Essay on Deena Larsen's "Samplers"
Structure = Meaning in Deena Larsen's Samplers: Nine Vicious Little Hypertexts
by Dene Grigar, PhD
“The pattern dreamed about the whole, and the whole dreamed about the pattern.” –Deena Larsen, “Notes about Samplers”“The pattern dreamed about the whole, and the whole dreamed about the pattern.” –Deena Larsen, “Notes about Samplers”
Deena Larsen's Samplers: Nine Vicious Little Hypertexts was made with Storyspace 1.2C and requires 5.5 MB of space. The idea for an anthology of numerous small hypertexts woven together was sparked in 1993 when Larsen and Kathryn Cramer talked together at the ACM Hypertext 1993 conference, held in Seattle, WA. A year later Larsen sent an early version of Samplers to Eastgate Systems, Inc. [1] and in 1995 presented it at ACM Hypertext 95. [2] That same year “Century Cross,” one of the nine hypertexts planned for Samplers, was published in The Eastgate Quarterly Review of Hypertext Volume 2, Number 2. Winter 1995. Larsen continued to work on Samplers in 1996 and finally saw it published in 1997 on 3.5-inch on floppy disk, first for Macintosh and, then, for PC. Later that same year the CD-ROM version compatible on both platforms was released. [3] Larsen reports that she produced the work on her Macintosh computer and did not see the PC version until years later ("Interview"). Unlike the PC version, the Macintosh version provides for certain functionality that Larsen likes: The Return key makes multiple links possible as default paths, for example; other features relating to content and the interface also makes this version robust. [4] Thus, the Macintosh version is, according to the artist, the authorized one. Samplers is the second major work by Larsen and follows four years after the success of her opus, Marble Springs (1993). Larsen participated in the series entitled “hyper_text: Explorations in electronic literature presented in collaboration with the Electronic Literature Organization,” on Friday, February 27, 2004 at the UCLA Hammer Museum where she shared the stage with Geniwate. Mentioned in the promotional material are both Marble Springs and Samplers as works she would be drawing upon for her reading ("Hammer Museum Calendar").
Quilts as Patterns for Structure
Samplers references the concept of the sampler quilt––that is, a quilt whose patches do not repeat the same pattern but, instead, offers unique quilt blocks throughout in a way that demonstrates the mastery of the quilter’s craft. Like a quilter of cloth, master storyteller Larsen draws upon established quilt blocks for her quilt of stories. “Firewheel,” for example, resembles the quilt block by the same name. Recognizing this structure of Larsen’s hypertext provides readers with an understanding about what to expect with Samplers: The image Larsen created for both the cover art and interface shows a quilt made of nine blocks stitched together. Each block, when clicked, launches a work of short fiction with a different structure. It comes as no surprise, then, that in her interview for her Live Stream Traversal, Larsen reiterated her view that “structure = meaning” (“Interview”), a concept emphasized by this quilt metaphor. As she states, her “Quilting Structure:"
The importance of structure is further emphasized in comments Larsen scribbled in her notebook. One such note states, “When you piece your own story together, stitch it tight against . . . other who force their own visions into yours.” [6]consists of a pieced top of nodes set in a geometric pattern. Pressing <return> throughout the work will take you through these nodes in an orderly fashion. Note—this isn’t the only or even the sanctioned way through the Sampler. I just had to pick one way out of many. . . . Quilts are much more than pieced setup. The stitching itself holds a quilt together and lays down a pattern over the pieces. Samplers uses links to quilt the work. Click on the open book in the toolbar to see all of the links from a node. Then read the names of the links in sequence to unravel the pattern. (Larsen, “Short Description”)
Larsen wrote about her structure in several essays, but the one included in the manual for Samplers, “A Stitch in Time Saves Nine: An Introduction,” connects the software directly to her conceptual framework and process when she tells the reader that she “examined Storyspace boxes as quilting pieces and links as stitches.” Later in the essay she states that “[l]inear texts think in one dimension, quilts think in two, and hypertexts open their minds to a bazaar of practically infinite dimensions. . . “ She finishes with this idea:
Looking at the interface, we see the nine samplers each with a different pattern but stitched together to form a whole. To navigate through the work, readers click one of the nine patches. Holding down the Tinker Bell keys (OPT + CMD on the Macintosh; ALT + CTL on the PC) on the main interface reveals a series of nine image maps located on each sampler. If readers start at the sampler located at the top left-hand side, they will encounter "Mystic Knot."Keeping my questions firmly basted to the texts, I pieced the patterns of nodes together, quilting them with double ands triple layers to produced three-dimensional texts. When I finished, I found that the white king paradox had proliferated into nine very different, inextricable creations. The pattern dreamed about the whole, and the whole dreamed about the pattern.
"Mystic Knot"
In the quilting tradition, knotting is a way to bind heavy fabric. This idea is played out in the hypertext, “Mystic Knot,” represented by a ball of red, black, and yellow threads of yarn holding together the story of a traffic barrier in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park that awakens to the sounds of “[h]ums, clanging, and clicks of the cable cars” (“Awakening”). As he (the character is referred to as male) “slowly began to feel out his true form”––that is, a “mass . . . deep brown rose granite flecked with silverfish mica, pale quartz, and dark feldspar” with a base that “crushed comfortably into the pale concrete sidewalk below him” in a very noisy site of the city, he believes that he is “destined to command” (“Willing”). But soon he comes to understand the limits to his powers and, so, he forms his “True Command” (“Proving”). He calls out to the world around him, “Take me to a quiet and green place where I may think” (“Commanding”). Time passes and with the eventual renovation of the street, his wish to leave the hustle and bustle comes true; he is uprooted and driven in the back of a pickup truck to the “dump” (“Answering”). When no room is found there, the driver–– having had many stout beers––tossed the traffic barrier “behind the Japanese tea garden” in Golden Gate Park (“Placing”), which surreptitiously resulted in his "True Command" to move to a quiet place followed. This location becomes the popular place to dump other stones, and over time the traffic barrier viewed these newcomers as “his congregation.” He begins to preach “the way of solid repetition” to them (“Presiding”). Unmoved, the stone and the rest of his congregation remains silent. Later a tagger shows up and paints “his red spiral signature” on the traffic barrier (“Marking”). This act prompts the traffic barrier to “[s]leep . . . [w]ake no more . . . [c]ommand no more” and so the traffic barrier “released his soul into sleep” (“Sleeping).
"Crossed Ends"
“Crossed Ends,” whose sampler pattern is presented as a colorful patchwork of cloth sewn together to resemble an X, tells the story of Charles Goodwine's retirement party on May 13, 1994. Readers can start the story at one of two places: “Where it ends” and “Where it starts.” Two other choices, “”Give up now” and “or try to understand” take readers out of the story or to the directions, respectively.
Readers are introduced to Goodwine's retirement party via a memo announcing the event and reminding everyone that Charles had spent the entirety of the past 41 years and four months working at the Denver Division of Engineering and Research for the Bureau of Water and Power. Readers also learn he earned one commendation––the Special Art Award––in 1977, and that his interests include “sailing and fishing” (“Retirement”). From this lexia readers can take one of four different paths, one of each member of the Goodwine family. Each member’s path consists of seven lexias that reveal their perspective of their family dynamics and response to Charles’ surprise announcement.
In talking about Larsen’s interest in the way structure impacts meaning, it is important to note that the names she gives the paths between the story’s lexias. For example, from “Retirement” readers are provided five ways to continue the story. The use of capitalization and punctuation found in the paths’ names, taken together, form a statement that alerts readers to the gist of the story:
Path 1: “Every story has” goes to “Charles 1”
Path 2: “at least four sides:” goes to “Patty 1”
Path 3: “what you see as truth” goes to Diane 1
Path 4: “and what they see.” Goes to Cherry 1
Besides information about the story’s focus––there are multiple perspectives to a story––readers are also alerted to the characters representing the “four sides” of this particular story and, so, can make a decision about whose to hear first.
Choosing path 1, readers learn about Charles’ dissatisfaction over his life choices and his desire to regain a sense of adventure by selling the house and spending a year on a boat. Working over four decades at the company and toiling for a “lowly GS-9 salary,” Charles is not ready to retire and had, in fact, hoped to “ma[ke] supervisor.” He took the early “buy-out” for fear he would be “laid off.” The party venue––“a pink room”––was a “bit too fussy” for Charles, but he was glad to see that a “good chardonnay” on “the wine list” (Charles 1). Charles wonders about spending his year on the boat with Patty, his partner who “never had been the sociable type” and herself never rose to the “right places” in her job. (Charles 2). Patty, readers learn from Charles, did not go back to work “after the kids had gone.” Charles wonders if “maybe they could have had enough money for a real cruise” if she had. He reminds himself, though, that Patty “would not have been much good at anything” (“Charles 3”). Following the speech, Charles makes his “big announcement,” one he did not have “much of a chance to talk . . . over with Patty” who “never said anything in the past and probably wouldn’t start now.” In his speech he thanks the man who “had forced retirement on him” and his wife even though “everyone knew [she] was a mouse who had nothing at all to do with anything” (“Charles 4”). Then, calling Patty to the front of the room, he hands her the “keys to [their] new home” and announced they are soon to “cruise the Gulf Coast.” Patty’s reaction interrupts Charles: She “screeched into tears, clawed her way past him, and headed out of the banquet hall for the ladies room” (“Charles 5”). Charles' response to her distress is to simply stand there in place because he did not think anything “he did would get her out” (“Charles 6”). When she never emerges, Charles begins to imagine the “extra square footage he would get by leaving Patty behind” and wondering if “one of his buddies [would] be willing to go with him.” Despite hearing her “sobs,” he heads to the lobby bar (“Charles 7”).
Patty’s side of the story helps to flesh out her perspective. Readers learn that Patty helped to plan the retirement party and was the one who had “chosen the pink room.” Charles had told everyone that he wanted a “nautical” theme, which Patty viewed as “silly” considering “Denver’s high, dry climate.” She was reminded, though, of his interest in boats, including the “sailing monstrosity that blocked their garage most of the year” (“Patty 1”). Readers learn that Patty knows Charles does not think much of her opinions and that she has not paid much attention to him. During the toast, for example, she tells him that he was the “best structural or design or whatever engineer.” With Charles and Patty at the party is their daughter Diane and her child Jennifer, who had been kept away from Patty because of an accident involving a “burn” (“Patty 2”). From Patty, readers also get a better sense of the company’s poor treatment of the retirees and Charles’ lack of communication with his wife over his retirement plans. Instead of a “gold watch or buffalo statue,” Charles is given a “paper watch,” a “sailing cap, and a “ship in the bottle,” which Patty views as “gag gifts.” She thinks about them “settlin[g] down and relax[ing] together” (“Patty 3”). Admitting that she had “never been strong enough,” Patty reveals that she may have been responsible for Charles' lack of upward mobility because it “was an effort for her to meet those wives.” She takes comfort, however, over the fact that unlike her daughter who pursued a career, Patty had been a good mother and wife, having “cookies waiting for the children when they came home, a martini waiting for Charles” (“Patty 4”). Looking forward to living out their lives in their “pretty house with the rose garden she’s worked on forever” and “seeing her grandchildren,” his announcement takes her by surprise, so she flees out of the room (“Patty 5”). The pink ladies room reminds Patty of her own bathroom, where Charles never ventured and where she often fled to cry. Diane would provide her comfort during those times, and the daughter shows up in this room, “on cue” (“Patty 6”). Patty begs Diane to allow her to see the child but is abandoned by her daughter, leaving Patty alone, “wait[ing]” (“Patty 7”).
Diane's story fills out the narrative. The woman has taken off work in order to attend the retirement party but spends her time at the front table during the festivities plotting her escape and the errands she must run. Readers learn that Diane is not fond of either parent (“Diane 1”). Her father, readers learn, often “stay[ed] late at the office” in order to curry favor with his bosses who had ignored his frequent requests for promotion. She also laments how she “drudged” for her parents “mow[ing] the lawn” and “d[oing] the housework,” a narrative that runs counter to Patty’s memory of devoting her time to the kids (“Diane 2”) but is born out in the next lexia where Diane recounts taking care of her younger sibling, Cherry, through her various crises. Readers also learn that her own mother could not cope with Charles’ late nights, his buying the sailboat, and not “pay[ing] the bills.” Patty’s response to Diane’s help that “[a] woman’s work is never done does little to mollify her daughter (“Diane 3). Readers learn that Diane was enjoying early retirement after socking away money from her profitable job at Martin Marietta. That she had taken the job in Denver was more about its lucrative salary than about living in the “same state as her parents” (“Diane 4”). Charles’ announcement is welcomed by Diane since it would mean that her mother, who had “asked practically weekly to see the kids” and had been negligent when watching them, would be gone. Patty’s “anguished scream” brings Diane out of her reverie (“Diane 5”). Realizing that her father had more than likely surprised her mother with his plans, Diane allows herself a few moments “to comfort her mother." She heads to the bathroom wondering about how much of her life is actually her “own” (“Diane 6”). Once in the bathroom, Patty “clutch[es] at Diane’s arm” and begs to live with her daughter, promising not even to “say a word about [her] working.” Diane leaves promptly at 12:52 as she had planned to take care of her family’s errands (“Diane 7”).
The last side of the story belongs to Cherry, the younger daughter of the family. Cherry is indeed as troubled as hinted at in Diane’s story. She does not like “government types” that ruin the environment and thinks her sister is a “goody-two-shoes” and “fussbucket” who keeps Cherry from enjoying life. She sees the retirement party as a good chance to eat and drink for free (“Cherry 1”). Readers learn that Cherry, who had developed a “honey-innocence practice” with her father, is now planning to ask him for a large loan of $20K (“Cherry 2”). Cherry’s disdain centers on her mother’s ignorance of the world, and especially of her family’s dynamics. Cherry, readers learn, had an abortion at the age of 12 that Diane suggested as a way of helping her. The event caused Cherry to lose the ability to have her own children, a predicament that Diane said “be happy” about (“Cherry 3”). Cherry reveals that her real name is Charlene and that she ran away from home to Haight Ashbury when she was 13 (“Cherry 4”). She greets Charles’ announcement to live on a boat positively and begins to imagine leaving her awful waitress job and joining them in this adventure. Her mother’s cry awakens her to her mother's rejection of this lifestyle (“Cherry 5”). While everyone files out of the room and her father stares out the window, Cherry heads to the “pay phone” (“Cherry 6”). Listening to her mother’s cries in the rest room next to the phone, Cherry tells the person on the other end of the line that she “couldn’t hit [her father] up for [the money] and makes plans to meet the person at the restaurant (“Cherry 7”).
Thus, the four characters find themselves literally at crossed end with one another with no solution to their family’s lack of understanding and communication. In fact, one of the paths readers can take upon starting the story is called “Where it ends.” This path goes to an advertisement that reads:
Wanted
A new family for a good, slightly used mother. A touch forgetful, but not yet senile. Good cook and housekeeper. Good with children (as along as she is supervised). Needs a large, stable family who will welcome her daily visits. Eats little. Not a bother to anyone. Free to a good home. CALL 492-1411 ANYTIME.
Though the four character’s presented very different perspectives of their family, this ad could have been written and posted by any of them.
"Seed Voices"
The third work, "Seed Voices," features an image of two seeds resembling pinwheels with the one in the forefront is slightly larger than the one behind it. The phrase with the image reads, “A false seed leads in” (“Seed Voices). Clicking on the image, readers encounter the same image with the phrase, “to Reality and other paths” (“Conversation”). Larsen had originally called this hypertext, “Conversations,” but changed the title to “Seedy Voices” and before settling on “Seed Voices,” because she thought “Conversation” resembled the hypertext, “Conventions,” too closely. [5] It would have been an ironic name for the work since the bulk of the conversation that takes place doesn’t occur between the two people but rather to themselves. Only at the end do they come together, but even this interaction is not a dialogue; rather it is only a recognition that the relationship has ended.
Clicking Enter takes readers to four paths. They include:
Path 1: “Get closer to reality” goes to “Conversation”
Path 2: “Or look another way” goes to “Voices in the Seed”
Path 3: “Find out how” goes to “Directions”
Path 4: “Or just shut this up” goes to a null space
As these paths show, the story focuses on versions of reality with the promise that one can get “closer” to it and at the same view it “another way.” Once again, Larsen uses the feature that Storyspace offers––that is, naming the paths––to imbue meaning into the story.
There are two main ways to read the story; both involve following and reading the lexia found in “Voices in the Seed.” Readers get to it directly via the second path or in a roundabout way via the first. The interface for “Voices in the Seed” features a series of seven seed images, mentioned above. The first way sees readers clicking on the larger part of each image and discovering the inner dialogue of the protagonist, a pregnant woman who is peeling an avocado, attending carefully to its seed, and not responding to the comments the angry man makes to her. Clicking on the smaller part of each image finds the abusive comments the angry man makes at the woman. In both cases, they are one-way conversations going nowhere. In this reading, however, the story unfolds with a clear demarcation between characters, what they say, and do.
The second way to read this hypertext has readers following the story from “Voices in the Seed” by the hitting return key. This strategy provides ambiguity in that readers do not easily glean who the speakers are or what their relationship is. The first lexia readers are taken to, for example, is “Patience,” where the narrator is “peeling” the avocado. The voice of a man “continues somewhere,” the narrator recounts, “over there” as if disconnected from it and him. As the narrator works on the fruit and thinks about the “orange scratches on the naked part,” the man continues to talk. The narrator connects his voice to the green of the avocado (“Cracks”). The introduction of the color “lilac” and “flesh gone bruised” hints to physical violence (“Coloring”). She puts much care put into the avocado seed she nurtures in the “sake cup” (“Pouring”). Still the man talks, and the narrator “nods as if . . . listening” (“Lifting”). The story’s perspective and tone shifts from 1st person point of view and inner dialogue to a conversation between two people where one of them is angry, in the lexia, “Too Late:” “Look, it isn’t like I don’t care about this. I do, It’s just where do you get off not saying anything about it until now?” Their conversation focuses on one of the character’s pregnancy and the fact it is too late to do anything about it. The argument continues in the next lexia with the pregnant woman finally responding to the man, “Why the hell should it matter to you anyway?” (author’s emphasis, “All it is”). The trembling of the pregnant woman causes the man to remind her that he has “never harmed one hair on [her] head” (“for god’s sake”). Though he may not have ever physically harmed the woman, he does, however, verbally abuse her, calling her “an underhanded little sneak thief who never does anything!” and then berates her for not keeping the house clean (“maybe it’s just”). When one of them decides to leave in order to stay at “Barbara’s” where “[a]t least it is clean,” it is difficult to know who is speaking (“ok dammit, I’m gone”). Ambiguity is cleared up when the man calls the woman “a lame excuse for a mother” and reminds her that the “rent’s paid up” and she can get further help from “some Catholic charity” (“call someone then”). His final comment to the woman is “you didn’t think this thing was going to last forever, did you?” (author’s emphasis, “look here”).
“Voices of the Seed” can also be reached by following the first path, “Conversation.” This strategy, however, offers a more convoluted route to the story that sees readers go back to the screen, “Conversation,” hitting the return key to get to “Voices in the Seed” where they encounter the seven images of the pinwheel and the words “Seed Voices.”
Hypertext scholar Susana Tosca suggests that the two characters are daughter and father. [6] However, the fact that the man leaves the pregnant woman to stay with another woman and reminds her that their own liaison was always temporary for him suggests it is also likely that the conversation may be between a woman and a man who have been lovers. In any case, the woman’s devotion to the avocado reflects her acceptance of the growing seed found within her own body, a devotion to the seed voice within her that the man’s anger and suggested violence cannot kill.
"Century Cross"
Mentioned at the beginning of this essay, “Century Cross” was recognized early on as one of the best of Larsen’s hypertexts from Samplers and, so, was published in The Eastgate Quarterly Review of Hypertext Volume 2, Number 2 Winter 1995 two years before Samplers was released. This reputation has continued to the present time. [7]
This hypertext is placed first on the second line of the three lines of nine quilt blocks and takes the form of a swastika, an ancient design common in some Native American art, most notably Navajo. The opening screen reads, “Centuries lie.” Clicking on it takes readers to a second screen featuring the same patch with the words, “when they need to,” positioned below it. Thus, the focus of this hypertext is the way ideas may change over time. The 35 image maps are found on this patch lead to a story that draws on Native American myths.
To read the hypertext, one can work through each of the image maps or follow hyperlinks and paths presented on the lexias. Occasionally readers will encounter lexias with no links to another lexia. In those cases, readers can begin again by choosing a different image map. Clicking on the top left one, for example, takes readers to “Coyote,” a story about a coyote, “a dandy” who, admiring the fashions he sees around him, creates a “waistcoat” from “tall prairie grasses” and “trousers” from “cottonwood bark.” There is one hyperlink on this lexia that reads: “came into the land.” Clicking on it takes readers to “Storyteller 14,” a lexia about the way “battles . . . change the world.” The word, “change,” is underlined and takes readers to a dialogue box with the choice of two paths to follow. Path 1, “the time to leave,” takes readers to the lexia “Coyote 14;” Path 2, “the time you can’t,” goes to “Navajo Creation 1.” Following the link to the first one reads, “And that is how it happened that Coyote tricked himself into carrying the Nothing Pouch on the tip of his nose forever.” Following “forever” takes readers back to Storyteller 14 where they can, this time, choose Path 2, “Navajo Creation 2.”
This lexia retells a Navajo origin myth, taken in part from Raymond Friday Locke’s The Book of the Navajo, about the Insect People and their exile from the First World by the gods. They are soon taken in by the Swallow People who live in the Second World, but due to the “Insect People” [making] too free with the wife of the Swallow People,” they are turned out and “forced to fly into the sky.” The hyperlink on this screen is simply the note “[3]”.
Clicking on another image map of the main interface can take readers to a contemporary story, told in 1st person point of view, about the strange occurrences taking place in an office suite. The lexia, “Storyteller 3,” has a woman hearing “a picture on the other side of the . . . room . . . fall[ing] down” right in front of her. Clicking on the hypertext, “saw no one,” takes readers to a dialogue box with two paths. Path 1, “the east, the far edge,” takes readers to “Storyteller 5,” while Part 2, “now shows only,” goes to “Coyote 2.” Path 1 continues the story about the haunted office space. Pictures continue to “crash onto floors by themselves” and “footsteps started circling around [the narrator’s]desk.” The hyperlink found on that lexia, “I didn’t see,” goes to another dialogue box with two paths. Part 1, “more thin coffee,” goes to “Swastika Report;” Path 2, “I stirred my cup,” to “Coyote 14.”
Readers can decide not to follow the hyperlinks on the lexias and return instead to the main interface, thus starting the hypertext anew. Clicking on the image map for “Hopi Warning,” readers find the legend recounted from Alice Marriot and Carol K. Rachlin’s The Hopi Warning, of the “Grandmother Spider” who lives by the “spring” in the “Third Mesa.” Those who encounter her having undergone the “kachina initiation” can pass after “lay[ing] down his stick of firewood” for her. Those who have not been initiated, including “non-Hopi” people, will fall under her spell and “follow her into her house, under the rock, into the womb of our mother, the Earth.” Clicking on the forward arrow at the bottom of the screen takes readers back to the main interface again where they can continue to select lexias to read.
A lexia can take readers back to the haunted office building where the narrator tries bargaining with the spirit to leave her alone so that she can work over the weekend in the office (“Storyteller 9”). The two storylines converge with the Coyote appearing as the disaffected spirit in the woman’s office suite. “You can see me?,” the Coyote asks the woman. “Aren’t I fine?,” he remarks to her. She learns that the “Nothing Pouch” he carries contains “the Nothing [that] would gobble up Everything outside” leaving “Nothing . . . left” (“Storyteller 11”). The woman and Coyote make a deal: “[She] would see what stories [she] could tell of him, and he would keep the Nothing Pouch closed tight” (“Storyteller 12”). Crossed in this hypertext then is not only time––the titular “Century––but also space and the beliefs systems that can be bridged if one opens themselves to risk and differences.
“Firewheel”
"Firewheel," the second hypertext of the second line of the hypertext, tells the story of a young American teaching English in a small village in Japan who comes into contact with its mythic and spirit world. The title is based on the quilt block by the same name and features a bright red circular pattern with 12 flames, each representing a lexia of the story. A thirteenth lexia, entitled “Bonfire,” is situated in the middle of the circle. The structure's metaphor––telling a tale around a campfire––suggests a story filled with magic and mystery.
The story can be read with three different ways: reading the lexias sequentially, clockwise; reading them sequentially, counterclockwise; and reading them non-sequentially following hyperlinks. All offer a different experience with the text yet present the same concept––that is, the merging of the two worlds the narrator experiences, the everyday life in the village and the mythic and spiritual existence that permeates the local culture.
Because storytellers are encircled by their audience when telling their stories, readers wishing to experience the story sequentially clockwise may wish to begin “Firewheel” with “Bonfire,” the lexia mentioned previously found in the middle of the circle. In this lexia readers learn that “[t]hey or their ancestors dance here since the beginning. They laugh, clasp hands and give their bodies up to their fox god.” While readers do not yet know whom “[t]hey” is, readers are introduced to the general notion of ritual and myth with reference to dancing and the god. From this lexia readers may wish to start with the topmost flame, “Watching,” where they encounter this ominous statement: “They are the ones who watch me.” No other information is relayed that helps to flesh out who “they” is, why they are “watching” the narrator, or even who the narrator is. Moving next to “Travelling Home,” the story shifts to a description of where the narrator lives: “[p]ast the rice paddies, behind the small graveyard, across the tiny bridge over a deep ravine no one but the old man enters.” “Warming myself” introduces the antagonist and the conflict. Coming home one evening, the narrator––whose gender is never identified––decides to “warm” themself at the “fox shrine.” The “old man” they have seen every day in the village is now “hovering over the fire” at the shrine. He speaks one word to the narrator, “Kitsune.” This is the word for firefox––the witch animal also known as the red panda––and “motion[s] to [the narrator] to sit down.” In the lexia, “The old man,” readers learn that he gives the narrator “a bowl of mulled rice wine from the fire . . . [s]prinkled” with “cinnamon from an American tin” to drink. In “Proofs” the old man hands the narrator photos of the shrine “dotted with a thin wraith of yellow-orange” fire, evidence of the spirits found there. These may be the very spirits the narrator encounters in the next lexia, “Firefox,” when they see the fox and stone gods in the shrine fire. In the next lexia, “In the morning,” the narrator awakens mysteriously in their own bed. Readers learn in “Stairs” that the narrator lives on a hilltop that the local population believe is haunted. In “The old man,” listed a second time in this hypertext, the narrator runs into the old man in the village and, despite what had previously transpired between them, the two “do not speak.” The story shifts in “Joining” to the narrator telling readers that “I join them. The laughter turns on edge. The fire sputters to itself, hiding their whispers.” Once again, having just left the shrine, the narrator leaves open the possibility that “them” refers to the gods. The next lexia, “Daily Lives,” recounts the relationship the narrator has with the people in the village. “[S]hopkeepers . . . laugh at [her] attempt at their language,” and “Midori . . bring[s] hot spiced soup when [the narrator] is ill.” However, there are the villagers the narrator “teach[es] English to . . . who listen and chant politely. Too politely to know who they are.” “They” in this lexia may be referring to both the villagers and the gods referred to earlier. Returning to “Watchers,” readers are reminded that “[t]hey are the ones who watch me.” Experienced in this manner readers follow as the narrator makes sense of the two worlds that cohabit the same space, the human and spirit, that the narrator is becoming part of.
Moving through the hypertext sequentially counterclockwise offers a different experience. While "Bonfire" and "Watchers" lead to the same mystery found in the clockwise reading about to whom "they" refers, in this reading the next lexia is "Daily Lives" that also begins with "they." Positioned, now, as the second lexia in the circle as opposed to eleventh as in the previous reading renders the ambiguity suggested previously not strongly articulated, but it does carry forward the suggestion that “they” refers to the villagers. In fact, the spirit world is not alluded to again until “Stairs” when readers learn about the haunted hill on which the narrator lives. When readers arrive at the next lexia, “In the morning,” they are introduced to the mysterious circumstances surrounding the narrator waking up in bed not knowing how they got there. Readers only meet the “fox god” again in a lexia also named “Watching” positioned opposite of the first “Watching” found at the top of the circle. The next lexia, “Firefox,” opens with “We stared into the fire.” At this juncture, readers do not know to whom “We” refers. In the previous reading they are led to interpret it as the old man, but here it can be also viewed as the fox god itself. The old man, whom readers learned in the previous reading had initiated the narrator into the spirit world, shows up in this reading in “Proofs” and next in “The old man.” Thus, the mystery unfolds later in the second reading than it does in the first. The overlapping worlds of life in the village and the world of spirits occurs gradually so that when readers return to “Watching,” they are more aware of the dual world the narrator now lives and who may be “watch[ing]” them.
The third reading would begin once again with “Bonfire,” where there are 11 words hyperlinked in red. Clicking on the second “they,” in the lexia takes readers to "Watching," the lexia that reveals that the narrator is being “watch[ed].” Clicking on “They” in this lexia takes readers to “Proofs.” This is the lexia where the old man shares the photos of the shrine with the narrator. Readers have the choice of following two hyperlinks: “wraith” and “nothing.” Clicking on the first of these, readers learn that the narrator’s home among the rice paddies, graveyard, and shrine. There are four hyperlinks found on this lexia: “no one,” “pass,” “shrine,” and “fire.” Clicking on “shrine” takes readers to “Bonfire,” the center lexia. This hypertext shifts to 3rd person point of view and tells of “ancestors” who “dance here since the beginning” for the “fox god” and in front of the “stone god.” The hyperlink, “here,” leads to “In the morning,” the lexia where the narrator has “returned home” unsure how they got there. Clicking on “rise slowly,” takes readers to “Firefox,” the lexia where the narrator experiences the spirit world. Clicking on the hyperlink, “firefox,” takes readers to “Joining” where the narrator recounts an evening where “laughter turns on edge” and “[t]he fire sputters to itself, hiding their whispers.”
Thinking about structure impacts the way the story unfolds, we see a sequential reading of the work reveals the connection between the two worlds at different times––clockwise sustains the mystery of them over the course of the story and counterclockwise builds toward a slow revelation of them. However, the third reading––nonsequentially via the hyperlinks––merges the two worlds so that they become almost indistinguishable.
One final comment about this hypertext: Readers may be compelled to attach meaning to the use of colors applied to the lexias in the story. Green is used for both lexias entitled “Watching” and “The old man;” pink is used for “Daily Lives, Travelling home,” “In the morning,” and “Firefox;” blue for “Joining, Warming myself,” “Stairs,” and “Proofs;” and red for “Bonfire.” There seems to be, however, no correlation between color and content save perhaps “Bonfire,” the center lexia that describes flames used in the ritual celebrating the gods.
“Interlocked”
In quilting, a pattern where elements appear to be connected by being locked together is one that is interlocked. This idea forms the basis for Larsen’s sixth hypertext of Samplers.
The opening interface reads: “False memories always.” Clicking on it takes readers to the rest of the sentence: “Turn into reality.” This statement serves as a warning to a story whose memories and reality involve the nightmare of incest. The first lexia, “Becomes,” wastes no time introducing the “sordid” scenario:
Your room has no door. You try to pull the blankets over you, but you know that they, too, will be tossed aside . . . . You twist under the flood of memories he has told you are not real. Your arms tie themselves to the bedpost and you weave the wait for paid into your soul. (“Becomes”)
Clicking on the link, “he has told,” takes readers to an untitled lexia that reads: “He doesn’t know why it happened that way.” This lexia suggests that the man has not only been gaslighting the child but also feigns ignorance about the reality of his sickness. “Why” takes readers to the lexia, “Resolved,” a lexia whose words are all expressed in red and recounts the time the man “grabbed into [her] wrists” and told her that “[t]he easiest way to keep something is to touch it.” The text associated with him are italicized as a way of distinguishing his voice. One of three hyperlinks, “I am doomed,” takes readers to a lexia whose words are all expressed in blue: “What I need to know.” This lexia suggests the sexualization of the child: “The fire seeps under the rug, knowing every part of my back. His hands follow.” The second hyperlink returns to “Resolved.” Under the rug goes to the lexia, “Terror,” where the man tells the child: “Just lie quietly and wait for me.” “Just lie quietly” takes readers to the lexia “what i feel,” a lexia that is completely empty of text, signaling perhaps to readers the way he makes her feel like nothing. Clicking anywhere on it goes back to “Terror,” where readers can follow the second hyperlink to the lexia, “Waiting.” While the use of the narrator’s 2nd person point of view––“your” and “you”of the lexia “Becomes”––may have seemed a coping mechanism the child uses to shift the experience away from herself as a way of disassociating from the trauma, we later learn that she may also be simply repeating the man’s words to her. Thus, the gaslighting the man does has worked on the child because in this lexia, expressed in blue, she says that “[t]he pain is nothing,” I tell myself. Only your imagination.” This hyperlink goes to “the images,” whose words are expressed in red: “The soft hot leather of the cat-of-nine-tails he promised not to use and did anyway.” At this juncture readers may wonder about who “he” is. Is the narrator still the child we met earlier or is it her now an adult who has never been able to move away from the childhood trauma? Later, in the lexia “After” readers encounter the narrator when she is older and living in San Francisco. She is starting a relationship with someone who seems frustrated with her reticence for intimacy: “It’s high time you learned . . . . You’re twenty-five and you still haven’t. . . .” The hyperlink reminds readers that she did indeed learn a lot: “I learned everything from my father” (“Lessons”); “learned everything” returns readers to “After.” “[D]id anyway” goes to the lexia “Just” expressed in red where readers see the italicized words of the man, “Just hold still. Relax into me for once. Don’t be so tight.” This second hyperlink takes readers to “your soul” where they encounter the words in red: “You will never be anything more than what he wanted.” “He wanted” goes to the lexia “and open it” that reads in very large red letters: Your room has no door.” There are no hyperlinks associated with this lexia and everywhere readers click takes them back to the opening lexia Interlocked that reads, “False memories always.”
As Susanna Tosca points out, This is a story of incest from the past locking up the present" (Hipertula) “Interlocked:" This story "explores how sexuality and fear connect through the years” (Eastgate Systems, Inc.)
Critical Reception
Eastgate Systems, Inc. promoted the work as, “Nine richly imagined works make up this sampler quilt of hypertext. Stories of spirits returned to haunt the living, of memories that stubbornly refuse to fade, and of children far wiser than their parents.” Susana Tosca at Hipertula says that it is a "surprising achievement in hypertext fiction....Deena Larsen shows a mastery of very different styles through the nine short fictions and a remarkable ability to build characters and atmospheres, but the best of Samplers is the deep understanding of how to structure fiction." Leo Flores says in his essay published in Hyperrhiz 11, “Deena Larsen’s Metaphorical Interfaces,” that “[e]ach story in this collection is its own little hypertext pattern, its own design block, and each design block offers her a writing constraint (see figure 3). The map of just one of Larsen's stories show how much attention she dedicates to developing the structure of her hypertext works. An as you might imagine, reading the stories in Samplers will lead you to discover links between the stories that stitch the blocks into a coherent narrative sampler quilt.” Lori Emerson reminds us in her book, Reading Writing Interfaces, that Larsen “exploit[ed] a bug in Storyspace 1.2C that produces a screen requiring the reader to choose between two writing spaces after they hit Enter.” This allowed readers to both follow a default story line and “be forced to choose at key ventures” in the story (Larsen, qtd in Emerson). In her essay for BeeHive, "Honeycomb Patterns: Interweaving Texts, Bodies, Voices," Carolyn Guertin, classifies the work as feminist for the way it "privileg[es] subjectivity and mak[es] explicit its own ruptures." Tosca, returning to the work for her essay, "The Lyrical Quality of Links," says that:
“Samplers is also an example of the use of structures with an aesthetic end, as the patterns (that we can see with the Storyspace map) give clues about the meaning that each story explores. Another interesting feature of this hypertext is the poetic use of the “Links” dialogue box, as it contains path descriptions for each link that form poems on their own. This ‘independent’ lyrical quality of links (considered apart from the departure/arrival texts) could also be exploited in the kind of link-destination preview mechanism described in Zelleger et al.” 217-8
The work remains one of the only anthologies of hypertextual writing for the Storyspace environment.
Notes
[1] The Deena Larsen Collection managed by the Electronic Literature Organization has a letter Larsen sent Eastgate Systems, Inc. on October 30, 1994 that verifies that she is submitting “nine short hypertext as part of the serial publication started with Marble Springs, published 11/15/94.” The title Samplers is not mentioned. Also of note is the idea that the idea grew out of Marble Springs and that she cites the publication date of that work to be 1994.
[2] A photograph of objects representing the objects in Samplers contains on the backside in Larsen’s hand the caption, “Deena poster for HT 95 . . . the whole thing said structure forms navigation and meaning, showed Samplers for the 1st time.”
[3] A second letter that accompanied the one dated October 30, 1994, mentioned above, shows that Kathryn Cramer served as the first editor of Samplers. The letter dated May 29, 1997 from Diane Greco verifies that she had taken over the editorial work by the time Samplers was released. The list of changes Greco suggested to the work, amounting to three pages, shows the detailed approach and care she put into her position..
[4] The letter of October 30, 1994, alludes to an early version Larsen produced in Storyspace 1.3, a version of the program was lacking a “default text bug” that made it possible for readers “to choose where to go next,” which she wanted to see put back into the program.
[5] Personal notes that Larsen provides shows a page divided into nine sections, each featuring a title, a description, and many times a hand-drawn image. This early planning document still identifies one of the hypertexts as “Conventions,” which she later changes to “Seed Voices.” Pages she copied out of her notebook provides “short descriptions” the work. Another page of the notebooks shows Seed Voices named “seedy voices,” and Conventions missing. In its place is a hypertext called “July 7.” The former is listed later in the notebook as “Seed Voices.”
[6] ccccc
The letter dated June 28, 1994 from Bernstein to Larsen acknowledges Bernstein’s acceptance of “Firewheel,” one of the nine hypertexts. He gives her advice for adding guard fields and reminds her that there are only eight colors for Storyspace boxes.