This story, that focuses on the lives of contemporary artists in the San Francisco Bay area, unfolds in four parts: Dorothy Abrona McCrae; Interlude - Dorothy and Sid; A Party at Silver Beach; and Afterwards.

Part One: Dorothy Abrona McCrae
http://www.well.com/user/jmalloy/dorothy_abrona_mccrae/

Narrated by an 81 year old "Bay Area Figurative" painter, Dorothy Abrona McCrae is a lexia-based narrative in which the details of the narrator's life are intertwined with a past that is disclosed through descriptions of her work. The story is set in her studio/residence in the California Gold Country foothills.

In Dorothy's distinctive voice -- simultaneously archaic (in the classical sense) and iconoclastic -- the epic unfolds in fragmented lexias. At the core of the narrative, recollective meaning is altered by a series of events that are revealed through letters, art work, and conversations with curators and other artists.

Dorothy was married when she was young, but her husband was killed in the Pacific in World War II. Despite a long-time relationship with San Francisco art dealer Sid Seibelman, she has lived alone for many years -- her life centered on her work; a picture of her deceased husband still on her bureau. But when she revisits the place where she and her husband were stationed before he was killed, she meets a woman with whom she knew her husband was friendly, and she also meets the woman's grandson -- a young man whose resemblance to her husband sets in motion a life-altering chain of events.

Because Dorothy is of a generation more comfortable with sequential writing then with computers, this work is fairly sequential. And, in this format, the narrative works more within the novelistic growth of the character framework than do some of my other works. (which approach narrative from a memory and observation vantage point) In confronting her past and the events that shaped her life, Dorothy's attitudes towards her friends, towards other artists, towards her relationship with Sid undergo a sympathetic change.

The interface displays the pages of her notebook with her writing in the central frame. The entire work can be paged throught by clicking the bar at the bottom of this central screen.

On the left hand side are the months in which each notebook segment was written. To move to another month, simply click on its name.

On the right hand side are phrases from the pages of the notebook. Clicking on a phrase accesses the page that contains it. This section of the interface changes with each selection, allowing entry into other groups of pages.

The work discloses a fairly sequential story, one which the narrator would be comfortable telling, in the way she would tell it.

Dorothy Abrona McCrae was begun as an online serial in April, 2000. A new installment was added each month. The final installment was posted in December, 2000.

I know from feedback, that some readers believe that the painter Dorothy Abrona McCrae is a real person. Perhaps it is the immediacy and the intimacy that online narratives are capable of creating that has engendered both the belief in her reality and the occasional concern that her opinions will be taken as the opinions of the writer. I could write a disclaimer, but in any work of literature, it should not be necessary to point out that fictional characters are not the writer; or that writers do not always create characters exactly like themselves. It is important that writers have the freedom to portray all kinds of people.

Dorothy is one of my favorite characters. I hope that readers will enjoy the story of her life as much as I enjoyed writing it!

Notes on Reading this Work

The story can be read sequentially by clicking on the text or on the red bar at the bottom of each lexia. Or, it can be read as a nonsequential hypernarrative in which parts of the narrator's life are experienced in whatever way the reader chooses, either by clicking on the "Month" menu on the left, or by clicking on the phrases on the right.

Part Two: Interlude - Dorothy and Sid
http://www.judymalloy.net/dorothy/intertop.html

Interlude - Dorothy and Sid is an "Interlude" between Dorothy Abrona McCrae and A Party at Silver Beach. In this work, in a series of trips and initmate moments, Dorothy and Sid change their longterm but ocassional relationship into a more serious commitment.

Interlude is composed like a piece of music which moves along in four parts. To experience the work, simply click on an area in the text which allows you to do so (such as the white boxes) and continue on.

It was included in: The Blue Moon Review in "Intersections Women in Web Hypermedia", edited by Marjorie Coverley Luesebrink.

Part Three: A Party At Silver Beach
http://www.judymalloy.net/party/begin.html

As the work begins, a party celebrating the marriage of Dorothy and Sid is in progress. The narrator is Jenny Clark, the narrator of Uncle Roger, who is now a gossip columnest for a South Bay newspaper.

A guest at a party encounters and observes many people, speaks to some guests, overhears the conversations of others. The work unfolds when the reader follows Jenny's experience of the place where the party takes place, the food, the guests whom she encounters.

At a party -- and in a hypernarrative in which the reader moves in and out of the story in a nonsequential manner -- it is often difficult for the reader to know who is speaking. The icon-keyed text in this interface is a filmic way of situating the reader at the party. To read the story, click on one of the icons which surround the text.

Simulating your arrival at a party, the first room you enter, offers multiple entry ways to other rooms -- with more than one icon leading to other rooms.

In the other rooms, only the icon directly before the "?" leads to another room. The "?" always leads to the table of contents and guide to the work.

Icons which lead to text which has not been viewed are bordered in red. (note that it sometimes takes a while for the border to disappear after the text associated with the icon has been accessed.)

A suggested way of reading the work is to first visit all the rooms and read all the text in each room, so that you are familiar with the people at the party and their stories. Then return to the first room and click at random, so that you experience the party in the way you might exerieince a real party, following the flow...

Part Four: Afterwards
http://www.well.com/user/jmalloy/dorothyandsid/thoughts.html

Afterwards immediately follows A Party at Silver Beach.

In a series of conversations and parallel thoughts, the narrative weaves together the relationships of three couples who were at the party: the young couple Tina and Jerry (first introduced in Dorothy Abrona McCrae) who are unsure whether to begin a serious relationship; Gunter and Gwen, (first introduced in l0ve0ne, their lives were chronicled in The Roar of Destiny) and Dorothy and Sid who took decades to commit to each other and now are learning how to live together.

Those readers who wish to follow one couple should click on one color of squares in the interface, (an interface approach I first encountered in Cathy Marshall's work at Xerox PARC).

Those who wish to weave together all three developing relationships should click on any square in the interface. The work is multi-sequential in that the beginning is accessed at the top of the array, and the end of the array offers closure. The structure of this coda is somewhat similar to the narrative data structure I used in Wasting Time -- which over ten years ago used slowly appearing text to simulate conversation and connected columns of words to simulate parallel thought patterns. (and was published in After the Book (Perforations 3) Summer, 1992.)

Afterwards was published in the Iowa Review Web, the web publication of the Iowa Review.

Thank you for spending some time with
Dorothy Abrona McCrae!

Dorothy and Sid is copyright 2000-2003 Judy Malloy