Reflection on hypertext specifically Patchwork Girl

Shelley Jackson’s Patchwork Girl I believe serves as a perfect example of what was addressed in class, this idea of hypertext allowing a person to take in the text as a personal experience. In the article Stitch Bitch Shelley, the monster states, “we shall soon see who is the author of whom.” Furthering this idea that the identity of the author is person in fact clicking on the mouse. While the chain of text is there, the viewer becomes the author of his or her own Patchwork girl thus taking advantage of hypertext. Patchwork Girl is a work in which not every viewers “path” is the same. In all actuality it is more likely that not a single person in my lab section had the exact same experience as me. The uniqueness of my Patchwork Girl experience is how I interpreted what hypertext was. Fittingly, connecting my own experience to a definition. However, the mind’s tendency, “To make something orderly and consecutive out of the divergent fragments that come naturally feels like forcing myself through a Klein bottle.” In my case it had me confused for the first 30 minutes of lab.

Arising from the midst of initial confusion, Shelly Jackson’s Patchwork Girl became a unique digital adventure that furthered the concept of my personal embodiment of hypertext. The monster backs this statement up by saying, “ But the statue doesn't exist except in the mind, a hard kernel like a tumor, set up in the portal to the body, blocking the light. The project of writing, the project of life, even, is to dissolve that tumor. To dismantle the project is the project.” So it seems that a personal adventure is the initial intention of the author. However I think that this understanding of the text as a reader/ viewer doesn’t come across as such until a person steps back from the work and all of it. For me the adventure continued after reading the article online and viewing Patchwork Girl on the computer. As I sit here writing this blog I find myself understanding. Therefore it is through an almost lifelong adventure that this body of hypertexts comes into being, “dismantl[ing] the project” becomes “the project”.