“Other people were doors he could not open.”
I hope I will be forgiven for quoting now an extended definition from this work of its version of hypertext: “a knowledge system, text interconnected by a network of nodes, links, and cross-references. Certain words became “doors”: open them up and they’d tell you their secrets. You’d find definitions and explanations, but more significantly, more “doors.” Sometimes you’d open door after door and it would be as if you were in this endless dream house of ideas, a big old ramshackle palace of a place with ancient and modern sections blending surrealistically together because of all the remodeling that had been done, so that you were completely lost, you couldn’t get out, and much of the time you didn’t even want to get out.”
Much of this book ALREADY seems to be forming a raison d’être for the process of Gestalt Real-Time Reviewing that I invented ten years ago as a means to critique the books I love. Extended by this story towards a confirmation of my literary pareidolia or apophenia in a congeries of cross-references, conceits, coincidences as to chance plot event, synchronicity, serendipity, word-structure, phonetics and semantics. Doors within doors within doors, even if with large amounts of confirmation-bias. Here neatly connected with regard to this work is the story of Cole, one with psychological problems from childhood, a loner with such an aptitude of hypertext given the chance by his successful brother to road-test new software for that brother’s computer business. It is fascinating the hypertext process Cole then creates to delve into his own family connections and how they affected his own hang-ups, including the discovery of the true nature of his brother in this context, but, for me, that story of Cole is almost secondary to the increased illumination that this story has given me with regard to my own development, not Cole’s!
From my review of Steve Rasnic Tem here: https://dflewisreviews.wordpress.com/2019/02/04/the-harvest-child-and-other-fantasies-steve-rasnic-tem/
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