I don’t think it’s any big secret that I’m the teeniest bit of a control freak. Nor that for a long time I nodded and smiled while deep inside me lurked a festering resentment against hypertext, IF, gaming, or any other means by which the reader rebellion could claim victory over the author.
How can you plan a story out so carefully (said she who has never plotted from A to B but creates instead in response to the "voice" inside her head) and then leave it up to some smudge you’ve never met to read it right? (insisted I.) How indeed can you foresee and plan for every possibility so that some jerk doesn’t fuck mess it up? How can I trust someone not to turn it into a farce? (I wailed. Inwardly. Silently. Because I’m extremely polite.)
There is an added pressure on the author of hypertext story. Loose ends must be glued to another strand of thought or episode. Characters may drop out of a scenario but there must be damn good reason. And, they must be returned before they’re forgotten.
Ersinghaus has a well thought-out story line here, though I would think that it may be considered several, it still is focused upon the main character Ham Sandoval in various segments of time that come to the forefront when needed, (omigosh–I just got an image of a grid with covered words or pictures that you have to select in pairs and match, or re-cover and remember and try again).
There is Ham Sandoval’s youth, his memory of his mother, brother, and what he was told of his father. There is his teenage years with the Butlers and his closeness with Maria. There is his first teaching position, then his switch to journalist. And there is his love interest, Pen, who weaves in and out among the blocks of time, as does the string theory and black holes and water (and trees!) that provide the bindings of narrative structure.
Ersinghaus, being the proper English Professor minus the stuffiness that accompany some, has not disregarded the primary elements of story, the need for conflict, tension, and more thought-provoking and timely topic matter (meaning political–just can’t get away from it…) that serve as the high points, the blips on the arc of whatever curve the story has taken you–or rather, you it. What each of these conflicts accomplish may be a moral decision, a character revelation, a statement on human oppression that surprises the reader–but stays with him. And this is for two reasons: one, it has a certain subtle shock value and two, the problem doesn’t get solved. Just like in real life.
It is admirable to watch how an author has knit together a coat that covers a character. And while I would call this a literary novel, it is not by any means a navel-gazer nor does it require any more from the reader than to tap and click one’s way through it. Oh yes, and to think about what was just read.
The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology