The situation is manifestly different in a hypertext or a game environment such as the Miller brothers' Riven, where it is difficult for one to know whether one has exhausted the text's resources or where it may be clear that one is unable to reach certain of its areas.
Aarseth defines "narrative," by restricting this term to include only texts which are presented in a form in which a single obvious path which encompasses every word of the text - i.e codex books (though he acknowledges their capacity for "random access") and electronic texts that offer no choice of order to the reader. Texts that do offer choices are designated as "ergodic literature" or "cybertexts."
His book endeavors to explore the nature of ergodic literature and so, perhaps unsurprisingly, does not give much space to a consideration of the nature of spatiality of "linear" narrative texts. In this project, I want to consider the spatiality of the narrative form, which I conceive of as dual. Clearly there is a linear narrative line, but, as Barthes points out, "meaning is not 'at the end' of the narrative, it runs across it." In order
~Previous~properly to conceive of the narrative reading process,we must, I believe, consider what Barthes calls the "vertical axis."
Whilst the linearity of narrative remains, it is supplemented by a vertical network or grid in which one cannot get "lost," but rather where one "finds" the meanings of the text. Here we can follow the chains of what Barthes call the text's "indices" rather than the horizontal functionality which leads in a unicursal path to the narrative denouement
What follows, is an attempt to provide such a vertical, indexical structure to Borges's short story called "The Garden of Forking Paths."
I have broken (or "starred") the text into 58 lexias in a similar manner to Barthes's operations on "Sarrasine" in S/Z. The codex form of Barthes text means that, though he is able to identify the indices (or "Semes" as they are called in this later text), he is unable to offer Sarrasine in the varying orders that would allow the reader to duplicate the mental