Hypertext
-Shelley Jackson’s “Stitch Bitch” —”Hypertext is schizophrenic: you can’t tell what’s the original and what’s the reference.”
Schizophrenia–(from dictionary.com)——
Also called dementia praecox. a severe mental disorder characterized by some, but not necessarily all, of the following features: emotional blunting, intellectual deterioration, social isolation, disorganized speech and behavior, delusions, and hallucinations.
-a state characterized by the coexistence of contradictory or incompatible elements
I feel like the reading in patchwork girl is schizophrenic because there is no organization and i find it extremely difficult to navigate with the web mapping and the spatial reading necessary to comprehend the work. The web layout and the links are very challenging and I get stuck and frustrated at certain points in the work, taking away from the message of the story.
Stitch Bitch–”The self may have no clear boundaries, but do we want to lose track altogether? I don’t want to lose the self, only to strip it of its claim to naturalness, its compulsion to protect its boundaries, its obsession with wholeness and its fear of infection. I would like to invent a new kind of self.”
-Jackson’s view of self is that when one reads a work they should lose their self and be challenged when reading. The message of the work isn’t so much what its specifically saying in the novel but what you find out of the story and how you read the work yourself.
-Birkerts view of the self is that reading is more about finding your identity, taking the message of the novel and reading what that means to you. Birkerts believes that you lose your identity through the use of technology and that losing yourself is a bad thing. Both Birkerts and Jackson agree that technology means losing yourself, but Jackson thinks that is an important and new concept. A technology and literature hybrid means “waning of private self.”
I personally agree with Birkerts I like to read a book and find a message in it that I can relate to myself. I want to be able to connect with a book and understand a plot and a story line, which I feel patchwork girl is lacking. This could be a bias, for I greatly enjoy reading and when I read I am expecting to be taken away from reality in a novel.
possible Thesis: Hypertext and computer reading is schizophrenic and without a clear message in the work I feel the work does not accomplish anything.
-Specific parts of patchwork girl: The work’s layout as a whole is confusing and not easily navigable. The bad dream section especially seems very difficult to understand. The writing is incoherent and schizophrenic, so I feel it is unsuccessful at accomplishing anything. I understand why Jackson wrote the work the way she did (different parts of patchwork girl can be metaphorically expressed through the different links in the work and again in the incoherent rambling in the bad dream section; there are many different pieces just as patchwork girl is made from many different pieces) but i feel that the work is overwhelmed by metaphors and is just not focused enough on a specific theme or message.
Bad reading/Bad writing
-My personal experience with patchwork girl was frustrating and challenging, but maybe that is because I have certain expectations from a work I read. This work was written with a schizophrenic style, maybe that calls for a kind of “bad reading”. Maybe the work would be better read in bits and scraps, just as how it was written. Then a message can be taken and the work can be read as the reader sees fit. One can lose the concept that a greater whole must always be necessary in the work, maybe the work is meant to be read as just a list of messages that one can apply to life later.
