VII. conclusions

the presence or absence of visual means have an impact on the overall aesthetics of the Texts, so that the (virtual) absence of visual effects in Afternoon makes it appear episodic and epistemologically unstable, the use of a representational map in Victory Garden restores the coherence of the Text and makes it possible for the reader to relate to it in the same way as to realistic narratives, and in Patchwork Girl, the use of the conceptual map as an alternative site of signification lends it a postmodernist feel.

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I think that to make the reader more interactive, a real bricoleur, requires that the reader be provided with more information about underlying structure. It is only on this metatextual level that the structuring of hypertext, as well as hyperfiction, occurs and J. David Bolter has quite fittingly cited Ricoeur writing about the "followability" and second order writing of hypertext. Slatin has a similar argument to make:

I think of hypertext coherence as appearing at the metatextual level--that is, at the level where the reader perceives ... 'the pattern which connects.' ... This metatextual level is perhaps best represented by a visual map of some kind,...

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