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history of bombing
I'm currently reading Sven Lindqvist's History of Bombing.
The subject matter is obviously relevant, but it is the book's form that fascinates me the most. The book is organized into 399 fragments, organized roughly chronologically, but within that chronology, several different narrative threads exist: you are not intended to read the book in a straight-through linear fashion, but rather to jump from fragment to fragment, depending on which narrative chain you are following. (The book opens with twenty-two starting points, which you can choose from freely.)
The book functions like a more structured version of Cortazar's Hopscotch. Or, more generally, it works as another good example of "ergodic literature," where "nontrivial effort is required to allow the reader to traverse the text," a category which also applies to a great deal of electronic writing. It not entirely unlikely that part of the reason I respond so favorably to the idea of separate narratives within a chronological superstructure is because it is similar to my own project, Imaginary Year.
Lindqvist describes his book as "a labyrinth with twenty-two entrances and no exit."
Labels: book_commentary, electronic_literature, writing |
Monday, March 25, 2002
12:40 PM
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