Hello all! In this blog post I want to extend my analysis of the piece “Frequently Asked Questions about "Hypertext"” by Richard Holeton. Specifically I want to look at how the degeneration of a coherent narrative (and narrator) makes room for the play of code and dialogue with the reader.

While there appears to be nothing overtly strange in the structure of the faq, the content soon undermines this stability. As the reader progresses through the categories the creator of the faq seems less and less reliable. Often over justifying his position, and having long tangents dissolving into schizophrenic associations between paragraphs (for example, a paragraph may briefly mention Southpark and then the next will take Southpark as its subject matter), the creator of the FAQ seems to undermine his knowledge of the poem and its origins at the level of articulation . The only way to understand the faq for “Hypertext” then is through this suspicious narrator, and the reader must distrust the linear narrative and piece together many incongruous bits. This act of rearranging in fact mimics the poem “Hypertext”, which is an anagram-turned-poem of all the possible new meanings from the word Hypertext (though it should be mentioned that this same creator gives us this insight).