vamenro's blog

Firstly, Six Sex Scenes is a clear text based on digital narrative. The  interactive reader, who direct the story, can  go jumping from page to page through hypertext links at the end of each text’s segment. This work, written by Adrienne Eisen is a non-linear hypertext fiction. Six Sex Scenes is an example of how the reading experience can be drastically altered when it takes place in a net-based context. The writer has linked any section within a text to many other spots in the same work. A segment of writing can therefore lead to any of several alternative continuations or disgressions rather than just the next page; you  always have the option “home” to come back at the beginning of the hypertext. The episodes assemble their own versions of a fictional world in much the same way that they piece together unique, personal versions of the real world from the fragments of their own experience. This text becomes a real environment that the reader can interact with and alter rather than just a description of one.

The hypertext starts showing six squares which contain a different image each one, except the square situated in the centre which is salmon pink (the colour which will viewed on the screen along the story). The others contain a picture, but once you have read the hypertext, the only images  which could be attained to the story is the first and the last because  you can see childhood’s moments (the boy playing next to the swimming-pool and balloons). The viewer could stablish a relationship between these pictures and the earlier ages  main character or maybe her brother. Anyway, the title of the hypertext attracts attention by the word “Sex” because,  let’s no kid ourselves, this three letters will be enough to raise intrigue to readers and put them to be interested in. Now then, after this title more than someone might say that he or she hopes for some pictures connected with the title but you’ll be waiting till the cows come home because there aren’t  daring  images or scenes  neither at the beginning of the hypertext where is the title nor through the story. So…what are the authoress getting at? No doubt she is creating an incentive to the viewers with the absence of any explicit sex images replaced by five kind and innocent photographs at the beginning. So, to shed one’s doubts you have to read her work.

If you click on  you realize that four of them carry you to the chapter “social functions” and the rest to “Therapy“. You choice these two options  and enter to one. Here, the viewer is showed that no images are supporting  Eisen’s narrative, so the important and more  relevant of this hypertext is textual information. There are any element which can disturb the interactive reader. If you travel through the story, choosing every time a path or option to follow the story from the links provided at the end of the chapters, you are going to comprehend the visual simplicity that Eisen has wanted to her narrative. Without images, the content of this hypertext is too illustrative; so there are no necessity of visual support because the most morbid chapters are gone into detail and the viewer constructs on mind a visual scene without realize. The language is colloquial and sexual “lick” , “shrink” or even coarse language such as “dick” or “to touch up”.

When you look through the story the  screen  of your computer is overcome by salmon pink colour, sometimes changing to its variations: apricot, coral, dark salmon or maybe pink orange in where the only that stand out is the black writing  which seems come from a typewriter. The reader sees the same graphic model in every chapter of the hypertext. This visual effect isn’t coincidence. This colour has a symbolism: spring, gratitude, appreciation, admiration, sympathy, socialism, femininity , health, love, romance, June, marriage, joy, flirtatiousness, innocence and child-like features. The most of this topics appear through the story implicitly.

Because of the type of writing we could suppose that the girl, the viewpoint character, writes her more important personal moments with a typewriter by way of diary.

The most of first words in every chapter are written in bold. It will be to catch our attraction.

Another element to talk about is music. One more time like images,this hypertextual tool is another element which is conspicious by one’s absence. Previously we have said  that there aren’t images here to not distract the viewer  because the content of this narration is enough complex to require the five senses from reader and with this tool, music, happens much of a muchness. If there was an audible element, this would distract the reader’s attention and it is a long enough hypertext  to make this happens. So, Six Sex Scenes lacks significant audio-visual tools but it isn’t necessary; moreover, the multiple paths that provides to follow the story jointly with the events ‘ background is the significant from it.

A striking feature is  in no way  the name of the protagonist is mentioned; the girl, the main character of this hypertext,  narrates the story by scenes as if  mixed pages from a personal diary were. When she reproduces dialogues in which her father or mother call her, the only allusions to her are “Honey” for example, but not her name.

To read the story you only have to click on the different chapters which are showed to you at the end of screen depending of what chapter you are reading in that moment. Some of them are a little longer and text occupies more than what the screen shows, so to continue reading the story, you only have to move the mouse down and the rest of the text appears.

When I read Six Sex Scenes I remembered an article written by Howard S. Becker: A New Art Form: Hypertext Fiction, because I had the same sensation that he had experimented reading  “Afternoon: a story”.

“…Readers have further difficulties, once they learn all this, difficulties which are known generically, in the world of hypertext, as “the navigation problem” (Bernstein, 1991)c.That is, authors of hypertext documents of all kinds know, from bitter experience, that uninitiated readers (and all readers are uninitiated when they read their first hypertext) have difficulties beyond not knowing what to do. They also, and this is much more fundamental and serious, don’t know what to expect and often “get lost.” That is, they complain that they “don’t know where they are” in relation to the beginning and end of a text. They don’t know how to find their way to a point that will allow them to orient themselves to the body of texts that confront them. I had just this experience when I first read “afternoon: a story.” I put the disk into my Macintosh one evening at ten, double-clicked on the icon to open the document, and began reading the story. I met many characters, read many intriguing dialogues, learned the crucial dilemma of the text, which is that the narrator thinks, but is not sure, that he saw his son killed that morning. Engrossed, I read on and on. Some texts were repeated, but the repetitions led to material I had not seen before. In one long section, one word at a time appeared on the screen in a kind of poem. At one in the morning, I realized I had no idea how long this work was, how much of it I had read, how much I had still to read, and so (though it was by now very late) I called Michael Joyce at home. Fortunately, he was still awake. I said, “Michael, I’m reading your story and it’s wonderful, but when do I get to the end? When is it finished?”

I should have anticipated the answer. With a deep chuckle, he said, “Yes, that’s an interesting question, isn’t it?” He went on to say that I might consider myself finished when I lost interest or when I saw no new texts, but neither of those would guarantee that I had read everything he had written. He did not seem to mind that, although many authors would…”

Obviously, Six Sex Scenes isn’t so long as Michael Joyce‘s hypertext but it is enough long to “get lost” and to experiment the sensation that it never will finish. It happened to me when I was reading Six Sex Scenes because when I thought it had finished another new chapter appeared on the options to choose. Finally, after reading this hypertext at least eight times, I think  that I have already read all of them.

This hypertext is constructed by 48 chapters which  haven’t got a chronologic order. Here you can read all of them except “When we get home” because it’s not available on the internet at this moment. Enjoy it!