Re: Escaping a bookless room
Posted by:
jon (---.abel.net.uk)
Date: January 27, 2003 12:24PM
<HTML>As I understand it, the text needed has to a) exist elsewhere in a format accessible by book-jumpers (a metatext) and b) be of sufficient length as to recognisable as a quote from such a text. In other words (pun) 'and' would not be enough, and 'it was a dark and stormy night' wouldn't be specific enough, because it could apply to many texts, not just one. The washing label used by Miss Havisham is short, but is presumably a text unique to washing labels, and therefore leads to a specific destination.
Condition b) is easy enough to define, and therefore if one had a text that you knew could be jumped into, writing it on a steamed up mirror would work; perhaps Jurisfiction agents should be issued with an emergency parachute text for just such occasions - even one word would do, if that one word only existed within a given metatext.
Condition a) is harder. At what point does a text become jumpable? Does the metatext have to be published, printed, both or neither? TEA and LIAGB tell us that neither is required, since manuscripts are not printed and Lost Plots are not published. In which case, if I write 'Jasper Fforde stood casually on the rooftop of Waterstones Piccadilly, checking his pockets for his busfare home' on a piece of paper, does that constitute a text into which a jumper could jump, or does it have to form part of a longer work? This question is in fact a rehash of the ancient argument 'what is art?', and the only sensible answer is 'whatever people think it is'. So if a text is generally regarded as metatext, it is one, regardless of length or format. So, who decides what is and is not a metatext, or is there a specific number of people who have to recoginise a text as one until it is one?
Who set up Jurisfiction? and who is in charge of it now? Do not attempt to answer these questions - they stray into the forbidden realm of Speculation, and if you wish to enter therein, do it where Jasper can't see you.</HTML>