This week I am actually going to be glogging about my frustrations with the structure and material aspect of patchwork girl. When reading the work the first few attempts left me anxious and frustrated for I was trying to read the work in a linear path, like one would do with any other novel. Then I realized that what I was doing was impossible; the work is set up in a system of interlocking webs that connect topics. To follow in a linear path would be just a wasted effort and would degrade the experience for the work was made in a web like manner. Then I tried just reading random passages and once finished I would just click on the first link that came up in the screen and read that passage. Only after a few passages did I realize that this method just brought me full circle and the reading was choppy and hard to understand. The best method I found to read was through the use of the outline. Its a linear chart that allows one to finish the work in logical steps, without missing important sections of the work. Although one can still jump around from topic to topic but keep track of what was read and not read.
I began to wonder why the work was made so choppy, and at first I thought, disorganized, and messy. Well the novel is supposed to be a metaphor for the creation. One can see how the work was written, the missing links (metaphoric of scars), the bad transitions. The continuous connecting to links occurs until a dead end is reached or the computer directs one to an old link. This seems frustrating and disorganized at first but the process is much like the work of a scientist. One is experimenting with the system trying to discover the best way to make the story, for different ways of reading could result in different messages in the novel. One is trying different stories or different creations. A scientist could develop a different creation each time by how they put the creature together. The whole materiality of the work is a metaphor that echoes Frankenstein only the reader is the creator.
Is this a good thing?
Well it depends on if one thinks that this is just sloppy writing or if it is a very creative approach to writing a novel. I feel that it is a little bit of both. The metaphor is an interesting approach and makes one think about how the work was written, this work is an example of a technotext. Although I also think an important part of reading a book, and yes one can think I am small minded like Birkerts, is that one can get lost in the story and enjoy the experience of reading. I don’t want to constantly be interrupted and directed toward a new link. I want to continue with the story and gradually ease into the next part of the story. This work doesn’t feel like a story to me when reading it. It seems like a combination of various things. The work is more like a glossary to a story. It tells you whats in the story and the background, for example the parts of the body have descriptions of where they come from, but the work doesn’t actually explain how the body parts were put together or how they were found or why they were chosen…just what they are. Reading this work cannot be done in a linear manner and one cannot expect this work to be like a novel, for it isn’t, but I’m struggling with reading this novel and understanding the storyline because I’m constantly interrupted and challenged by the material aspect of the work.
Another point I would like to make is that this work reminds me of other works I have read in the past, such as The Poisonwood Bible.
The Poisonwood Bible-the title lexia in this work has three authors listed, Mary/Shelley and herself (the monster). This reminds me of The Poisonwood Bible because the book is written in various perspectives throughout the novel. A family is sent to Africa to spread Christianity and the book describes each of the characters experiences through their own perspective. The Poisonwood Bible shows the inner feelings and thoughts of each character, I’m still waiting to see if Patchwork girl will share this style of writing. Though I am still questioning if a narrator even exists or if the reader is just picking arbitrary points of the work and pasting them together to create a version of the story and that the reader is thereby determining the narrator of the work.
