a thesis blog

I developed my interest in narrative through my interest in reading. I think there is still a lot of merit in the notion of an author, a writer, an individual who can conjure up a narrative that leads us to an understanding—however subtle, subconscious, or overwhelming—that we did not have before reading their words.

Designers and artists are good at seeing, at looking, at interpreting the world through shape, type and form. Writers do this through words.

So I guess in short, I still believe in the creation of mediated experience through words, and also in reading those words.

I have to thank Sven Birkerts for very clearly and passionately explicating my thoughts and emotions on this subject. I agree with him nearly fundamentally. In particular I really believe that the act of reading—its slow, meditative pace—undertaking over a length of time is fundamental to the experience of narrative in book form.

To clarify. One does not “read� when being told a narrative. Such an oral communication is a different art and a different experience. I think the same holds true with cinema. One does not read film. It is akin to an oral narrative—one experiences it and thinks about it subconsciously at the time, and consciously later.

Books and texts, on the other hand, are an active creation between the words (the writer) and the reader translating them. But it is not merely the reader turning symbolic markings into verbiage, it is the reader turning words into visuals in their mind. It is the reader effortlessly matching someone else’s words with their personal experiences, melding the two and creating a world unlike no other—tailored and meaningful to the reader, but structured and formed by the writer. According to Birkerts, “Reading is fundamentally an agent of self-making�. And how can someone make themselves if the experience does not last long enough, or cut deep enough to make an impact?

It is the “deep� and durational time in this world that elucidates a narrative (see all the importances above) and really allows an individual to experience them on a significantly deep and meaningful level. One that cannot (yet) be matched by any other medium.

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Narratives aren’t entirely the utopian share-fest I’ve described before. A lot of narratives are used for less meaningful ends. Part of the reason I got out of the marketing and advertising game is because the narratives I was to tell visually were disingenuous. They weren’t the true story, they were carefully crafted stories meant to get the viewer to believe what sounded best. And often this was simply a preying-on of emotions.

A lot of advertising is like this. The Super Bowl is coming up, see there for figure 1. For figure 2, I will direct your attention to television during the months of November and December. If you need a figure 3, there’s also an election on the horizon.

We communicate all sorts of things through narrative, and one of the things narrative is so very good at is convincing us of things. We like stories, we like hearing them out to the end, and we like everything to make some sort of sense in that end. I think our brains are—in many ways—predisposed to the Disney-esqe happy ending we all strive for. In advertising, the happy ending is “buy this in order to get the happy ending�.

But because we engage so easily with narrative, and because that engagement is so deep, we have a hard time seeing that the “happy ending� isn’t always the best thing for us.

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I’m not sure exactly when I switched my language from “books� to “narratives�. I wonder if most people in society just don’t lump them together.

But narratives, I think, are fundamentally different. The dictionary widget on my computer defines narrative as: “the spoken or written account of connected events; a story�.

The Oxford English Dictionary on the U of M Library’s website defines narrative as a noun but also as an adjective that has an interesting art connotation...

NOUN: "An account of a series of events, facts, etc., given in order and with the establishing of connections between them; a narration, a story, an account"

ADJECTIVE: "Art. Representing a story through the medium of painting or similar art forms."

There are also some interesting definitions from various fields...

SOCIOLOGY: "A basic way human beings have of apprehending the world and giving it a coherence"

PHILOSOPHY: "The concept of narrative has of course great interest and importance for literary theorists, but it has also been of interest to philosophers. It has, for example, been used by Alasdair MacIntyre to express the way in which a human life is a structured, unified whole, and not simply a series of discrete events. Human actions are made intelligible though being part of a narrative."

At this point, I think any squabbles over the definition of narrative (and there seem to be plenty in the literary world) is just bickering over semantics and context.

What I think is more primary here is the profundity of narrative—what I see as its overwhelming importance in our lives. (“Our� can be read as “humanity, the human race�). I believe that narratives tell us so much about the world—its histories, its cultures and peoples. It connects us to that which we have little or no experience, whether that be places, people, things, or emotions.

Morals, ethics, lessons, information, education, and entertainment are all passed through narrative form. I think it helps us define ourselves by exposing us to that which we know, and that which we don’t. We process it, think about it and consider it in relation to ourselves while reading. And through this learning, this engaging experimentation through imagination, we come to be who we are as individuals and societies.

That being said, I keep a loose definition of narrative. I don’t even believe there needs to be words involved. A sequence of pictures, of images, or of well-defined space can tell us a story—or allow us to develop our own. Much like the adjective definition of narrative given above.

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