The Harmless Yank Hobby

[Dave Monroe]

Exactly, and, as I attempted to hint there, ab
origine, as well as in practice.  But other such terms
are pretty well entrenched, my point was, Rossi,
knowing he doesn't have decades to centuries to
millenia of literary discourse or whatver behind him
here, rightfully goes to the trouble to explain
himself, where others generally need not (or, at
least, feel no need to, though in my experience,
"allegory," for example, still generally engenders at
least a paragraph to a few pages of explication before
deployment). There's no point in denigrating him for
doing so, so ...

--- jbor at bigpond.com wrote:
> 
> They're not all the same thing, of course, and none
> of them is necessarily the same as a hyperlink. I
> guess there's an assumption that most readers will
> know just what each one is, or can easily find out
> by looking in a dictionary.
> 
> But "intertextuality" is probably a good generic
> term for all of these textual features.

Which is how Rossi uses the word as well ...
 
> In most cases a hyperlink equates most closely to a
> footnote or bibliographic reference in a text.

This is why I thought it a good trope here, esp. as a
hyperlink, at least in Rossi's sense, and as ofetn as
not online, is NOT necessarily as overtly indicated as
a foot/endnote et al., with tehir
super/subscripted/perenthetical/whatever tarces right
on the page.   Links of course can be shown
explicitly, highlighted, given icons, "buttons," what
have you, but tehy need not be ...
 
> Infinite Jest is much more of a "hypertext" kind of 
> novel than anything by Pynchon.

Having only browsed it, I'm guessing IJ's
"hypertextual" elements are first and foremost ON the
page, straight up textual, at the bottom margins, and
so forth.  In Pynchon, there are obvious
"huperlinks"--proper names, technical terms, et
al.--but there are also, as both Rossi and Hollander
(and many, many otehrs) point out, elements which, by
repetition, their seeming incongruity, whatever, call
attention to themsleves.  This is all likely true of
nigh unto ANY text--which is why I think Rossi's trope
a good one--but it's particularly true of
Pynchon's--which is why I think it a good one here ...
 
> I'd also argue that "we" don't all read in the same
> way, and that if one reader asserts that the
> "Kenosha Kid" is a deliberate reference to Orson
> Welles and another reader asserts that it's a
> inserted hyperlink to Heller's Major Major, well
> then, Houston, we have a problem.

Again, "a facultative act," "following a link is not
compulsory," and, of couse, there are as ofetn as not
different links one can click on, which will take you
down further, and not necessarily ever again mutually
articulated, branches.  Or, rather, rhizomes ...
 
> I think that Slothrop has a lot more affinity with
> Yossarian than with Major Major, and that what
> he's doing in St Veronica's is more comparable to
> what Yossarian's doing in the hospital at the
> opening of Catch-22 (which is what prompts Major
> Major's forgeries anyway).

Now this is what I THOUGHT would be more interesting
here, Rossi's specific claims about GR vis a vis C-22 ...

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