Good question- my immediate response to this question would be no. The narrative is a solid, old form and there are no more considerable directions to take it. Of course, this was my immediate response and these types of responses are usually not well thought out. After reading “Multivariant Narratives” by Marie-Laure Ryan, I have changed my mind. The Digital Age has offered various new ways to consider the narrative, especially when it comes to reading hypertexts. One of the points that Ryan makes often is that the multivariant narrative does not necessarily have a direct course. When one is reading a typical codex book, for example, Moby Dick (why Moby-Dick, you might say, everyone hates that book! No, actually, they don’t and I’m an early Americanist so don’t make fun of Melville). So say a disgruntled high school student is reading Moby Dick, they only have one direction to go in. They start at the beginning of the book and finish it until the end (unless they take a short detour through sparknotes- but that is a different story!). There is nothing to take them on an alternate path and Melville did not provide his reader with any alternative endings. With hypertexts, however, there are various ways a reader can experience the narrative- and as Laure points out, most people never finish a narrative when they are reading a hypertext because it is almost impossible to visit all the paths involved. A good example of this is the hypertext by Shelly Jackson titled “My Body.” Finding all the paths to read the whole story takes a lot of time and effort by the reader, and after a few “clicks” most will finish when they are satisfied with what they have read. This doesn’t happen all too often when reading a typical codex narrative.
Laure also points out that the digital world can add sound to the narrative. Old media narratives, also known as books do have pictures and images, but never has sound been available (unless you are talking about one of those picture books for toddlers that has the panel of noises to accompany the text on the side. Always loved those things as a kid- still like them today when I play with my nephews.) Laure ends her essay with this really excellent point:
“The textual phenomena described in this chapter represent two extremes on the cultural spectrum. While computer games have taken popular culture by storm, generating a billion-dollar industry that rivals Hollywood and Disneyland, hypertext is an arcane academic genre read mostly by theorists and prospective authors. What remains to be conquered for digital textuality is the territory that lies between the stereotyped narrative scripts of popular culture and the militant anti-narrativity of so many experimental texts: a territory where narrative form is neither frozen nor ostracized, but recognized as an endlessly productive source of knowledge and aesthetic experiences” (no page number- this is digital, baby!).
If the experimental text, or the multivariant narrative offers an “endlessly productive source of knowledge and aesthetic” than how do we make it mainstream? Should it be mainstream, and if it does, how will it change the way that people read? How will Barnes and Nobles handle it? I think that these are larger questions about the future of digital texts, digital pedagogy, and teaching digital English that need to be thought about and discussed more often.
*NOTE*: I wanted to touch upon “How the Computer Works” by Andrea Laue in this blog post because I think these pieces work in a nice dialogue with each other. However, I have a horrible sore throat (and although there are no excuses in Ph.D. school, my head feels like it is about to explode. Quite a messy affair, I would think). I will probably relate a little of what I thought about Laue’s piece in Thursday’s post instead.