PLOT OVERVIEW
The hypertext is a biographical analysis of the two authors who try to describe as good as possible situations that happened during their childhood, adolescence and maturity.
There is a mix of memories of the two authors
because both
are mentioned in the text "Catherine, for once I have this funny
feeling that
I'm on a trip that's too weird for you! I hope you'll bring yourself to
understand." That's what she wrote me in December of 1982”
“Somewhere in Tempe,
Arizona, he leans over Harold's shoulder, says, "Tell Judy
hi" and the words
hang on my screen.”.
The author starts this hypertext by presenting the car accident that Corky, the son of her friend George, had on Christmas Eve.
George flies over to see his son, and his wife was already there but the future of their son is uncertain.
Also, the author remembers some of her friends and what each one is doing. She remembers a walk that she did with her friends Yves and Kathy and their animal friends. Memories about a beach in Santa Cruz with her friends and also New Hampshire come into her mind.
Another memory is when she sees Corky in her old house, which seems that didn't change. She spends the night with him, but he still talks to his ex-wife, an English professor. Corky was beating his wife Susan and went to prison for a while.
Return to present-she is reading her e-mail (1990). She reads about her friends' problems.
Another return to the past (1982) reflects a series of minor events in her life and in the life of her friends.
In the present, the author is in the kitchen with her mother, talking about Corky's death in the car accident.
She remembers about her friend who confesses her that she is pregnant and the author asks if she is going to have an abortion. After she had the baby the messages slowly stopped. This seems to be a sad memory because the tone of the author is sad and lacks energy.
Memory about her flirting with Samuel by email and some events that took place when she was a student return her to the past and aggravate her tone, from calm to aggressive.
A discussion about psychiatrists reveals the fact that the author has brothers, one of them named Stephen.
The author is giving the impression that she had an affair with Mark in a motel and also mentions that she has a son, who we later find out that it could be Jim’s.
There are also other memories about her childhood as the hurricane that passed over her family house and the view that she had about that event. Also, she remembers the bad impression that she has about teachers and her walk with her friends gathering chestnuts.
Also, she remembers a lot of things from the basement where she lived and whose landlord was Mr. T. - there were cockroaches.
She remembers the moments when she had Sean and her mother’s reproaches because she is taking care of her son and that she didn’t want to marry a rich man.
Other memories about her
childhood and
her grandfather-he made her promise she won’t cut her hair and that
there was no
reason to buy alcoholic drinks. " My grandfather told me there was no
reason to buy liquor (and he said it just this way), that mouthwash
had just as much alcohol and it was a lot cheaper.
I was ten. What he said made a lot of sense to me, except that
vanilla extract tasted better than mouthwash.
"If you'll come meet me in San Diego, I'll let you try some of my
Prozac," he says when he called me on Saturday. The tryst is strictly
hypothetical, proposed with ironic distance. He is teasing me and
teasing himself."
The woman who had an accident when she
was 14
left a great impact upon her perspective about life.
The hypertext has an open ending, it doesn't say how does the text ends.