I often start by asking “Have you ever heard about…?” Today it was “Have you ever heard about Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell?”1 Last Wednesday it was, “Have you ever heard about Robert’s Rules of Order?” I can’t tell you how many times I’ve asked “Have you ever heard of Mystery Science Theater 3000?”

In the course of a day, the thoughts, the connections, the images appear, unbidden2, and I would share them. Except, without context there is no meaning. Because what I actually want to say is just as John Uskglass resuscitated and reformed his last work as tattooed on the body of Vinculous, we can destroy, repurpose and recreate our own works. Because what I actually want to explain is how to manage a fee schedule subcommittee to the geothermal management board. Because what I actually want to say is a heavy font like this needs to double-brace the H.3

So I start by asking, have you ever heard of Tristram Shandy?

The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman is a novel by Laurence Sterne, inspired by Don Quixote. It’s a fictional autobiography, the details of which I will not go into except to say one of the central jokes of the book is that Tristram cannot explain anything simply, but is always adding explanatory digressions, so much so that Tristram’s birth is not reached until Volume III.4 For years and years I have had so many tributaries to my mind, a vast delta spreading outward to the sea (of my mouth?). Very rarely to people in meatspace have the time, or indeed patience to wait while I construct the necessary foundation to say the things I actually mean to say. Speech is tragically linear.

With a place like www.guyinterlinked.com, I’m not bound by time or linearity, at least not from your perspective. As Tristram Shandy’s narrative relies on the reader to participate in the often overlapping double narrative, I too require participation, dear reader. Here I will lay it all out, building foundation and structure at once, a hypertext narrative5, a web collage of novel and familiar, old and new. And, like some painters, I want my work to be cohesive from a distance, and up close in the impasto, visible evidence of the work of brush and knife.

Even so, I’m not so pretentious as to make things inscrutable. I, like most people, wish ultimately to be understood, and wish to share the things that have brought me joy, wonder, sorrow, wisdom and folly.

So if things here ever seem digressionary, have you ever heard about The Story of the Old Ram?

Footnotes

  1. I was originally going to link to www.jonathanstrange.com, but the link seems to have rotted. ↩

  2. The Unbidden is the name of one of the extra-dimensional invaders found as an endgame crisis in Paradox Interactive’s 4X space game Stellaris. I was originally going to link to the Paradox wiki article about them, but the page has been moved and a contextless redirect left in it’s place. Instead I’ve now given you my own context, and link to the wiki post anyway. ↩

  3. From the MST3K episode “Deathstalker and the Warriors from Hell” Extra stuffed germanic font in credits ↩

  4. Aside from simply sharing interesting things, another major reason write is to crystalize6 my thoughts and deepen my own understanding of the things that influence me. When I was describing the nature of this post to a friend of mine this morning, I suggested that the occasion of Tristram Shandy’s birth didn’t happen until two-thirds of the way through the story. What’s one-third between friends, but the fact remains: I cared less about the truth of the thing than I did about the feeling of the thing. It was a careless exaggeration, we all do it, but I am no longer interested in the surface level of things. It’s the difference between being a scientist and being a fan of science. I want my outsides to match my insides, and to mine own self be true. Or within my own self be true. Transparent and Authentic. ↩

  5. You’re on your own for this one, but like ergodic literature, being here will take a little effort. It’s not quite a game, but please, explore, engage with what you want, and ignore what you don’t. But never fear, Homestuck this ain’t. ↩

  6. I want you to trip like I do. ↩