. Spinning .

Noticing that my response to this novel has been very positive, I feel it necessary to make clear that the author, Steve Ersinghaus, is one whom I consider a friend, and this reading and commentary is on a download that is not considered the final edited product. 

Having made that admittance, I will also admit that I spent a bit of time reorienting myself to the hypertext environment (which I’ve never been fond of for reading purposes–though I am intrigued and convinced of its possibilities for creative presentation) and scanned bits of the story.  Had I hated it, I would never have offered to read nor to make public my thoughts.  Steve would’ve gotten a polite and supportive "yay-rah-rah-check-it-out" post and that would have been it.

Obviously, I didn’t and instead I am writing an honest running commentary just as I do with any of the other books I’ve been reading.  I’m enjoying it immensely and though it could fall flat for me yet, I doubt that it will and strongly recommend this to anyone who enjoys a good story, a thought-provoking multi-layered narrative and the involvement of a hypertext read.

Ersinghaus has given us Ham’s opinion of what is both metaphor and theme of his story:

(Ham on relations)

How do I know that the pool is bottomless and why would I choose a pool of water other than for the fact that water follows me or signifies emptiness and confusion but also peace.  I can weave my life on storybeads by following water as a mental metaphor because roads are like water and roads and water are my common themes.

Which makes me immediately discount it and seek different meaning, Roland at my elbow hissing me on.

The roads are important; from the very moment that Ham Sandoval is let off on the side of the road and on his own, his journey starts with the carving out of his own path (why didn’t he follow the safety and sureness of the road? Why did he hyperlink to the left down into the woods instead?)

Ah, the woods.  With the undeniable knowledge that this novel is written in hypertext, the reader cannot help but be aware of that likeness of journey and choice that the medium offers.  The woods are a new place, sheltering yet confusing (much as Ham’s mother).  I see the woods as one of the transition points in his life, and as he leaves them, spit out of their darkness just as he was made to leave his mother’s car (world), into the world of a new Ham and life with the Butlers.

The pattern of trees is subtle throughout.  They make up the forest.  In New York City they are a protective band of trees and Ham once again needs to leave.

Trees branch out, which limb shall he climb? There is an image that Ersinghaus provides within the text of an old barren tree against a blue sky.  With roots in the earth that likewise grasp onto the memory of earth:

But what are the memory trees?  They aren’t the physical specimens. They are tree ghosts.

Trees are history and history is a problem. There is the intermingling question of time and what is real in what blip of space.  That fourth dimension of time is what changes the content of the cube.  In a symbiotic relationship of story and hypertext, space may be considered then a container of time, much as a Storyspace textbox holds within it a reality that has become a memory.  When first read, it may be original or real; the next time, a memory. 

Or does it become memory when written?  And whose? As narrator, it originates from Ham.  But then when I stumbled upon a path that was not in line with the characters and setting it was a place that now, having read further, I now recognize the relationship and yet see it still in the future of this place where Ham is now.  Future, and yet familiar to me now; a memory not yet experienced.  And later, a path of past is offered, placing Ham back in the car with his mother and I have a choice: end the story, keep him safe. But I don’t.

I’ve been taken up by story, medium, and intricacy of ideas, but I’ve always reviewed books from a writing perspective, and not really as reviews, but as ahah! notes or sometimes, a notable disappointment in plot or style.

Ersinghaus’ writing is so well tuned, perhaps by his background as a Professor of English and knowledge of writing, but I think that’s just the controlling factor.  The voice usually reveals the natural talent and in this novel, it goes from lofty to lovely, but all earthy and real:

(Ham on ones)

Yes, if the universe were uniform, centerless, and symmetrical, then, yes, indeed, we’d all be blind or eyeless, but the expectation of uniformity or the redefinition of uniformity is the key to our survival, the key to distinguishing love from hate, life from death, and other discontinuities, other idioms of boundary. Not all the light of stars travels earthward from a uniform distance; neither is the earth infinitely fleshed and boned.

This is a sample of the random yet orderly thoughts of the main character and it would seem that the author has likely found a channeler in Ham. There indeed is always a part of author in his/her characters, and what freedom to allow these more philosophically scientific ideas to be put out there without interruption!  But the choice of words is what makes up a voice, the poet found in the imagery, the musical tone of a sentence well-wrought:

"You see love, or charms, or magic, or God, or simple beauty: that’s how far you can see into the dark sky at night." The air began to grow sweetsmelling in the heat and I felt salt water crawl down my face like the tips of hot wet fingers. But then, how does one resolve cruelty, and is death statuesque?

"Salt water crawl down my face like the tips of hot wet fingers."  That’s McCarthyesque for sweat.

Hypertext notwithstanding, there are more layers of story here that are open to readers beyond my own level of scientific knowledge, or in fact, beyond my level of experience in any of the areas upon which the novel touches.

That Ham has chosen the scientific field of physics in which to proceed is very telling of his character and as I’ve mentioned previously, may in fact be Ham’s own way of bringing a sense of logic to his own rather illogical world that is not grounded in stats and data.  But his dedication to string theory applies to other areas of his life, and the reader who would be somewhat knowledgeable will have a better, or maybe merely different, understanding of the story.  My own very limited comprehension of string theory and the like will certainly be one of ignorance tempered by imagination to bring up images of bodies merging, distancing and reapproaching, and that’s my own connections made of what I’d call the surface story: that of Ham and his movements through time and space and in particular, his reaching out for family both to his mother and to Pen.

Both of these women, it would seem to me, are from different galaxies.

Strictly following story line, there is plenty of action and drama to hold even the romanticist.

And if there be a sensitive among the scientists, the relationship between reality and the unknown is fine enough to invite the mind seeking possibilities.

(Ham on trees)

Remembering the trees can be said when one recalls trees "seen" or otherwise experienced (after observation, unless one can remember an event that has yet to happen, which may or may not be quantum memory) or in another context, removed from the proximity of the trees, yet one can tell someone else, "Remember those trees?"

But what are the memory trees?  They aren’t the physical specimens. They are tree ghosts.  Incomplete, shapeless, massless. They are nothing. Are they nothing? How do they occupy?

I’ve no idea how far I have invaded into this world the author has created. There is no book to hold open at reading point to tell me that I’ve traveled only quarter-way into it.  There is nothing to let me know how much reading space of pages equal to time the hero has to get his shit together.  To find his father-mother-brother-lover-self.  Or if he will.  Or, for that matter, if he will have any Eureka! moment that will make his life fit back together in a solid whole.

For the first time I’ve come across a link that seems to have brought me into a different story altogether.  As Ham and Pen drive cross country, there is a bridge to Ham’s past relevant to their conversation.  But from there I seem to have entered a time in Ham’s life somewhere in the future with a cast of characters I do not know. 

Thankfully I’ve learned to save, go back, jot down questionable intersections where I feel I want to wander, to know more.

This has always been  one of my main concerns with hypertext, how important is choice when choice is only to go this way or that, not what I want to find out next since that is something the reader does not know.  This must also be a challenge in writing story in this form.  There are pros and cons to every medium; books, it has been proven, cannot be read in the dark.

So with a murmured excuse me, I back out, back out and return to a place that looks familiar.

A nice thing about this hypertext is the way Ersinghaus uses minor characters to reinforce a character, an episode, a question that remains unanswered. By following some of the links within a textbox, we are provided some conversation that took place (?) in an unknown space of time that refers back to a thread we are following.

For example, when Ham and Pen meet again, we get advice-like discussion from Cervantes, Maria of the Mountains, Ernest, and both Ham and Pen that adds meaning to the meeting that we wouldn’t quite see otherwise had we followed whatever linearity Ersinghaus allows.  This develops an acceptance of the timelessness of the story.  Even as Ham’s youth comes up again and again in his pursuit of some sense of truth, between that time is a block of unknown space, and after it comes another that we may or may not ever get to enter.

Rather fitting though, this idea of missing some pieces, fragments of time, for it mimics Ham’s own situation.

Well so much for comfort and security here.  I feel much as Ham must have felt in the woods.  The author has slipped his hand away, trusting me to have made the right choices.  Without realizing he’s gone–or ever had been there–I’ve raced onward, changing direction with the wind, choosing by running towards the warmth of the sun or away from it, going with the abandonment of formula or plot plan.

Somewhere–and it’s too far back to go back to now though I know it was (Pen on aliens) that started the burst of freedom–I lost all sense of control.  The pace of the story, the paths that I choose urged me on instead of stopping to sniff this rose or that. So story here took over and plot points were enhanced, encouraged by whatever data they offered: an e-mail from Pen, advice from Maria, from Cervantes and others, and all the while what Ersinghaus has me doing is finding out more about Ham until I have lost my way and must depend upon Ham to lead me from here.   

Hypertext at its best–if you can accept it.  For me, I’m still excited with the running, yet part of me fears what I might have passed by, and one of my deeper fears, that I am lost. 

I’ll have to bite the bullet and cope.

Ersinghaus is extremely adept at finding the perfect simile to express an image.  In his choice he may be taking into account not only the item but the setting or environment of story, as it adds to the scene by its tone:

(Ham on Cervantes)

We met at my office. Washington asked and listened through the interview, periodically reaching over to run his fingers over the ears of a Chuihuahua he’d brought.  The dog, he called it Miguel Villa, sat on my desk staring at me with its black insect eyes, unperturbed by field science.  I thought I saw accusation there. The dog would sneeze often and lick its small pink nose. One eye would snap shut and open slowly like the door of a garage.

The dog becomes the focus of the scene, the playing field and umpire as the two men sit and talk. You already get the feeling that Washington has set the dog between them on the desk for this very purpose, whether to put Ham at ease or to distract him into letting down his guard.  The movement of the dog’s eye, snapping shut, opening slowly like the yawning entryway of a garage, ready for admittance.

(Ham on Mexicanos)

"Stop calling me ‘Washington.’ My name is Cervantes.  Call me Mr. Cervantes." He put the pencil and pad down and sat straight and prideful in the chair. He patted Miguel Villa between the ears and the dog’s eye closed, rose slowly, like something oiled.

The interviewer is adamant that he be called by his preferred name of Cervantes, an affiliation with his people, as is his dog in both breed and name.  He is upset by Ham’s indifference, having come to expect, I think, an ally.  He shifts position, pats the dog, reaffirming his space.  Ersinghaus then brings our attention back to the dog and in particular, his eye, opening slowly, "like something oiled."

That bit of detail, that subterfuge, keeps tension within the scene.  It diffuses it from the two men and leaves the dog as a bubble of translation between them, the talk going in and out through that opening and shutting eye, which also, by its slow pacing appears wise, unagitated, a symbol perhaps of political correctness that filters reality.

I’m not sure whether it’s pure determination or whether Steve Ersinghaus has managed to make the reading of hypertext nearly pleasurable for me, but I do not seem to be having the frustrations that I’ve had with prior readings of this story form.

There is a nice flow that begins with a dramatic episode as the the story starts in Ham Sandoval’s youth, and as the plot of this thread moves along, via hyperlinks there are other directions to take (I’d love to see again, now that I’ve read a portion, the mapping out of this novel).  So while the narrative arc is being established, there are still subplots, backstory, insight, grounding, and foreshadowing contained within the sideroads that add to the comprehension of the whole.

My method is that of the tortoise.  I am consciously aware of a timeline of sorts, of a linear movement of Ham through the story, and am trying to stay on that track.  But I’m nosey.  And, the grass may be greener–who knows?  Or I’ll get through the checkout without trouble, or maybe I’ll be stuck behind the mother whose 2 year-old throws up all over the gum rack.  So I investigate all avenues, keeping in mind where I started to leave the trail, learn what I can about what word or phrase offered me the option of finding out more and follow it for a while.  I am, however, directionally dysfunctional and spatially impaired–not your best reader of hypertext. 

Ersinghaus has kept me close on the trails though and I do find myself lost in the story, and not simply lost.

While I may be stubbornly clinging to my own perception of Ham, it does appear that as he matures there is still that substitution of physics and string theory that I visualize as a safety net holding all that he is and was, and holding it all together as well as maintaining a comprehensible history of sorts.I would think that this rationale enables Ham to control what he can and gives it a dimension that does not exist in real life.  Perhaps it ties himself in with the rest of humanity and makes him transcend what he’s been through, I don’t know.  But his interest, his dedication, to theories and the setup of the universe to explain life seem to intersect here, as he finds out about a relationship he was hoping to have with Pen:

The backgrounds shatter. Sometimes the math makes no sense. I took a sip. Cold coffee.

Ham may have just lost it all.  I have an image of gridlike netting, rolling like waves outward to the edges, affecting all that is balanced upon it. 

But there, in the center, a hole.

For a long time, Ham claims he fears nothing and from what we see of him, I would not wonder why.  There are certain fears common to a group of like status.  With children, we see the fears of losing parents, of bogeymen in the dark, and once they’ve learned to group themselves with peers, of being embarrassed, i.e., wetting their pants. 

With males in particular this fear changes form but not its basis which is, I think, a loss of what they’ve learned to control.  In Ham’s wanderings through the woods, while he boldly walked away from his mother, it was just a manner of controlling the situation–once he understood that his mother truly would leave him there.  Alone, hunger cramping his insides, he stumbles on in fever, vomits, shits his pants and lays there sick and broken.  His worst fear has been realized.  He has lost control.

From here, Ham learns to allow the Butlers to become his family, learns how much of himself–of what he knows–he will reveal.  Wrapping himself in the safety  of their welcome, he learns to fear new things:

(Ham on being)

And it wasn’t that I feared just what was behind, as Dorothy Jones had intimated, but also what lay ahead and that which would become behind.  I feared middles, being between the crush of the past and the crush of the future.  My mother, the past, my brother, the future, who couldn’t be found, who may not have even been flesh.

Without a defined past, Ham, with his determined passion for a sense of order that’s been missing and yet he seeks in the balance of numbers,  attempts to align and name that fear with something stable, something known.

I had to keep my memory, find a way to store it, make it permanent but in a form proper, in numbers, equations. Hypertext for hyperlife.

Does he know? Is Ham aware that he has already left a trail of textboxes that mark the way he’s come, that lead out in strings of story that are his possibilities in life and can be read in 900,000 ways? 

As narrator, in the the process he can control the paths he chooses to offer (via Storyspace) but once it has been done, does he understand that as Barthes insisted, the reader–particularly in the hypertext environment–takes over the control?

So much for providing an example of the thread of building character as I had planned.  I’ve gone astray and ended up in a more philosophical Ham Sandoval that despite his war-lost (?) father, his mother-lost (?) brother, and being left beside the road deep in the woods has managed to become part of a family.  Oddly knowing how to relate, his closeness to Maria, the youngest daughter becomes his routine, facing down his mother in a courtroom, deciding hatred is the best door he could find.

Then there is a knack and love of numbers, calculations, reason:

(Ham on coincidence)

We think in time regardless of the nature of time and space, just as we are spatial beings.  Time could be the smell of wood smoke and it wouldn’t matter to time.  Hence any time is the opportunity for things to happen.  Coincidences are the result of population and the innevitability of place and nature.  Place, time, events and motion–they simply are.

So if a bug falls to the earth and splats at the same moment as some other body falls and splats, we need not attribute cause.  But we will.

These are ways to think about a missing family, unanswered questions, I think, without the pain of feelings.  I think that what Ersinghaus is giving us is almost a diversion to the mundane likenesses of lives by bringing the enormity of the image in focus.  Ham needs to overcome the loss of three people he barely knows by comparing it to the vastness and the importance of the universe.

Or so I think.

Unable to read today, Ham Sandoval still visited my mind to keep me wondering.  I have as scattered a series of thoughts as the boxes of text that tells me who he is.  I see his fears, some that no one but Ham could imagine, some that I recognize as that of every man I’ve known.  He is grown, he is a boy, he is both within the structure of the story, but as I see him, he is boy even grown, grown as a boy.

How to explain?  By context of course.  But then, the medium doesn’t work like flipping back pages.  I must adjust to the nature of the beast.

Some early morning thoughts, random, leftover from last night’s reading…

There is a psychological realism quality about this novel and in thinking about previous hypertext stories, I believe that for one thing, it invites the style because of its text box format.  I do not know (yet) how Storyspace affects the writer, but it would seem to me that a blank slate presented as a small box asks to be filled with an idea, a thought, an episode, but one that has sprouted from another box and that will surely connect to another and another.  Does it force a concise image?  I would think so since the box appears as a container, and small, versus a page whether in paper form or computer screen where visual knowledge of a continuous supply of blank pages is a given.

This lack of physical story–in other words, in a book, the unread being a mass in the right hand just as the knowledge, or known portion of the story (the read) is held in the left–may have something to do with the ethereal feeling of the story.  Once something is read, it becomes memory. Memory is not something that can be weighed or displayed, but is just as real as the couch I see across from me, for when I close my eyes, the couch becomes a memory.

Does this quality of writing hypertext inspire a different style of story then?  Would there need to be more grounding if this novel were in book form?

I’d read somewhere that hypertext is more like the natural process of thinking, of remembering, of plotting.  Ideas come in snatches of often unrecognizably related thoughts.  One idea may string itself out, then pinprick another into life. 

In the middle of Ham Sandoval’s trial in the woods–over now, as he is found and rescued–I discover him at work in an office building, and the woods are a memory.  Past and present and future are presented on a simultaneous concoction of three-dimensional planes.  Time differences that may occur in book form as chapters or even as simple white space, occurs here without warning.  A click, and you’re elsewhere in time and in space.

I would also say that with the benefit of some knowledge of acquaintance with the author here, there is a similarity in this chain of thinking style that may make certain writers more perfectly suited to the medium.  Here, this seems to be the case.

And another trait of the medium:  at 900+ text boxes (reading spaces) x 1000 links, not only are there 900,000 possible variations of the narrative structure of the store, there is the inevitability of never having read the story completely, missing text by not foregoing certain paths.  Will a reader/discusser of this book format ever be honestly "finished?"  

It strikes me that in this novel and probably others of the hypertext format are written (or read?) in a stream of consciousness manner.  Not only the randomness, the flow of the choice of the paths from one text box to another, but each text box itself seems to be a self-standing thought.

(Ham on arrows)

I stood on empty unprecedented ground.  On the journey here, I’d tried to mark my mother’s driving for landmarks, but signs were rare, vague.  I looked up, down.  There is only one direction: the one followed, spacetime’s direction, the one pointed at (to) by the tips of your shoes.  I could take ten steps, circle back, go the other way, but either case, that way is always ahead of me along the world line of time’s arrow.

I felt the enormity of space, the enormity of fear.  I learned then that absurdity (illogic) had size, a spatial quality.  I felt the earth and time clicking under my sneaker soles.  A distant crow’s call tunneled through space, becoming a thick and exotic projectile.  I had the urge to duck.

As part of the narrative structure (at least the story line I followed), these are Ham’s thoughts as he is left on his own in the woods, his mother having driven away.  But it is also a commentary on physical space, a question of our concepts of measuring space and time, and movements within it. This text box has then, two questions: 1) what does Ham do next, and 2) what is real, what is not, can we decipher it given the tools we know how to use. 

Of course there’s the nature of hypertext in that both questions are in reality, an and/or problem, as with the ability to backtrack we can take a path, change our minds or follow it to a point, go back, follow another, therefore, following both.

I’m reading for story (and damned glad I have a couple Faulkner’s under my belt) and yet the possibilities still whisper "me, me!" "no, me, take me!"