Monday, February 9, 2009

Garden of Forking Paths 2

This is the website (http://www.scribd.com/doc/454118/The-Garden-of-Forking-Paths) where I found the story (tiny print, murder on the eyes) and a small commentary on Borges and his role as a precursor to hypertext authors. Apparently Borges never even wrote a full novel, yet many consider him to be a great pioneer of hypertext narrative.

I started thinking about what the story would be like if it were written with modern media. Would it be a print story at all? If not, would it be as widely read? In an odd way, I kind of like that it's written as a straightforward account and not (to be annoying) a garden of forking paths. Reading the story this way, as the characters in the story had to read the novel-within-the-story, seems fitting. If the story were written as a hypertext document, then it would change entirely (the setting would probably be the first thing to go).

Anyway, I wasn't able to find too much about in the way of hypertext adaptations of this particular story (maybe I just don't know how to look), but I did find quite a bit about hypertext in general.

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