Clicking on the node labelled "Nelson" in the center of the image map or leads the reader to a node not in the story but in the theory. There is no section of the story told from Nelson's point of view. Nelson is, rather, in the world of the story, a person whom others interpret. Here I add a couple more interpretations of my own.
When a reader ceases for a moment to look through the words of the story and looks at them for a change, or in other terms performs the oscillation between the virtual and the hypertextual that Jay Bolter discusses in "Degrees of Freedom" (see the section on "Looking Through the Text"), Nelson becomes a text interpreted by other texts. Like many people, including authors, critics, and readers, many of the narrators in the world of "Holier Than Thou" assume that their view of the world (and of Nelson in particular) is the correct one. Even if they are slightly less presumptuous, they assume their reading, if not the correct one, is at least accurate insofar as their knowledge extends. It's a rare person who goes around assuming that their interpretation of what facts they do have is invalid or unsupportable. Certainly no such person shows up in "Holier Than Thou." Nelson often, maybe always, assumes the self-righteous attitude implied by the story's title; so do his interpreters.
This phrase and the attitude to which it refers has a curious applicability to the nascent art world of hypertext fiction into which I've launched Nelson's story. Recently (March 1996) I attended Hypertext '96, the 7th ACM Conference on Hypertext, as a student volunteer. One phrase I remember from the conference that came up on a number of occasions was "hypertextier- than-thou." I may have heard it prior to that, either on the Usenet group alt.hypertext or the hypertext theory mailing list ht_lit. At the conference it turned up in debates between people who were advocates for various standalone hypertext systems and people who were proponents of the World Wide Web. This debate is generally framed in terms of what the Web and its various browsers and version of HTML can and can't do that other hypertext systems have been doing for a decade or more (in terms of liabilities and assets for my own writing, I discuss these issues in more detail in the node about tools) In that sense, it is also reminiscent of the ongoing debate about Microsoft's dominance of the software market and whether Windows simply rehashes features that Apple's MacIntoshes have had for the last decade. The debate over the Web shows up in serious discussion as well as in such humorous forms as Stuart Moulthrop's unpackings of the initialism HTML, beginning with Hypertext, More or Less.
Extended use of any technology cannot help but change the user. The tool tends to become part of the social fabric; if it is a powerful enough technology, it goes even deeper and becomes part of the self.
While technological change does not play a major role in the story, it does form part of the background against which Nelson is seen by narrators and readers. Vehicles of all sorts are by far the most prevalent technology in "Holier Than Thou," enough so that one of the image clusters of automated links is about them. His gradually changing attitudes toward and uses of cars and other vehicles serve to amplify traits of character that lie within him from the beginning. Growing up in the rural South in the early years of this century, Nelson has no particular need of or use for a car until long after he's an adult. Work is on the farm, not in town--Nelson never even applies for a job until after World War II (when he would be some forty years old). Besides, in the sections of the story that take place prior to the Depression, there are no decent roads. Typically, it is May, his first wife, who is the only character aware enough of the world at large to notice this latter fact. Coming from a slightly more urbanized environment, May is in fact the character who introduces the very thought of such technologies as automobiles, movies, and radio into Nelson's world. Early in their marriage we see Nelson as a young father ridiculing the idea of needing a car--where, after all, do they need to go?
Despite his initial skepticism, however, (not to mention lack of money), times change and he changes with them. The automobile insinuates itself into the fabric of his society. After May leaves him and Dean has been killed, we see Nelson not only accepting the automobile but becoming slightly obsessed with it, as if it were a kind of residue of his love--or at least need--for May. This reaches comical stages when he takes to broadcasting hymns, sermons, and general moral upbraiding as he drives the county's highways and pitiable stages when we see him as an old shrunken man, albeit still energetic enough to be vituperative in his own small way, carrying a helmet for some small motorcycle or moped. In a scene still in its early stages (and not yet posted on the Web), we find the man who once scoffed at this particular technology from the security of his small farm with his life contained and circumscribed by a vehicle. The social worker dispatched to locate Nelson finds him living in an abandoned schoolbus, the bargain basement trailer that still dots some fields in the South. The social worker, new to this area like May was some sixty years earlier, is shocked at these living quarters but carries out her job, which is to determine, in essence, just where this cranky old man fits into her system. She arrives form in hand, ready to possibly offer some real help but also to encode him for her agency's computer system.
Abstract | Bibliography | Glossary |"Holier ThanThou" | Project Entrance
Initial release: April 3, 1996
Last update: August 4, 1996