

Hypertextuality: how a programmer reads TS Eliot's 'The Waste Land' - Tycho
http://www.std.com/~raparker/exploring/thewasteland/table/explore6.html

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Tycho
For those not familiar with _The Waste Land_ , it's a ten page or so poem
about the decay of knowledge and purpose in modern life (circa 1920s). It's
regarded as one of the first/founding works of literary 'modernism.'
Interestingly, a large portion of its text consists of fragments of other
works, and it's littered with countless subtle references/allusions to other
things. Drawing meaning from it requires investigation of these links; you
need to follow the trail.

The person who made this website is a software engineer, without any
university qualifications or formal education in literary analysis. It's also
one of the best resources about this poem you can find - and there are
literally thousands of books and papers to compete with. The hypertext format
didn't exist when The Waste Land was written, but its a perfect fit.

~~~
streblo
This is a wonderful resource, despite the difficulty of navigating all of the
content. Where did it come from? Are there others?

~~~
Tycho
As far as I know its a one of a kind, set up by a hobbyist. It draws on the
notes Eliot supplied himself though (they are actually linked alongside the
lines they correspond to); and no doubt on the work of other scholars to
unravel the poem's mysteries.

There are other good candidates for this sort of treatment though: poetry of
Ezra Pound, lyrics of MF DOOM...

------
igravious
Here's a link to the main page:
[http://world.std.com/~raparker/exploring/thewasteland/explor...](http://world.std.com/~raparker/exploring/thewasteland/explore.html)

I am studying a course in digital culture, part of that involves studying
electronic literature, part of which involves studying hypertextuality. There
is as yet no literary exemplar of the hypertextual realm, it is curious that
we have to go back to a poem that predates the hyperlink to find a good fit.

Thank you ever so much for posting this, I really appreciate it and know quite
a few others that will find this very intellectually stimulating.

~~~
_delirium
What do you mean by:

 _There is as yet no literary exemplar of the hypertextual realm, it is
curious that we have to go back to a poem that predates the hyperlink to find
a good fit._

Do you not count hypertext fiction? E.g. stuff like:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afternoon,_a_story>

~~~
igravious
Good example you've chosen. Patchwork Girl by Shelley Jackson
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patchwork_Girl_(hypertext)> using
(coincidentally created using the same authoring system that you link to) is
another fine, if not finer, example.

However, owing to the youth of the medium, and the very slow uptake I feel we
have as yet to see any outstanding works in hypertext fiction. By which I mean
of great artistic merit and a piece of work that transcends its form so that
it is just thought of as a great work of fiction and not just a great work of
hypertext fiction. (Non-fiction is a different matter entirely). As is
suggested in this thread it is very possible that by sacrificing pace that a
crucial component of fiction is lost to the author in the hypertextual realm.
Ask me again in 50 years, really we're back in Gutenberg times with electronic
literature - very exciting stuff, but really what we have are a lot of
hypertexted bibles and not much else. (And I say that with all respect to the
authors working in this field.)

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Gatsky
What's this? Two submissions about 'The Waste Land' on the front page of HN?

As much as I don't like conceited meta-comments, I have to say that this is an
incredible and surprising community...

------
poet
I couldn't imagine a worse way to read literature (although hats off to the
creator for the hard work). The beauty of _The Waste Land_ comes from slowly
unwrapping the references and allusions yourself. As we know from exploratory
programming, there's value in the process of both discovery and understanding.
This medium removes discovery.

On a different note, certainly the first read of any poem shouldn't be as
cluttered and busy as what's presented here.

~~~
Tycho
To be fair, I think most people kickstart their 'unwrapping' of _The Waste
Land_ by reading the notes Eliot supplied himself - which are fairly detailed,
though not exhaustive (but neither is this webpage. for instance line 25
mentions 'the red rock' I believe is a reference to Mars-->The God of
Wa-->/WW1). I agree one should read the pure text to start with, and try to
make sense of things by yourself, but you're going to need help at some point.

What I like about this is that it lets you see viscerally how interlinked the
text is. I like to visualize modernist poems as crystalline datastructures
floating through the heap of culture with pointers to other objects in
(public) memory.

Here is a recording of Eliot reading the poem for anyone interested:
[http://town.hall.org/Archives/radio/IMS/HarperAudio/011894_h...](http://town.hall.org/Archives/radio/IMS/HarperAudio/011894_harp_ITH.html)

Also the text on its own is here <http://www.bartleby.com/201/1.html>

I was only a teenager when I first read it (plus it was my first exposure to
modernist texts), but it did take me _quite_ a long time to even get past the
'wtf?' stage, until it eventually clicked.

------
streblo
This is a great resource, but yikes is it difficult to navigate.

~~~
zbanks
Agreed. However, I feel it's way better than a "traditional" system of
footnotes and annotations.

It's difficult to navigate due to the sheer amount of information it contains,
most of which can be ignored. That being said, it can certainly be improved,
but I empathize.

I bet there are literary critics who would kill to have a nice system to
generate documentation in multiple formats... Do any exist?

