ANALYSIS

The hypertext Cutting Edges is very long but its structure is quite simple so that it resembles a little bit to a “classical” novel. In the home page there is the title Cutting Edges that leads to a page in which the story begins. The space in which the action develops is the editorial office where some of the protagonists are talking about the approach to assume for an article. Here we find some links that lead us in a recent past in order to let us understand better the story. From now on every page has its nodes that lead to the continuation of the story or to a more detailed narration of the aspect of the story we are reading in that moment. Thus, as in every hypertext, the reader can choose which part of the story he wants to follow. There are also links that get the reader to a brief description of the characters, about their personhood or life, helping him/her to have a more complete understanding of the nature of the characters.

Below there is the subtitle Or, A Web of Women and if we push Web we see a kind of poem about the web in which many words are links that lead to other events of the characters’ life. If we push Women we can read a description of what women have represented in the history and what they represent now, a feminist and ironic interpretation of the figure of the woman.

Finally there is another subtitle A hyperfiction of love, hate and the war of the sexes, set in the great Pacific Northwest that let us immediately perceive the topic of the story. Pushing the terms love, hate, war, sexes we find a definition of each one.

As to the spaces of the narration we have to point out firstly that the story unfolds in Portland, a city in the state of Oregon (United States of America). That’s an important point because the monthly Cutting Edges is a regional magazine so it deals with the facts that happens in that State as we can see with the article that Diana writes about an upstart recording studio that intend to promote regional bands, with The Mushroom Festival in Lake Oswego (another city in Oregon) to which Marty -another member of the staff- goes and with the story of Portlandia.

The main space of the text is the editorial office, a place that always recurs because it’s where the group works but it’s also a place, as every place of work I suppose, in which they talk about their private life, their problems and anxieties; in which they buzz about or argue with a colleague.

In the piece there is a quite detailed description of the place in which the office is and how it appears: “The office of Cutting Edges was in an older brick building on the edges of downtown, one of the remaining incongruities among all the towering architectural innovations of the eighties. It looked like it hadn't changed since the building had been built, aside from the coffee machine and the computers.” Thus their place of work seems suitable for them, it seems to reflect them, old guys and ladies that have stopped in the 60s and 70s, their golden age, when all city was like that building.

The spaces are mostly indoor like the magazine office, some bars and restaurants, and the houses of some of the characters. But there are also outdoor places; an example is in the setting in which Lyssa, Roxana (photographer and graphic designer at Cutting Edges) and Deborah (a successful novelist) are in the street, precisely on the corner of 5th and Madison. They are watching with a crowd of people near the Portland Building the arrival of an enormous statue that is going to be the decoration for the building and the symbol of the city.

Another outdoor place is in the setting in which Hannah (Lyssa’s daughter) and her new boyfriend Jesse drive to the coast until a parking lot near a beach. There are many descriptive references about the place in which they stop through expressions like “the edge of the cliff overlooking the beach”; “the dark blue-green water and light blue sky, the rocks jutting out of the ocean and the pines turned away from the wind”; “The path down to the beach was lined with trees, sheltering them some from the wind.”

The author says that Jesse loves the outdoors and he takes frequent trips to the coast and the mountains. He’s a rebel boy five years older than Hannah (who is 18) and has left his city Chicago to search something better in Oregon. That’s important because it’s often underlined somehow that there are different ways of thinking and living in these two places. For example when the text says: “In the few weeks Hannah had been going out with him, she had been lectured repeatedly on the dangers of the "real world," which consisted solely of Chicago, and the unreality of Oregon, apparently because it wasn't dangerous enough.”

We find also other two cities in the text. Eugene that is where Hannah go to visit Kate, her best friend from high school, to get away from Portland and Jesse that had hurt her so this city represent a way of escape. In Eugene lives also Matt, the long-distance lover of Myrine (that works at a recreation center where she teaches women's self-defense). The other city is Seattle where live Adrian, a man that have a long-distance relationship with Diana (that lives in Portland and is assistant editor at Lyssa's magazine.)

Finally it’s necessary to mention another space: “the trees”. We meet it when Myrine tells Roxana, Lyssa and Deborah that Matt is up in the trees. He’s a tree-sitting and it’s a form of social and environmental protest. Thus the place “trees” has to do with one of the major topic presented in the hypertext, the topic of idealism. In fact Matt is the most faithful to the ideals in the group of friends and we realize it also reading in the description of Matt this sentence: “Matt is perhaps the closest thing to a professional idealist as is humanly possible.”

Academic year 2008/2009
© a.r.e.a./Dr.Vicente Forés López
© Valeria Prota
vapro@alumni.uv.es
Universitat de València Press