Writing Project #3: The Philosophy of Hypertexts

Maddie Zins

Professor Sean Meehan

English 101

Due: 27 April, 2012

Writing Project #3: My Philosophy of Hypertexts

As a sheltered child of the ever myopic Howard County, Maryland, I don’t think I was ever mindfully aware of the other walks of life that people around the earth strolled as casually as I did the path to preschool with my mother’s hand in tow. I don’t remember anyone ever sitting me down and telling me to open my eyes to the idea of other cultures and their beautiful innovations or really just the other perspectives of looking at our world. Perhaps this is common of most young children, the same way that they do not learn that everyone calls their mother “mom”, or something of the like, by their mom sitting down and talking to them about it. When they see or hear it they may ask, but for the most part their little minds latch onto and remember the norm so they can perform it at a later time. I almost wish that someone had told me of the diversity of the earth as I blindly toddled across its surface because now as a young adult, despite my growing up in a household that upheld only the highest of Western traditions, I am trying more than ever to embody the perspectives of the Eastern world.

A large importance is placed on the universality of the world around us in Eastern cultures. By this, I mean that they dictate an eagerness to focus on the connected nature of all things and see the world as a stream of flowing, ebbing, near “distinctionless” connections. I have adopted the idea of oceanic awareness as a kind of mantra; that all things are part of one great body of consciousness, with coexisting energies that make up our fantasies, sentiments, insanities, similarities, differences and ultimately, beings. Looking at the world through such a lens of ubiquitous correlation I view many forms of hypertext as sources of innumerable instant connections. Never before have the technologies of literature been able to so rapidly link us to far off places that maybe, if I had known of or had as readily in childhood, would have expanded my sphere of knowledge of the world earlier in life.

As a result of my Eastern mindset, I believe that the world is a web of connections, linking all of its inhabitants. And after being exposed to literary hypertexts like The Invention of Hugo Cabret, I came to the conclusion that hypertexts for the purposes of entertainment further the connections we forge to the inhabitants of our world through everyday reading. This is not to say that the hypertext will or must displace the book. I side with Janet Murray’s argument when she states that because they are both the brainchildren of technological advancement, rather than pitting one against the other, it is best to look at the book and the computer as having the same purpose: to further our connections in the world.

In The Invention of Hugo Cabret, Brian Selznick draws his audience into the realms of film, magic and even France though the integrating of images within the printed word text of the novel. Those experiencing Hugo’s story are engulfed in and enticed to explore the book’s many fantastical worlds. Despite the seemingly low-level complexity of that statement, I placed my words and pushed my keys rather carefully so as not to belittle the feat Selznick has achieved in making his book more than just “entertaining” and his audience more than just “readers.” Another dimension is added in flipping through the heavily bound book’s spell-binding pages. Amid the insight into the medium of cinematography by way of old-time photos (not unlike this,

http://www.davidbordwell.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/Train_wreck_at_Montparnasse_1895.jpg), we as readers become connected to film history, just through the interaction of our eyes and brains with this richly linked text. We, too, feel a sense of connection with the characters in it as well. In ways more direct, though no better or worse, than standard books, hypertexts provide the readers with tangible ways of relating to the characters. Though the illustrations of Hugo’s view from inside of his room, of holding and peering at his notebook, from within the ornate clock in the train station and numerous others shown in Selznick’s hypermediated fantasy, we are able to get a direct association to the ways Hugo views the world. Hypertexts allow for similar interactions with audiences by way of the turning of a page, the scrolling of a mouse, the clicking of a button. Some critics would, however, see these connections that readers like myself relish, as impediments.

Critics of hypertexts tend to argue that such literature goes against the furthering of our culture. They believe that we lose some source of imaginative energy when we have the instantaneous connections of hyperlinks or, as with Selznick’s novel, images, provided for us. Many claim that there is a transformation occurring in our thinking based on the type of text presented to us and this is viewed by critics as a cultural derailing. Probably one of the most prominent opponents of hypertexts is Sven Birkets, the author of The Gutenberg Elegies. In his book of essays, Birkets plainly states this main critique for hypertexts that has been argued since their inchoate stages:

For, in fact, our entire collective subjective history—the soul of our societal body—is encoded in print. Is encoded, and has for countless generations been passed along by way of the word, mainly through books. I’m not talking about facts and information here, but about the somewhat more elusive soft data, the expressions that tell us who we are and who we have been, that are the record of individuals living in different epochs—that are, in effect, the cumulative speculations of the species. If a person turns from print—finding it too slow, too hard, irrelevant to the excitements of the present—then what happens to that person’s sense of culture and continuity? (Birkets 20)

I strongly hold his view of society being furthered by books and storytelling to be true, but I would complicate his argument through a bit of mindful probing. I question Birkets’ narrow-mindedness and ask why he feels that hypertexts, which are merely extensions of the printed word, are counterproductive in advancing society the way the book does?

Birkets believes human existence is founded on our ability “confer meaning on our experience and to search for clues about our purpose from the world around us” (Birkets 31). He uses this phrase in opposition to technology and says that this is our race’s distinguishing gift, not our “technological prowess.” Here he refutes himself. He stated before that the history of the Earth, its inhabitants and the concepts they embodied while alive, is best relayed through storytelling and books. In this quote, he is putting down technology in favor of connections of experience and quests for understanding. Yet, the way in which we confer meaning on our experience best is through the employment of technology. The technology of language, the alphabet, the word, the page, the book, the phone, the image, the camera, the computer, the Internet, the Ipod—at this day and age, the list could go on for what seems like forever. And all of these above technologies make it easier and more readily available for humans to relay meanings on life to one another. The integration of many of these technologies in one text enhances its ability to do just that—connect us to the world.

In analyzing the previous precept from page 20 of Birkets’ book, I do not attempt to be close-minded to a rather crucial argument that is embedded within it, that our society now finds print to be “too slow, too hard, irrelevant to the excitements of the present,” and therefore will approach it now. It is with wariness and unease that I leave this snippet of the quotation for the end and not because it is to be my most impressive point in the battle against critics of technology. I, like Birkets, have come to see the metamorphosis of interactions within my genearation as influenced by the new society of the internet happening today. I hear of it as it occurs on Facebook (and remember it because after coming to this realization of the false or inferior quality of the connectedness of social hypertexts I deactivated my account), tumblr (although I’ve never experimented with it), Twitter (the same) and other hypertexts of a similar, social nature.

Despite my appreciation for and enjoyment of recreational hypertexts, I would argue that those of the social media are promoting false shadows connections in comparison to hypertexts that hope to entertain or enlighten, hypermediated texts (The Invention of Hugo Cabret or The Medium is the Massage), novels or any books at that, or even storytelling for a number of reasons. At the forefront of these is the illusion they give off of being genuine forms of connections. Perhaps a better way to word it would be the fact that they lack genuine connections. This way shows the possibility for hypertexts of a social construct in the future to create McLuhan’s idea of The Global Village.

http://a.parsons.edu/~jeonc627/majorstudio/images/interaction48.png

Until such a deep connection as that of a tribe (rather than the superficial connection of being “friends on facebook” with certain peoples you may not even be on speaking terms with) and so ubiquitous as one that is global (over that of all the small-town friends that “like” your pictures through the web but do not acknowledge you in the supermarket), I cannot give my support to such forms of hypertext. I see signs of the latter of these two causations for my supporting social hypertexts in the formative stages through my understanding of twitter, but again, the more important of the two which is the quality of the connections being made, is far from being attained. So on this point, for these types of hypertext, I am in favor of Sven Birkets’ approach which is that of wariness and dislike, but this does not change the way I look at other hypertexts (those for recreation), which I see as the beginning steps of reaching McLuhan’s idea of the Global Village, maybe without our even being aware of it.

Ultimately though, I believe that Sven Birkets would disapprove of such a structure for the entire globe. For that reason, I fundamentally disagree with his view of hypertexts. He puts them down, possibly because he is unaware of the connected nature of the world as it is already: one massive work of literature with the hypertexts of cultures woven in it. If Birkets was more knowledgeable of the nonlinearity that is opposed by his Western presuppositions, perhaps he would see hypertexts as technologies of merit in the literary sphere in which we live and the literal one. My conclusion, then, is not that everyone should take in hypertext as readily as I did the Eastern philosophies to which I cling so tightly. Rather that we are not obliged to love all forms of hypertext, but in order to keep up with this ever changing field of connections in which we live, we should come to accept their existence and learn to use them.

Works Cited

Birkerts, Sven. The Gutenberg Elegies: The Fate of Reading in an Electronic Age. New York: Faber and Faber, Inc., 1994. Print.

Murray, Janet. Hamlet on the Holodeck: The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1997.

Selznick, Brian. The Invention of Hugo Cabret. New York: Scholastic Press, 2007. Print.

A (Very) Rough Draft of Writing Project #3: The Philosophy of Hypertexts

Maddie Zins

Professor Sean Meehan

English 101

Due: 27 April, 2012

Writing Project #3: My Philosophy on Hypertexts

As a sheltered child of the ever forward-thinking (though not really) Howard County, Maryland—the name itself sounds, to me, as if it inspires narrow-mindedness—I don’t think I was ever aware of the lifestyles of other cultures. I don’t remember anyone ever sitting me down and telling me to open my mind to the idea of other cultures or other perspectives of looking at the world. Perhaps this is common of most young children, the same way that they do not learn that everyone calls their mother “mom,” or something of the like, by their mom sitting down and talking to them about it. When they see or hear it they may ask, but for the most part they take it in an attempt to comprehend the foreign idea in a way that their little minds can latch onto the concept.

I almost wish that someone had told me of the diversity of the world as a child because now as a young adult, despite my growing up in a household that upheld only the highest of Western traditions, I am trying more than ever to embody the perspectives of the Eastern world. Whether this is because of my increased knowledge of such abnormal practices (for me at least) through the ignorance-ridding environment of my course load this semester, or because I have always been eager to be inclusive, I still find myself thinking in the terms and mindsets of the once alien East.

A large importance is placed on the universality of the world around us in Eastern cultures. By this, I mean that they are eager to focus on the connectedness of all things and see the world as a flowing, ebbing stream of near “distinctionless” connections. I have adopted the idea of “oceanic awareness” as a kind of mantra; that all things are part of one great ocean of consciousness, with coexisting energies, fantasies, sentiments, insanities, similarities, differences and ultimately, beings. Looking at the world through such a lens of ubiquitous correlation I see many forms of hypertext as sources of innumerable instant connections. Never before has technology been able to so rapidly link us to far off distances around the globe that maybe, if I had known of or had as readily in childhood, my sphere of knowledge of the world would have expanded earlier on.

Upon reading hypermediated literature like The Invention of Hugo Cabret I was connected to the worlds of film, magic and even France though the integration of images in the novel. I find that hypertexts that attempt only to be entertaining or intellectually stimulating are generally successful and elicit the reactions that they set out to attain (examples of hypertexts such as Oulipoems and Galatea for enjoyment and ones like Wikipedia or arguably any internet database for informative purposes). Sometimes, while entrenched in the often spellbinding pages of The Gutenberg Elegies, I thought Sven Birkets too easily casted off hypertexts in exchange for books, when hypertexts for the source of enjoyment are interchangeable with books. They are both the end results of technological innovation.

Many critics that I have read recently seem to continually bring up that fact that historically, books were the maverick or the new technology. As Nick Carr points out in his article Is Google Making us Stupid and Marshall McLuhan in The Medium is the Massage, intellectuals such as Socrates, thought the universality of book reading or even the alphabet with which books and words are created, would lead to societal degradation. This parallels Birkets’ view that the new technology of hypertext is going to draw our society into “a crisis of meaning” (196). I’d argue that not a crisis, but definitely a transformation of sorts, is bound to occur and whether it is for the good or the bad is left to be answered as it unfolds.

Books forge connections just as hypertexts or computer/online mediums do and oral storytelling does as well. This is the point of technology–to be able to more easily and readily “confer meaning on our experience and to search for clues about our purpose from the world around us” (Birkets 31). And yet, Birkets uses this quotation to explain what our society has instead of technological prowess, when his statement clearly outlines what our “technological prowess” is used to further. Aside from this massive overlooking and the overall myopic perspective on this as well as other points against technology, I would critique his argument mainly based on the fact that the reason Sven Birkets cannot accept hypertexts is because of his inability to accept connectedness.

Today many teens and young adults have become transfixed on the connections available though social hypertexts. Though, like Sven Birkets, I must question the quality of these linkages. I cannot affirm much goodness in those hypertexts because in their attempt to replace social interactions, the quality of the connectedness is sacrificed and it becomes artificial. It’s odd that for the same reason I take delight in those hypertexts that connect thought to thought for the purposes of amusement, those with a hyper-linkage to hyperlinks, with smatterings of past, present, paradise and future accessible from the turn of or click to each page—for the same reason (my mindful awareness of and strive to maintain connectedness) that I revel in the immense connections of those hypertexts, I am unsettled by those hypertexts of social media or socially interactive nature. I think that my reasoning for this coincides with that of Sven Birkets when he states that hypertexts will come to change the way we interact.

I see the metamorphosis of interaction as influenced by the new society of the internet happening today. I hear of it as it occurs on facebook (and remember it because after coming to this realization of the false or inferior quality of the connectedness of social hypertexts I deactivated my account), tumblr (although I’ve never experimented with it), twitter (the same) and other hypertexts of a similar nature. These are false connections in comparison to hypertexts that hope to entertain or enlighten, hypermediated texts (The Invention of Hugo Cabret or The Medium is the Massage), novels or any books at that, or even storytelling for a number of reasons. At the forefront of these is the illusion they give off of being genuine forms of connections. Perhaps a better way to word it would be the fact that they lack genuine connections. This way shows the possibility for hypertexts of a social construct in the future to create McLuhan’s idea of The Global Village.

Until such a deep connection as that of a tribe (rather than the superficial connection of being “friends on facebook” with certain peoples you may not even be on speaking terms with) and so ubiquitous as one that is global (over that of all the small-town friends you have “poking” you daily), I cannot give my support to such forms of hypertext. I see signs of the latter of these two causations for my supporting social hypertexts in the formative stages through twitter, but again, the more important of the two which is the quality of the connections being made, is far from being attained. So on this point, for these types of hypertext, I am in favor of Sven Birkets’ approach which is that of wariness and dislike, but this does not change the way I look at other hypertexts (those for recreation and information), which I see as the beginning steps of reaching McLuhan’s idea of the Global Village, maybe without our even being aware of it.

Stub Poetry or Stub Poppycock?

While searching for scintillating hypertexts on the Electronic Literature Collection I came across one beneath many of the various headings of types of hypertextual literature that is titled Stud Poetry (the link for which is here: http://collection.eliterature.org/1/works/niemi__stud_poetry/StudPoetryIntro.html). I followed the ELC’s tunnel of hyperlinkage that would lead me to the game and found myself at the beginning of a poker match. This was unlike the ones that are provided on most PC’s and can be found under the “Games” folder of the Computer’s tools. This poker match tests the player’s mastery of betting and the technology of the word (without much active participation on the player’s part because most of it was left to chance). This was a play at poker poetry where the numbers are replaced for words, the opponents for famous poets and the traditional poker points system for one which is only slightly more literary.

In the game I played, my competitors were writers such as Jean Moreas, Stephane Mellarme, Gerard de Nerval, Charles Baudelaire and Arthur Rimbaud. I’m not completely sure because I’m not so familiar with all of these poets, but I believe they were chosen as competitors in the game because of the similarities between their writing and the medium of the game–hypertext. This is at least true of Stephane Mellarme whose poetry has elements of unique spacing that parallel certain types of hypertexts, like Ambients. Ambient hypertexts often feature lines of writing that move around the screen and are not as linear as the traditional poem setup would be. In Mellarme’s poem L’Apres-midi d’un Faune, the style and structure of some of the lines comes off a bit like those that are in motion in sections of the hypertext The Museum (for instance, Ophelia) only without the text actually moving as it is scrolled over. The creator Marko Niemi may have selected the the poets of the game so as to use a sort of covert intertextuality similar to  that of Mary Shelley in her novel Frankenstein.Shelley weaves intertexts into the book so as to both furthers the plot and enhance the tale’s intricacy of detail.

Despite this sign of possible insight and use of intertext on  Niemi’s part, I had serious structural problems with the overall game . I don’t think that the style with which the “poetry” was being pieced together and merited by points is really all that reflective of actual poetry. In the game the goal is to bet wisely and attempt to get word repetitions (although the words are dolled out by what seems to be chance, like in real poker) in a given hand or suit repetitions. I think because I am such a lover of poetry, especially poems featuring words masterfully strung together to create an almost singing, musical quality that almost makes the heart pang, I could not get past the disconnect between the game’s point system and what actually makes for good poetry. Perhaps Niemi’s point was to argue that hypertext poetry does not adequately parallel poetry that is printed.

If this is truly his purpose behind the game/hypertext–to showcase hypertext’s inability to mirror or further the book or really just the print medium–I think Sven Birkets, the author of The Gutenberg Elegies, a text I have been closely reading of late, would give accolades to it. As surprised as I am to see Sven Birkets, hypertext and accolade in the same sentence, I can’t see him opposing it if Niemi meant it to point out the flaws in the medium of the hypertext. Birkets’s view of the medium is stated here: “Hypertext… promises to spring me from the univocal linearity which is precisely the constraint that fills me with a sense of possiblity as I read my way across fixed acres of print” (164). The “poems” generated by the programming for randomness in Stud Poetry, despite their being shown in a line, are far from linear in their piecing or train of thought. Again, if Niemi meant to show the limits of hypertext when used for poetry, I would have to believe that Birkets would agree wholeheartedly that something is lost in the translation between media.

Yet I am fully aware that this interpretation may be flawed. Niemi may have, in fact, wanted the game to be seen as a completely legitimate way of making poetry and extending the creation of poetry to people who might not have attempted it in a different medium. If this is the case, both Sven and I would have to disapprove. Birkets would most likely critique this because there is no feeling of “‘liberating domination’ from the author” (164) and, as stated before, the lack of linearity. And I suppose my disapproval would be for both similar and different reasons. I would frown on the concept that this game allows users to create poetry and argue that what they’re creating, although somewhat poetic, is really just a short string of 5 or less words. I do not mean to claim that there aren’t other hypertexts that adequately display and further my love for poetry, but I do believe that this one lacks poetic qualities shown in texts which inspire me daily. Without those qualities, I would have to ask, is it really poetry the player makes and gets credited for, or something like nonsense?

On Society’s Void of Technological Sentiment

The halls and chambers of my most personal and private reading life have recently been flooded with the overwhelming company of technological innovation. From text on Google’s values, to women’s literature, to interactive fiction, to “monkish pursuits” all the way to nudity, although not seemingly so, technology has been at the forefront of my reading and thoughts. Which I guess, makes sense because reading springs from a type of technology: writing.

I first began to see the parallels of the internet and novels, or really all books, from Nicholas Carr’s Is Google Making Us Stupid. He calls upon Socrates idea that having books, scholars would “’cease to exercise their memory and become forgetful.’ And because they would be able to ‘receive a quantity of information without proper instruction,’ they would ‘be thought very knowledgeable when they are for the most part quite ignorant.’” Carr continues and argues that Socrates was “shortsighted. He couldn’t foresee the many ways that writing and reading would serve to spread information, spur fresh ideas, and expand human knowledge (if not wisdom).”

I originally saw the internet and technology as too ready and capable to share things that should be private, however upon reading this I began to see the internet as something similar to this idea of books. I realized that the merits of the printed word Carr talks of (it disperses information, enlightens and sparks ideas) are shared by the world wide web. I see literature as a source of escape from the public nature of the internet, a respite from the limelight that is social media, yet Socrates, in his time, viewed books in the same negative limelight that I had originally seen the internet and preferred storytelling or talking in a classroom setting. And then a daunting thought presented itself to me: what if one day the book will run out of fashion? I don’t mean to spiral into a place of “what if”‘s, but it keeps me tossing and turning awake at night when I think about the day that I very well might have to exchange the tightly bound dream worlds of books for the cold hard keys beneath my hands or the clicking mouse that ticks away at my sanity, as an escape from some worse monster-brain child of the newest technological fads.

I want to say that this won’t happen. I want to be assured that books, like the oral tradition, will not go out of style, and that just because the world is constantly evolving and ever-changing does not mean that many of the tenets of my life will not become almost obsolete. But everything I read about technology points to this eventually becoming reality, and perhaps the most profoundly reinforcing factor of them all is the fact that I read them on the screen and not the page. I want to say I can make a difference, that I can do something to change what appears to be this inevitable fact, because I think we have a great many thing to learn about the fibers of the pages of an author, an artist’s, desires that cannot be so easily submitted to the shame of Wikipedia as easily as I click the “Publish” button on my current page. And because I am an advocate of committing action to the beliefs we most heatedly accept and hold firmly to. I know that it is not just me who wants for this change not to occur and I know that it will be a long-time coming if and when it does happen, still I am now facing the soul sinking and spirit shrinking fact that it will.

I know technology is meant to further humankind and I understand that since the beginning of the invention of the alphabet it was meant to foster communication, which is something that I love. What upsets me is not the prevalence of the internet or the computer, but the declining importance of some forms of communication. I have learned from a course I am in called Native American Literature, that the oral tradition and storytelling are elements of communication that are going steadily out of style and this upsets me. I have surmised, as seen here, that one day the printed word may become a rarity; this too upsets me. One day in the future if the computer were to be obliterated from our culture I am sure it would upset me as well.

It is not the progress of technology that I am beginning to dislike, rather it is the depreciation of the value of old technological innovations that causes me unease and frustration. I agree with what Janet Murray says in her book Hamlet on the Holodeck: The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace, in that “the computer is not the enemy of the book. It is the child of print culture, a result of the five centuries of organized, collective inquiry and invention that the printing press made possible” (8). I am trying to look father back and forward, in that I wish our society would uphold the appreciation we had at one point or another for the past technologies we reveled in the accomplishments of. To forget the art and technologies employed by others, and to cast them off for the newest crazes is what I fear our society may come to. I guess, basically, what I wish is for technological sentiments to become more widespread  because I am nostalgic and I know that there is always something to be learned from last generation’s artistic fads even if it is merely that they are an extension of one person’s existence.

A Technological Villiage

Marshal McLuhan’s intermediated matter in The Medium is the Massage shows the predictions and predilections of a forward-looking man in the 1960′s. Through the pairing of compelling images with his contemporary ideas of technology his message (or massage) is portrayed: “all media work us over completely” and one day forms of technology will become huge, the same way the printed word and language did.

On the final page of The Medium is the Massage, the reader is left on a quite multifaceted thought, that because of technology, “with TV and folk singing, thought and action are closer and social involvement is greater. We again live in a village. Get it?” (156). At first glance, I see the heads up. When I merely read it I thought of how nice of a way to think of technology, as a connector not in a way that intrudes on our privacy, rather a form of the collective self, that we are together. Then I realized that our technology-minded generation does not, in fact, “get it.” It is the exact opposite. Our technology has made thought and action closer, but aside from online political forums and getting the news on smart phones, my generation’s involvement in technology has become primarily about the self.

If only Earth could become a village connected by wifi, all of us being members of the collective self and collective memory of the tribe of the world, but this of course is a hippie’s dream, not the world’s reality. McLuhan was using cynicism to portray what as become what I believe to be the ultimate technological defeat: our inability to use it to prosper unity. Maybe I’m generalizing, but almost every person that I know who uses social networking sights are either for their own benefit or for the benefit of the few. They either blog or post updates to get their ideas out there and “liked” or “retweeted” or they log in to facebook to check on what is going on with a select group of people or to send emails to a handful of individuals. From reading The Medium is the Massage, I believe McLuhan would never have imagined how self-centered technology has made my generation today.

As McLuhan goes through the different ways technology effects his era’s society and lifestyles–with headings like you, your family, your neighborhood, your education, your job, your government, “the others”– there is one category that stands out from the rest: “the others.” In this section Marshall McLuhan explains that technology can bring about “the shock of recognition! … minority groups can no longer be contained–ignored” (24). I had never thought of that side to technology, a way of advancement for equality because we are all, as McLuhan then goes on to discuss when he brings up the lack of privacy that comes with technology,”responsible for, each other” (McLuhan 24). He pairs this idea with the image of American Gothic:

I tend to think that the painting almost inspires judgement. From the glaring eyes and pitchfork of the man, to the woman’s resentful inability to look straight at the faces of onlookers, a creepy feeling of unease crawls up my spine whenever I catch this image’s glimpse. So I am left wondering, why did McLuhan pair this image with a page on “the others” and the containing of minority groups? Is it because he himself judges those that do attempt to contain minority groups? More realistically it’s because he is judging technology for being so interconnected, maybe he wishes to go back to the blissful private life of the southern farm, where no one walks onto the lands of others and our lives keep from being publicly announced by technology.

My followup question, one that my English class is repeatedly making me rethink, is: is this really the best way to approach technology? As much as I want to shun it and go back to the ways of old, where the publishing of books happened based on their quality and not the quantity of people the author knew, where facebook didn’t rule the internet and if you wanted to talk to someone, the interactions were more spontaneous or rare, and that much more special; as much as I want these things, I know now technology has taken our society places of no return. I have become hardened enough to face the fact and know too that as great as a technological village sounds in theory, it really has no likelihood of being reached because of self involvement in technology but maybe it’s better like this. Maybe our world isn’t ready to connect, and bridge gaps in such a way, maybe we’re all a little American or African or European Gothic, and perhaps McLuhan would say today that that’s exactly as it should be.

Hope- Hugo Cabret’s True Invention

Brian Selznick’s tale of an impoverished, orphaned, young french boy opens with the audience being instantly transported into film: a place of wonder where our fantasies are born anew into a reality of possibilities unlike any other. This is the mental setting for the protagonist, Hugo, and for the reader as they’re urged to follow him along and fill in gaps between images or plot with the creatures of their imagination’s fancy. We are captivated by and drawn into a series of adventures and stories that circle around the life, the metamorphosis and The Invention of Hugo Cabret. What is the boy’s invention exactly? It is an automaton, it is dreams, it is clockwork, it is magic, but above all it is hope; an invention that we could all use a little more of and find it easy to cling to after we leave the dimly lit lobbies of a movie theater. I think this is what Selznick wishes to invent in the novel or rather, what he wishes us to invent from the novel and its fantastical imaginative qualities.

When I first read the text a few months ago I was extremely confused by the idea of the automaton. I questioned how it worked. I wanted to know how gears in such a small machine could come together to draw such intricate images as the moon with the bullet in its eye. Of course I understood how Papa Georges made the automaton and the drawing, so it wasn’t generating new images, only the ones it was programmed to sketch. Still I felt obligated to completely comprehend how it made its drawings. I don’t know why I stopped questioning those crucial steps in creation, but I did. On this read, after setting aside my transfixed attitude toward understanding the automaton’s inter workings, I came to a few conclusions on Selznick’s purpose in not fully explaining this (for reasons other than it might be boring or perhaps he himself did not completely understand).

Akin to the magic bound up in the in-between of seeing the images that reel together to make film and capturing them with light imprints (something else I was eager to be hung up on the logistics of) is the magic that allowed the automaton to create its drawings. If the reader does not completely understand how such things work, the wondrous mystery and air of excitement is augmented. Perhaps Selznick means to further the awe we experience when reading this novel, like the amazement we feel while watching a film. Maybe he wants us to stop questioning “how” or “why” and utilize creativity to build on the astonishing dreamworld he put forth for us to revel in.

Selznick, like a masterful clock maker, magician or filmmaker, understands the working pieces that make up his craft: imagination. He knows what it takes to draw out our minds from their reclusive confinement of the possible, and does just that in The Invention of Hugo Cabret. Without expounding on all details of the machines or mediums through which his ideas are presented, imagination and creative thinking remains and maybe even are furthered. The novel’s little tinker himself sums this up best: ”Even if all the clocks in the station break down, thought Hugo, time won’t stop. Not even if you really want it to” (Selznick 378). This gives me hope that creativity won’t be thrown completely to the wayside, and if we will ourselves to imagine impossible things in everyday life, we can reshape our thinking, maybe even our world. And if I’ve got such a big ticket stub for hope in my pocket, like what Brian Selznick want’s us to be left with after engaging in his story, maybe that’s the first step.

Writing Project #2: The Truth Behind Mary Shelley’s “Hideous Progeny”

Maddie Zins

Professor Sean Meehan

English 101

Due: 19 March, 2012

Writing Project #2: The Monstrosity of Creation

Intertextuality is related to birth, or as it should be called, re-birth. Similar to birth, intertexts parallel creation or again, better named re-creation, though it is far from recreational in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Shelley states in the novel’s introduction that “Every thing must have a beginning… that beginning must be linked to something that went before” (23). Her idea is exemplified by Joseph Harris in his book Rewriting, as he explains how he views writing as a type of forwarding or commenting on someone else’s ideas. These two analogous concepts, by two arguably not-so-analogous writers, are manifested in literature as intertextuality—overtly using or alluding to the textual stimuli for thought throughout a work. Akin to this rhetorical device is the literal genetic programming that occurs in reproduction. The process of procreation and the piecing of parents’ genetic material to their offspring makes for a child that looks and often acts very similar to them. There are visible traces, fingerprints of ancestry, on the beings of all humans, animals, and things alike, and, like intertexts in books such as Frankenstein, it is those allusions to their sources that give the creations greater significance. Mary Shelley sets up this argument (which gets reinforced throughout the work) with the intertext of Frankenstein’s introduction wherein she also establishes the greater allegory that she is like Victor and that the novel itself is the monster that is created, as Shelley depicts it, “out of chaos” (23).

It can be argued that the monster and his creator Victor are symbolic of the novel and Mary Shelley. We, the audience, see this allegory at the very beginning of the introduction where Shelley is explaining her youth and early stages as a writer. Mary Shelley, in her youth, did not see herself a superb writer, she actually deemed herself to be a “close imitator” (21) of good writers and preferred creating and living in worlds of her mind. The spark for Mary Shelley’s idea for Frankenstein came from a writing exercise with Lord Byron and her husband wherein they set out the write a ghost story “to rival those which had excited us [them] to this task. One which would speak to the mysterious fears of our nature…” (23). Theses high standards were matriculated and codified by Shelley for her own personal gain in the process. When she did eventually move on to writing, Shelley’s mind was “so possessed” (24) with the idea for her story and was ever transfixed on it until she finished it.

Similar to Shelley’s young desire for day-dreaming dottiness is Victor’s childhood, boyish, attraction to the outdated philosophical works of Albertus Magnus and Paracelsus in his father’s library, choosing those over texts with a biological focus. Victor, too, eventually turns to biology and the sciences of life after attending college and being enlightened on their merits by some scholarly professors he has as instructors. He then becomes obsessed with the idea of making his own human and pursues his seemingly impossible challenge with fervor and zest until he sees the “watery” and “yellow” eyes of his creation take their first gaze on him. Victor divulges that in his creative state he forgot to care for himself and often “grew alarmed at the wreck I [he] had become; the energy of my [his] purpose alone sustained me” (60). Despite his disregard for his well-being, Victor survived because of the strength of his will and obsession he so tightly clung to for finishing his creation. This exemplifies exactly how fervent his ardor for his toils was and how alike it is to those passions of his creator, Mary Shelley. As her account of the writing/creative process of the novel continues on to how she makes the work and what she makes of it, so does Shelley render a tale of creation that is intricately connected to the story behind Frankenstein.

While writing the novel, we see that coupled with Shelley’s written creation of Frankenstein is a fear of it. Her purpose with it, at first with the ghost story premise, was to write something that would “make the reader dread to look round, to curdle the blood, and quicken the beatings of the heart. If I did not accomplish these things, my ghost story would be unworthy of its name,” (23). Mary Shelley was frightened by her text while she began thinking of it and said that, upon being awakened to the premise of the piece, her peace was preserved no more in fact. It seems that she does not even long for quietus but rather the excitement of the creation. Shelley states that in thinking of the plot for a first time “a thrill of fear ran through” (24) her and the word choice here interestingly implies that she wants to have fear, probably because she viewed herself as apathetic without such passionate emotions.

Victor sees his act of creating life as something fearful and in a sense, because of the means of creation, intends for it to invoke an awe-struck sense of fear. Upon beholding the monster’s visage, Victor imagined passersby would think on its existence, and the power that a human had to create life and in doing so, be shaken with dread and horror. Even Victor himself, in his recounting the tale of his creation to Walton, becomes frightened by the idea of his creation and how it came to be. As soon as the monster is animated he reflects, asking “How can I describe my emotions at this catastrophe, or how delineate the wretch whom with such infinite pains and care I had endeavored to form… breathless horror and disgust filled my heart” (61). At first, he cannot even put into words his fear and frustration over the monster and when he does, he chooses to pair an anatomical aspect with each sentiment so as to show that not only does he fear it as its creator or on an emotional level, but also as a scientist. This choice in syntax intensifies Victor’s already harshly strong fear for the thing he crafted and gives the audience insight into the reasoning behind his casting the creature off from his life completely.

Both Shelley and Victor at one point in time (or for Victor, throughout the novel) reject their creations based on what they think of them. This casting off evident in the way that they name their creatures: the author deems, though desires not to demean, her work the pet-name of a “hideous progeny” (25) and the scientist delegates his creation with the term monster. The rhetoric of this terminology for the novel, suggests both fondness for it (in the word progeny which gives off the connotation of a bit more than offspring), and apprehension in that the word hideous at the time Mary Shelley was writing had adapted to allude to hiding, not as if she wanted not only to gain a respite away from her work and fame but because she feared it enough to need to conceal herself from it. Shelley sent her work forth to “prosper” and although she had “an affection for it, for it was the offspring of happy days, when death and grief were but words, which found no true echo in my [her] heart” (25) she did not do much to further the accreditation and ubiquitous merit which the work sports today. Victor too casts off his creation, having some affection for it before it was given life. He then, upon realizing its ghastliness, goes on, like Shelley, to endure the reverberated pangs of loss and heartache in vast multitude because of the monster’s killing sprees. The homicide that causes Victor so much pain, however, circles back to him as the cause and his initial jettisoning of his creation. Shelley does not extrapolate on the cause of the anguish and death which she so painfully underwent. Still, the fact that the pair experienced loss after their creations’ completions is evidence enough of a tie between their creations and negative emotions/events with one another.

In Frankenstein, Mary Shelley weaves parallels of her own creative endeavors in writing into the creative pursuits of Victor. The introduction of novel can be seen as an intertext because Shelley’s writing story, which is composed in it, is embedded in the plot of the novel. With sufficient insight into the process of her creation of the book, we see the similarities to Victor and ultimately, we recognize Shelley’s purpose: to shed light on the fact that creators have a tendency to look down upon their creations because they myopically see the flaws in their work and therefore are quick to cast it off. In this argument she suggests that creation is, to use her own terms from the novel, “hideous,” “monstrous” or even “wicked.” As a writer myself, I see some glimmer of truth in this.

I find that writing can often be selfish. I write therapeutically almost every day to let the air out of the heated, bloated, pressured balloon of my emotions so as not to relinquish control of them in front of others and send them flying across the room in a tizzy only to leave me feeling deflated and crestfallen, in a heap on a level seemingly lower than the ground. When I first look back at the things I write to take out such passion, I am often disgusted with the idea that I could feel such a way. Being a writer, like Shelley, I am quick to scorn the work that I later take in so as to foster its growth and nurture it with regard; I come to see it as my brainchild. This transformation is paralleled with that of Mary Shelley in her views of Frankenstein because her affection for it accrued over time, and initially she saw it negatively. If Victor had allowed himself time to adjust to the reality and existence of his creation he might have come to this conclusion as well. I see her argument in the novel to be that if writers and creators alike do not grow to accept their work over time as texts that are to be seen by more than just themselves, then their creation will forever be viewed as “monstrous.” Shelley, in her introduction  after having come full circle in the writing/creation process, means to make creators more accepting of the things they produce, so that they might “commune with the creatures of their fancy” (21) and come to appreciate and enjoy them, rather than deride them because if they don’t, who will?

 

Works Cited

Shelley, Mary Frankenstein. 1831. Ed. Johanna M. Smith. Boston: Bedford Books of St. Martin’s Press, 1992.

 

Reflection Paragraph: I think I fixed the things I wanted to adjust. For instance, I reworked the intro a little, or really just saw it as working after discussing its significance and purpose with others. I also fixed/expanded on my conclusion. I think it works best as it is because it adds to the paper’s ideas as well as sums them up. I read the paper aloud, had a friend look it over and reread it to myself with the sentences chopped up like what we did in class so as to get a feeling for the flow of it as well.