Statement

As an experiment in hypertext, The Snowmakers is a piece that combines long-form journalism and memoir.  Several threads run through the piece, intertwining personal stories, historical data, technical information, and experiential interviews.  The hypertexts we explored in class, especially Sugar (and Biography) and INF (L) ECTIONS: Writing as Virus, Hypertext as Meme were inspiring as to how to organize each piece of the hypertext so it related with the others while maintaining a dynamic, fluid narrative.

The Snowmakers attempts to process the narrator’s interactions with other characters in a manner similar to John McPhee’s Coming into the Country.  For most of the story, the narrator is tacit, allowing the experiences and interviews of various characters to illuminate the piece.  The text focuses on characterization and simple, straightforward description.

Rather than travel narrative, the piece concerns a place that is intimately familiar, drawing from Sara Suleri’s appreciation for her childhood home.  When experienced as a hypertext, The Snowmakers has an interwoven narrative style, similar to the manner in which Suleri’s piece references itself.

Throughout The Snowmakers, brief interjections of numeric data and a sense of brevity interpret the form of Tom Wolfe’s The Right Stuff.  Though the piece attempts to build a strong relationship with nature similar to how Dillard emphasizes the importance of looking and experiencing the world around her, it more closely approaches Wolfe’s sense of lingo and dialect.

home