Patchwork Girl, a novel in an electronic medium, is about a girl who is sewn together. She then meets a man, who is the narrator in the story. He tries to see patchwork girl as a person or not what her physical appearance is. It seems that she has super-human powers and can easily physically handle the narrator in this story. I am actually very confused about the story so far because I haven’t been able to find most of it. I have read about the graveyard, which confused me a lot as well. I believe that part of the graveyard story is alluding to the patchwork girl and how she is in pieces. And her different organs can be found in a graveyard. Maybe this part of the story will soon be cleared up as more links and ways to read Patchwork Girl can be found. But the plotline at this point is very confusing for me because there are many different ways to try and read what the story is.
Beginning to read Patchwork Girl, I really do not understand the way it is written at all. It is very confusing, and I feel like this way of writing will only cause the reader to become annoyed and upset rather then get a sense of what the novel is actually saying and describing in the story. I am just very confused about what should be read, or what images should be interpreted, or even where to click to see most of the story. Also, throughout the story when reading, there are other links to click, which will take you to a different place to read on about something else. I feel like this is just another way to confuse the reader because I personally will not remember what I was reading at one point. Then I may never go back and read what that part of the story had to say like when reading “a journal” on the title page. When clicking on the window to continue the story, the reader can choose two different links either “written” or “sewn” and continue with the story. This link takes you to a different story line a different plot and different idea. I find this very deterring when trying to read the story. I feel like I am going to forget to read something important which will help me continue with the story. But this idea can definitely be connected with the article by Hayles. He mentions in the second paragraph that people have become “inattentive to the diverse forms in which ‘texts’ appear.” This goes along with my idea of frustration when reading The Patchwork Girl because I do not enjoy putting more effort into trying to find the novel and what to read. If I am going to have to read something then I want it to be easily accessible which is extremely lazy of me. I wonder, though, how Shelley Jackson thought of the idea of putting his novel into a CD form for the computer? Was he trying to think ahead of a future technological curve? Did he think that maybe books would be an old-fashioned and irrelevant form of leisure and work soon?
