AUTHOR: that imposter

the AUTHOR code is a reference to the remembered real-world context of the work

It has come to my attention that a young woman claiming to be the author of my being has been making appearances under the name of Shelley Jackson.

The authoritative tone -- "It has come to my attention" -- invokes a unifying certainty, a sense that the speaker is not only a definite figure but a (SINGLE) external objective one. It does this by implying that the speaker existed independently, before the (WORK) that contains her, and that she only then, independently, became aware of Shelley Jackson's existence.

This central conceit is however undermined or changed by its early appearance; the listener/reader is made aware of Shelley Jackson, is indeed already aware of the (AUTHOR) before the work is presented (in the original context, as speech; Jackson was on stage, inescapably present. In the archived, remembered context, as the by-line appearing in bold above its own negation.) Thus the centrality of the (AUTHOR) code to this passage; it asserts the independence not of the (WORK) per se, but of an alternative author contained in that work. (This alternative author belongs to an alternative reality, within the (WORK)).

 It seems you have even invited her to speak tonight, under the misapprehension that she exists, 

Again, the speech cannot quite shake its secondary nature; the knowledge, coming from outside the (WORK), that it serves a social function as an event in a calender or agenda (which, although hierarchical, is at least manifestly (PLURAL)). This social/societal context threatens to impose external meaning on the work; it fights back by explicitly commenting (META) on its role, in the course of the examination of hypertext's relation to more traditional forms.

In fact, Stitch Bitch and other postmodern works are generally more concerned with the context and authorship of a piece than some more traditional / readerly works. Traditionally, literature creates small, hermetically-sealed Universes that are consumed linearly by a reader with some implicit comparison to "real-world" context and awareness of authorship. This focus on context runs counter to the ideals of New Criticism and many of its successors; however, it cannot be directly challenged without fragmenting and reshaping the Universe of the work into something more self-referential (META), something which directly attacks its author's reality by standing next to it as an equal (see WORK).

Thus, the real world of the (AUTHOR) has become both a taboo and a major theme of postmodernism, and particularly of nonlinear hypertext (see below).

that she is something besides a parasite, a sort of engorged and loathsome tick hanging off my side. May I say that I find this an extraordinary impertinence, and that if she would like to come forward, we shall soon see who is the author of whom.

Well? Well?

Very well.

Well indeed! The (META) humor rests on the context-based notion that the (AUTHOR) Jackson is mocking or insulting herself; it comes across as rather vicious otherwise.

I expect there are some of you who still think I am Shelley Jackson, author of a hypertext about an imaginary monster, the patchwork girl Mary Shelley made after her first-born ran amok. No, I am the monster herself, and it is Shelley Jackson who is imaginary, or so it would appear, since she always vanishes when I turn up. 

Doesn't that rather imply an alter-ego relation? One doesn't think of the "imaginary" as prone to vanishing, but rather as never having been present, usually. Rather, the word "imaginary" must connote that (AUTHOR) Jackson and (WORK) the monster are on equal footing somehow; That the (SINGLE) author-concept is in fact (PLURAL), that just because reality's bigger doesn't make it boss (see WORK).

You can call me Shelley Shelley if you like, daughter of Mary Shelley, author of the following, entitled: Stitch Bitch: or, Shelley Jackson, that imposter, I'm going to get her.

Here, in fact, the (WORK) explicitly claims (AUTHOR) status.


The METABLOG, of course, suffers from the same conceit: it attempts a detached analysis of itself, which falls apart upon contextualization (there is a single author; this is an assignment; THIS IS THE METABLOG; and so forth). Hypertext in general seems to deal poorly with the notion of a (SINGLE) causal root, perhaps because it is so well suited to a plurality of (META)-level references and commentaries; in contrast, any content can only ever be produced linearly, if it produced by a single author. Thus, denial of linearity (as attempted by hypertext) must come with some attempt to escape contextualization.