Bloggin' About "AFTERNOON"

Michael Joyce's early hypertext creation, "Afternoon, A Story" was a strange experience. I'm a fan of reading. I read often. I also tend to like to finish what I've started.

With "Afternoon," I found myself somewhat uncomfortable. After clicking on a few odd words, I went off on an American Indian fable tangent that, after a few clicks brought me directly back to the point that I left to go on the trip. Like taking the scenic root and finding out that you've landed back where you started. Hopefully, you enjoyed the trip. (And, actually, the story of Crow and Snake was pretty cool.)

But I also had a hard time following a specific story-line. There must have been an actually, core, story that I was diverging from with my random clicking; at least that's what I kept telling myself, or wondering, anyway... The EASE with which you could leave the main story made it almost irresistable, for me, to click myself away into the labyrinth. I wanted to get lost (see what was at the center) and I did... But I don't know if I ever FOUND the center. Storywise, it was very stream-of-consciousness like. Dream words leading to dream images...