CONCLUSION

First of all, I have to say that the hypertext I have dealt with is not entirely on-line, is just an excerpt (105 spaces, approximately 500 links). The whole text of Victory Garden includes 993 lexias, and more than 2804 links connecting them.

Stuart Moulthrop's Victory Garden is an enduring hypertext classic. Studied in universities throughout the world and discussed in nearly every major treatment of contemporary hypertext, Moulthrop's work is also one of the most popular and well-liked hypertexts every published.

As is clear by now, I hope, there are several possible interpretations for Victory Garden. What ”interpretation” with hypertexts actually is, what it should be or could be, is discussed in more thoroughly in ”In Search for Califia”. All these competing interpretations share the common property of being very flexible, and also strongly indeterminate – despite that they still can not in any way explain each and every aspect of the large web of Victory Garden. There are always some loose ends, which will not have a ”natural” place in one or another composition of the larger picture.

 Interpreting Victory Garden means mainly to try and give it a structure – to try to describe how the mechanism works. In other words, trying to explain the poetics of Victory Garden. It refers towards even larger and more complex works, in regard to which there is no sense anymore to talk about individual story lines or scenes at all – all that may be reachable is some kind of understanding of the metastructures which govern the whole and set limits to possible actualisations.

Hypertext narratives, such as Victory Garden, would sit somewhere in the middle of this continuum. On the one hand, they betray their historical contingency in their heavy reliance on (an arguably conservative) narrative poetics. On the other hand, they signal a moment in literary history when an age-old cultural form opens itself to the influence of digital aesthetics. Such narratives constitute a telling moment in literary history, regardless of how momentary they may prove to be. Indeed, those who tell stories with computers do not need to call attention to the techniques and conventions of their medium, as did Brecht for theater. Digital fictions impede transparency by virtue of their unfamiliarity - their literary machinery is already strange enough.

But encased in the unique literary machinery of digital fictions are the unique voices of its characters, who often speak at and of the "fork in the road" where "traditional narrative interests" diverge from those invested in the play of interaction and simulation (Moulthrop 2003). There is still plenty of reason to listen to and interpret these voices - at least until a crack in our screen suggests otherwise.

From the examination of the narration and the characters, the fragmentation of the vision of the world, the anxiety to give importance to the literal component of the work, we see that the fiction hypertext only re-examines and takes to their limits the problems present in the novel from James Joyce to Robbe-Grillet. What characterises the hypertext is its reading device. Offering new material, it opens the door of the virtual to fiction. The author is no longer certain of what he has written, the reader of what he has read. Configurations are made and unmade, paths bifurcate or stop short, secondary characters gain importance, others disappear. Each reading reflects figures and forms which appear and fade away in perpetual renewal. Fiction has turned to hyperfiction.

The future of this new genre is uncertain. It still comes under experimental literature. Its public is restricted, its authors most often academics. As a literary genre it is threatened by the very potentialities of its support material. Informatics allows the text, the sound and the image to be put in synergy. Certain hypertexts already use these possiblities, but with hesitation. The perspectives are however immense and extend from the interactive picture-story to the most sophisticated multi-media productions. It is not certain that the literary hypertext, a barely emergent genre will not disappear in favour of the growing hyper-media fiction which could very well represent the new paradigm of the total work which remains the dream of a number of writers.

 I want to thank Stuart Moulthrop for his time sending me an e-mail although it was not very helpful for me because I think I have chosen the most difficult text I could choose, in fact is the only one from the list which is not complete. If I had known this before posting my election in the post, maybe I had not done this one. Anyway, I think I have done a good job to be the first time I have been dealing with a hypertext.