1) Making your way through this hypertext requires
your concentration on the instructions in the booklet that accompanies
the disc. If you keep the booklet with you when you are working, you
should be able to navigate the site well. The plethora of buttons
on the windows initially looks confusing (well, it was to me!). Use
the guide to identify each. The most useful to me in navigating are
the history, storyspace map and outline buttons.
2) This is a new experience: expect it to be
confusing. Don't be discouraged if you find yourself lost or overwhelmed
by windows or buttons. Just open up the storyspace map again to re-orient
yourself. Remember, too, that reading hypertext is not a linear experience:
you, as reader, are expected to create, in a sense, the story from
your reading.
3) The Story
If you read the article before you start exploring you should be clear
on the concept of the book, and the story of which it is reworking,
Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. A number of 'I's inhabit this book at
different times: the I of the writer of the hypertext, the I of the
maker of the female Frankenstein, the I of the monster itself writing
and speaking. In addition, each of the body parts from which the monster
is made narrates its own story. You need to work out all the time
you are reading exactly who is speaking.
4) Navigation
There are two primary ways to navigate the text: by picture maps and
by text spaces. You can move between the two at will, but for those
who like to know where they are going and what will happen when they
are en route her are some basic directions.
Bring the storyspace map version of the text to the
front. You will see a number of titled boxes. hercut through
hercut4 and phrenology are picture maps: you click on
different parts of the picture to bring up separate sections of the
story. Use the history button (which produces a list of all the text
spaces you have visited) to go back to the picture to explore additional
links. Or follow the links from the text spaces you open. Use the
history button, too, if you want to revisit a text box.
journal, body of text, story, crazy
quilt, and graveyard are primarily sequences of text boxes.
Impatient, linear readers like me should open the main text space
and click on the outline button. Check both the show text box and
the automatically show text window boxes at the top of the window
and a miniscule text sequence appears on the screen. The print is
just legible, but if you double-click on each section, the full-sized
text box will open in front of the outline, easing eye strain a lot.
5) Why am I asking you to read this book?
First, the content speaks intimately to each of us. The search for
stable identity, the urge to understand ourselves as a preliminary
to acting in the world, and the unequal struggle between rationality
and instinct occupy our reflective moments. Second, the symbiotic
relationship between content and form (between what is written
and how it is written) grows more and more important as we
read. As one student wrote in Spring, 1998, "It was as if the
story were alive..."
Explore…….Learn…….Ask Me Questions
as Soon as You are Lost!