This narrative hypertext poem allows readers to return to Judy Malloy’s fictional world and discover more about some of the characters from her previous works (including the delightful rogue, Uncle Roger). We enter this wedding party as Jenny (from Uncle Roger: A Party at Woodside) and experience the party by selecting icons for different characters, places, and a musical band. This interface and the control it gives us to direct our attention to characters and their situations, and move to different places in this beach house in California gives it a 1980s interactive fiction feel to it, but with a GUI for ease of use for contemporary audiences. Reading it without having read some of Malloy’s earlier works is still fun, because she provides us with enough information to follow snippets of plot lines and revel in interpersonal dynamics, and it’s much like the experience of attending a wedding reception where you haven’t met anyone before. But having read her earlier work magnifies the experience, as questions become answered and unresolved issues come to a head.
Call it intertextuality, self-referential allusion, or a sequel in a series, these invisible links are established and powered by the human mind, and make Malloy’s hypertext fiction much more complex and pleasurable.
Featured in ELO 2012 Media Art Show
