatever fantasy like image I am projecting- one that molds separate time periods as one.

 

Much like the instances we discovered in the hegirascope, and the first assignment of linking particular nouns to specific sites, words do in fact bring about a memory, a feeling, a fleeting thought that signifies its importance to you, and whether or not it deems further inquiry or interpretation. I saw these words and thought, surely this is a novel of cold hunger, much like the story, “Ordeal By Hunger”, (a war story involving the chronicles of men becoming men throughout a war zone). The tale, again, exemplifies that fantastic dementia between words, mind, interpretation, and sequence. (sequence, I speak of the placement of the words on the page, coinciding with the placement- rather importance- of certain words to the reader).

Afternoon, a story?

After reading this piece, I don’t see the connection with this piece with the rest of the hypertext that has been used in the class.  There were no links that I found that lead to an outside source, i.e images, related links which could further enhance the story as a hypertext.  Another noticeable difference is there is only one way to move through the story.  Pressing Yes goes on to the next page, Pressing No simply goes back to the previous page.  Therefore it was the same as reading a regular printed work for me.  Again no choices are really presented. I also found it hard to follow the story. At some points, it is clear the narrative is divided by two.  The narrator is walking through the woods describing the trees and scenery during one half.  The other half the actions of seperate characters and their surroundings are described.  For example, a house with lawn chairs and siding and other random objects were noted.  I was unable to make a connection betweent the two halves.  I would say the only the connection to hypertext is that the narrative is so random.

Afternoon memories

The stories involved in Afternoon seem shuffled and re-shuffled and the same paragraphs are even embedded in different pages and seemingly different naration lines.  There seem to be numerous narrators and I am at times unsure as to the narrator’s gender which can become confusing at times.  However, generally the story involves many memories and charactors.  Although at times I am unable to assess which character belongs to what purpose or description.  Perhaps I jumped about too much ;).  Regardless, My inevitable conclusions seem similar to my classmates experiences so, I am assuming that the information stays relatively the same.  I got trapped in cycles several times, rereading the same path over and over.  Though, I was able to link out of it once I figured out the process. 

Whenever the writer alludes to an ending of sorts which never really seems to occur he gives insight into the pattern of the program.  He often says "There is no simple way to say this."  Throughout the story and upon an "ending" of sorts.  "When a story no longer progresses, or when it cycles, or when you tire of the paths, the experience of reading ends."  This is how he explains the closure within this type of reading.  So, it seems it may end several times throughout reading, but the experience ends when the reader chooses to end it.  He continues to give hope that words may take the reader to a different place each time and in different situations.  Similar to Hegirascope, there are quotes from different books and poems perhaps one of the characters’ intermingling with the narratives. 

So, the story can change based on the links you choose and upon answering questions with innumerous possible paths.  I wondered whether the system mixes paragraphs up or whether he just reuses them to create memory.  I suppose it is the latter however, as each page is titled, and presumabley each is already written.  There are many references to movies within memories and musical relations.  I suppose this is because it is tyed to so many of our memories and the paths our minds take when recalling them.

Afternoon, a story

Afternoon, a story is not as obvious as Hegirascope that it is a hypertext fiction.  Afternoon does not seem to present as diverse a possibility of tangent paths from readers to readers.  I wonder how many different variations that Afternoon offers.  There is one line that stuck in my mind as I explore the story, it is found on the lexia titled "Hop Scotch", it states, "In its own way, this book consists of many books, but wo books above all."  Then the the paragraph goes to describe how this book of many books, consists of two books depending on the way that the reader reads it.  The different method determines the book, one reader can go almost a linear path without clicking on the possible links, whereas another readers can skip around like in hop scotch but still remain somewhat of a linear progression through the story. I am wondering if we all read Afternoon long enough, we will all come out with the same information and understanding of the plot and characters?   Is it just one great narrative with the same information but presented to the readers at different orders depending on what paths the reader choices.  The idea of the order of information reminds me of the main character, well at least the main characters for me in my experience of Afternoon, his ex-wife name is Lisa and his son is Andy.  There is a episode when the main character reflects upon his marriage, in one sense, on the literal level, he is addressing his marital failures between him and his ex-wife, on the other hand, metaphorically, this can address how some readers like certain control over what information is given to them and in a specific order. 

 I am really curious to know what other experience and narrative of Afternoon is like, because I am wondering if this hypertext is more linear, or if it has more diverse paths imbedded in the stories than I thought. My version of Afternoon so far center around the male narrator with the ex-wife that was never named.  Then I discovered more about Lolly, Nariscaa, Lisa and Wert’s different past and their lives.  A correlation that I found consist in Afternoon that also exist in Calvino’s novel is the unidentify shift in narrations.   The readers found out from whose  perspective the passages are coming from through the hints of that persons situation and characteristic to find out who is speaking.  In Calvino’s novel, the point of view is in second person throughout the main narrative, and then it shifts to different first person narration in the incipits.  Afternoon the passages are usually written in the first person but coming from different person at different time. 

Afternoon, a story

Afternoon, a story was very similar to a lot of the other hypertexts we’ve looked at so far. It reminded me a lot of Hegirascope. Like Hegirascope, Afternoon is a story guided by links within the text that is more like pieces of a puzzle that need to be put together. These links within pages of the ‘text’ will also divert you to other pages.

Although Afternoon and Hegirascope  are similar in many ways, there are many ways they also differ. Hegirascope only relies on the reader’s choosing of links and the systematic changing of pages to guide the reader. It also does not allow any ‘backtracking’ of the story (this is not intended by the author, although you can ‘cheat’ this system by pressing your backbutton on your browser to view a previous page or by going back to previous links). However, Afternoon has a backbutton that can allow you to backtrack if you want to go back to a previous page. You also have a "Yes" and "No" button so that you can answer the questions that are asked of you in the story (a click on "Yes" or "No" will guide you to a different page). It also keeps a record of what links you have chosen and the history of pages that you have visited. You can also type in a response in the blank field at the bottom, and your response will send you to a different page. In this way, is like Afternoon maps your course for you as you explore it.  

In Afternoon, you also have the option to ‘bookmark’ pages if you want. The reader can also read this story at his or her own pace – there is no systematic turning of pages as in Hegirascope. The reader MUST make a decision (click a link, click yes, click no, hit the backbutton) in order for the story to continue. In this way, Afternoon is very similar to the Choose Your Own Adventure books we read. Like the Choose Your Own Adventure books, if the reader does not make a decision as to what they want to do, the story cannot continue. Hegirascope, however, will continue whether the reader has made a decision or not.

With the reader being able to make all of these decisions, I think that Afternoon engages the reader much more than with Hegirascope  or with the Choose Your Own Adventure books.