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Schizophrenic Writing
Caitlin Carter
English 101
Professor Meehan
November 21, 2008
Hypertext and technologically influenced literature has a schizophrenic style making the message of the work incoherent and unaccomplished. The work is unaccomplished because it lacks a theme, plot, and a narrator. Particular aspects of the work, such as the storymap layout, the disjointed sentences and boxes, are obscure and incomprehensible. The material aspect of the story overwhelms the work.
Schizophrenia “is a state characterized by the coexistence of contradictory or incompatible elements.” Patchwork Girl is a schizophrenic work, as described by Shelley Jackson in Stitch Bitch. The work is schizophrenic because the organization of the story is inconsistent. The web mapping is difficult to navigate and challenging to understand. The links are continuous, but the cyclical layout is frustrating to use. Traversing through the layout was difficult in addition to the overall challenge of the new medium; these components distract the reader from the actual content in the novel. I was unable to find a plot, a narrator, or a main character in the story due to the constant interruptions of clicking on links, getting lost in the web work, and rereading the same material that appears as I pass through the material.
Navigating through the work is complicated and time consuming. The first image the reader sees is the story map of the work. In the story map there is a picture of various boxes with several different topics.
One can click on the boxes and several links will appear for the reader to choose from; the reader decides what pathway to take when reading the story. The links that appear are connected to the previous box or link in some way, but there isn’t always a coherent and logical pattern that the appearing links follow.
Reading in this manner seems uneven and jagged. The only logical way I found to read Patchwork Girl was through the outline view, where the different links are presented in a list.
Even this method became confusing and difficult, for the links under each category, such as the bad dream section, were unsound and illogical. I feel that the work is insubstantial and its reputation as a measurable work is derived from its innovative material but the overall focus of the work is absent. As Birkerts says “we are taken most by the look of it all-the compact, crisp, high-resolution design that inspires confidence.” The flashy materiality of the work overwhelms the reader, preventing her from grasping the deeper meaning of the novel.
A specific part in Patchwork Girl that I find particularly taxing to read is the bad dream section under designs, where the author lists random thoughts. The writing in this section is a list of random phrases or words, such as “peek a boo” and “puss in the corner,” that have no relation to one another. This section was written as if the main character was dreaming disjointed thoughts. I understand why the author listed the bad dreams in choppy syntax; the writing is metaphoric for the literal scarring of the female monster and the monster’s coarse destroyed body. I feel that the metaphor overwhelms the work, distracting the reader from ever comprehending the deeper aspects of the story, like an overall theme or message.
In my opinion the most important parts of reading are the overall message, theme, and plot of the work. When I read I want to be carried by the story, whereas the point of Patchwork Girl is keep the reader aware of reality. Birkerts view of literature is similar to mine where Jackson specifically wrote Patchwork Girl to contradict the normal perception of the reading experience. Jackson’s view of reading is that one should lose themselves in the work to think beyond self image. Jackson wants to “invent a new kind of self” that “changes directions easily, sheds parts and assimilate new ones.” This relates to the schizophrenic manner of the work. Jackson wants inconsistency in people’s selves; she expresses that view in Patchwork Girl. She wants to go against the life advice received to “focus, choose, specialize,” so she writes a work that opposes all of these things. Birkerts believes that losing individuality while reading is damaging to the person and degrades the work as a whole. Birkerts believes “the soul is that part of us that smelts meaning and tries to derive a sense of purpose from experience.” So if a work doesn’t have a meaning and can’t nourish the soul with purpose, it is a failure. I agree with Birkerts in that a work of literature should send a message to the reader and make her think about life and what the message of that work means to her. In Patchwork Girl, I could not find a message and so I believe the work was not accomplished.
The work, in my opinion, was not accomplished based on my perceptions of what a novel is supposed to accomplish. The way a novel is read is in a linear manner with a clear narrator, plot, and theme. Patchwork Girl does not clearly present any of these key components in the story. Some may call this work bad writing, but maybe it calls for a bad reading. What I mean by bad reading is that when a person reads the work they should think in incoherent terms; they should think of each box as an individual story with an individual message. A person should think of the work as a networking system, where each different box is communicating a different message. The work should be read in spatial terms and the work shouldn’t be read in traditional linear terms, but in a sporadic method. Reading the book in traditional terms, the work fails as a whole with the lack of organization, plot, theme, and narration.
