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| Swiveling My Hips |  | |  | | | through the Interbunk | |
by Lisa Ciccarello | | |
December 6th marked the 30th anniversary of the ill-fated
concert at the Bay Area’s Altamont Speedway where, during a free rock-n-roll
event attended by 300,000 fans, four people died. Among them was Meredith
Hunter, an eighteen-year-old African-American who was stabbed to death
by a group of Hell’s Angels directly in front of the stage. For many,
the murder at Altamont marked the symbolic end of the '60s – not the end
of the turbulence, for the struggles continued –signaleing the passing
of the decade’s spirit of hopeful activism, its idealistic faith in love
and peace.
The anniversary passed with nary a word from the national news media,
hardly a surprise since journalism is not a medium of memory (and besides,
there was the pressing issue of what to say about Seattle.) But if Altamont
has passed from national consciousness, at least that consciousness reflected
in the twitchy mirror of the news media, who or what remembers? This brings
me to the twin imperatives of historical writing (and to this essay's
topic, hypertext): "Tell me a story" and "Tell me the truth." How to tell
it? What form suits best? I submit that it’s this counterpoint of history
and memory, factual truth and the narrative organization that lends stories
their coherence and intelligibility. Regardless, it's precisely this counterpoint
that is evoked so bravely and un-nostalgically, by Sunshine
‘69, the "Web’s first interactive novel" by Robert Arellano, a.k.a.
Bobby Rabyd, Internet fabulist and teacher of creative writing at Brown
University.
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