Class Notes: Introduction To Narrative

Chapter 9: Adaptation Across Media

"Adapters, in other words, if they are at all good, are raiders; they don't copy, they steal what they want and leave the rest." The Cambridge Introduction to Narrative, p. 112.

"For a critic, then, to judge a work on the basis of its faithfulness to the original, it is important to determine whether faithfulness was in fact the goal. Otherwise, one should judge on other grounds." Id., p. 113.

When it comes to books, I love adaptations! I love new tellings of fairy tales or classics. I love when the authors get all creative on favorite literary characters. (Well, usually I do.) Even if it's not done particularly well I tend to give the author a little credit for the courage to try. Then, when it comes to movies, I find I tend to not like it when it doesn't stick to the book. I hold them to different standards. And, now that it has been brought to my attention, I have decided that it is stupid for me to do that. It's time for me to watch movies with the same open mind with which I read books. And I think sometime in the future I need to write about some of my favorite book adaptations. I'm putting that on my "ideas" list!!

Class Notes: Introduction To Narrative

Chapter 8: Three Ways To Interpret Narrative

"To tell a story is to try to understand it." The Cambridge Introduction to Narrative, p. 109.

Author H. Porter Abbott states that there are many ways to interpret narrative, but most of them stem from "one of three fundamentally distinct approaches." (p. 100) They are:

Intentional Reading: The ideas and judgments that we infer from the narrative are understood to be in keeping with a sensibility that intended these effects. For example, the interpretation is drawn from the views of the "implied author", who is not be assumed to be the actual author of the work.

Symptomatic Reading: Interpreting a text as symptomatic of the author's unconscious or unacknowledged state of mind, or of unacknowledged cultural conditions. Deconstructionism is an example of this method.

Adaptive Reading: Adaptive readings range from interpretations freed from concerns for overreading or underreading to fresh adaptations of the story either in the same medium or in a different one, such as film adaptions of a novel. The latter example then leads us to a new version of a previously posed question: At what point does an interpretation cease being an "adaptation" and become an altogether different story?

I have to tell you, I'm really glad I won't be tested on all of this later. I get to enjoy rhetorical questions and let them hang around the periphery of my brain while I read, occasionally conjuring up other rhetorical questions such as: Is Chuck Palahniuk himself a distraught libertine (symptomatic) or is it just his implied authors (intentional)?

Class Notes: Introduction To Narrative

Chapter Six: Narration

This chapter discussed some of the basics of narrator and point of view. Here are a few of my notes regarding definitions that I would like to keep in mind as I study:

About narrative style:

Direct Discourse -- Citing a character's own words as, for example, in quoted conversation.
Indirect Discourse -- Speech or thinking of a character rendered in the narrator's words.

About the narrator specifically:

Voice -- Who we "hear" doing the narration.
Focalization (aka Point of View) -- The lens through which we see characters and events in the narrative.
Distance -- The narrator's degree of involvement in the story he or she tells.
Reliability -- To what extent can we rely on the narrator to give us an accurate rendering of the facts?

The discussion of "distance" put me in mind of the Hemingway novels I have read. I'm beginning to think that one of the things I found so odd about his writing was that the narrators were, in fact, so emotionally distant from the events of the stories. Everything, no matter how sad or happy or horrible, was recounted as if the narrator were reporting there was a Tuesday last week. Hmmmm. Something to keep in the back of my mind when I read more of his work.


Chapter Seven: Interpreting Narrative

"As readers, we exercise a power over narrative text that is arguably as great as their power over us." The Cambridge Introduction to Narrative, p. 86.

Finally we begin actual interpretation! This is the part I was really looking forward to! The author walked me through an interpretation of one of Hemingway's short stories, "Now I Lay Me". (Interesting coincidence, considering my thought during the previous chapter.) As he went through the identification of motifs and themes in reaching his conclusion regarding how the main character's war injury fits with his childhood memory of his mother burning his father's collection of Indian artifacts, I began to feel totally inadequate to the task of ever doing this kind of thing for myself. I'm always in awe of how these people can draw parallels between things that look completely random and unrelated to me. (And I must add here that this was not one of those instances where you feel like the analyst was really reaching for meaning. Abbott's connections made a lot of sense once they were pointed out to me.) But that's what I'm doing all this reading for, right? To learn how to think like this, to learn to be more analytical. I have a long way to go, but, to use an already overused cliche, it's not about the destination, it's about the journey.

Class Notes: Introduction To Narrative

Chapter 5: Closure

"With regard to expectations, then, there appear to be two imperfectly balanced needs: on the one hand to see them fulfilled, on the other to see them violated." The Cambridge Introduction to Narrative, p. 59.

That statement is so true! We don't want our read to be too predictable, but we have a certain set of "rules" in our heads and if the narrative doesn't follow those rules, we can get a little uncomfortable. For instance, I read a book a few years ago in which the heroine of the story is murdered by the serial killer in the end. That was weird. On the other hand, some of the best books are unforgettable precisely because they violated our rules.

When we're engaged in a narrative, be it in the form of a book, movie, or something else, what drives us to continue to pay attention are expectations and questions. We want expectations resolved in one form or another, and we want questions answered. In short, we want closure. But what if the narrative doesn't provide that closure? What if the end is ambiguous? What if questions are still lingering? Does that bother you? Or do you enjoy spending time pondering the unknown?

Class Notes: Introduction To Narrative

Chapter Three: The Borders of Narrative

This chapter contained some definitions that I thought would be fun to share with all of you. These aren't anything wildly new, but things I encounter often when I read and, as usual, had never considered whether or not they actually had a name. I've been taking my reading for granted again! :-) Most of this chapter dealt with narratives which contain a story, but there are other stories within them. Sometimes these are obvious, and sometimes they are just small, unobtrusive fragments.

Framing Narrative: An embracing narrative acting as a framework within which a multitude of tales are told. The Canterbury Tales and A Thousand and One Nights are examples.

Embedded Narrative: The narrative within a narrative. It is also not uncommon to find embedded narratives within embedded narratives. Thinking about recent books I've read, it occurred to me that The Historian had a lot of this. There was the larger story arc, then all the letters written by the researchers telling their stories, and the stories in the letters of the people the researchers were talking to.

Paratexts: Tangential material that may inflect our experience of the narrative, sometimes subtly, sometimes deeply. These would include book jacket blurbs, book reviews, interviews with the author, essays, etc. All of these have the potential to affect our view of what we are reading, and our reading experience may have been different had we not had exposure to a particular paratext.

Hypertext Narrative: That subset of electronic narrative that makes use of the hypertext linking function to allow readers to shift instantaneously to other virtual spaces in which almost anything can be found.

That last one was particularly interesting. I had never considered hypertext linking as a fictional narrative device potentially allowing the reader to experience a story in multiple variations. Did you ever read any of those "Choose Your Own Ending" books? This is like the ultimate version of that! A talented author could have a field day! I've never looked for a book purposely written in that form, but they're out there somewhere. Have any of you ever seen or read one?

Class Notes: Introduction To Narrative

Chapter Two: Defining Narrative

"The difference between events and their representation is the difference between story (the event or sequence of events) and narrative discourse (how the story is conveyed)." The Cambridge Introduction to Narrative, p. 15

There was so much great stuff in this chapter that it's difficult to pick one or two highlights to share! I'll go first with the observation that "story" always moves forward in time regardless of the manner in which the narrative discourse presents it. The book used to exemplify this was one that I have read and loved, Time's Arrow by Martin Amis. (You can read my thoughts on it here.) Although the book is narrated completely in reverse time, it is dependent upon the reader's ability to reconstruct the forward movement of "story" to have its full effect. I remember clearly how alternately funny and horrifying it was. That technique was supremely powerful in that novel, and I don't think the story would have been nearly as impactful without it.

The second point I'd like to highlight is actually a question. What makes a story identifiable as the story it is? The author never actually answers that question, but uses it to feed our analytic skills. For example, what do we mean when we say, "It's a Cinderella story"? What are the events that make it a Cinderella story? At what point does it stop being Cinderella and become something else? What is it that distinguishes the actual Cinderella from "Cinderella stories"?

From here he goes into a discussion of constituent events (events necessary for the story to be the story it is) and supplementary events (events that could be removed and the story will still be reconizable as the story that it is). Because supplementary events are not necessary to move the story forward, asking yourself why they were included assists in interpreting the narrative.

Is your head spinning yet? In case it's not, here's another question that has scholars scratching their heads: Does a story exist before it is told? In other words, is a narrative a "presentation" that brings the story into existence, or is it a "representation" of something that already exists?

I am loving this book! It's shedding a whole new light on an activity I have always taken for granted. (Must be all those lightbulbs still going off over my head with every page I read.) I am thinking I'm eventually going to need to pick up The Cambridge Companion to Narrative. This is all just too much fun!!

Class Notes: Writing About Literature

I spent my early afternoon with Writing About Literature: Step by Step by Pat McKeague. The first chapter is titled "The Elements of Literature", so I probably don't need to tell you I spent some time with a worksheet writing definitions. :-) She also discussed mental operations we engage in when we think and learn (Application, Analysis, Synthesis, Evaluation and Problem Solving), and ways to practice those skills while reading (keeping a journal, making lists of phrases, formulating your own questions, concept mapping, etc.). I took pages of notes! I can feel my brain cells multiplying already!

The information I thought would be the most fun to share was the list of approaches to analyzing literature. "Meaning is one of the primary reasons for reading literature. It helps us clarify our own values and attitudes toward life." (p. 2) In searching for meaning in our reading, we tend to approach it in one of the following ways:

Historical Approach -- Seeing a work as a product of a certain period in history.
Societal Approach -- Seeing a work as a product of a certain set of social standards and conventions.
Biographical Approach -- Seeing a work as the product of the writer's personal attitudes, conflicts or concerns.
Psychological Approach -- Analyzing the motivation of the characters or the author by applying specific psychological theories.
Archetypal Approach -- Analyzing literature by noting the recurrence of certain types of characters, situations or symbols that appeal to our unconscious mind in an instinctive and intuitive way.

Seeing a list set out that way drove home the point that a single piece of literature can be seen many different ways, some more effective than others with regard to a specific work. Also, some approaches are simply more interesting to individual readers, which can effect his or her enjoyment. I know if I go into a read with the wrong attitude or specific ideas of what I want to get out of it, I tend to be disappointed. I'm trying to teach myself to open each new read with a blank slate -- tabula rasa, so to speak. It's hard to do when we have so many preconceived notions about books we've been looking forward to -- or avoiding!

Is there an approach on the list you consciously find yourself usually adopting when you read? Is there a book you didn't enjoy that you may have found more interesting if you had approached it differently?

Class Notes: Introduction To Narrative

It looks like people want to read the composition assignments when I get to them, so post them I will! I'm excited people are interested, but it also makes me nervous. What if you hate them? It will be good to conquer that fear, right? Thanks in advance for helping. :-) I don't know when I will get to the first one, but when I do I will name the posts in a manner that readers will be able to tell what it is. Most likely something clever like "Composition". (I crack me up!)

This, however, is the first "Class Notes" post in which I will share all the fun things I learn while I read my textbooks. I've only taken two college literature classes in my life and those were many years ago. Much of what I'm reading in these texts are things I either never knew or never really thought about. I'm surprised I'm not keeping people awake with all the light bulbs going off over my head!

The chapter I read last night was "Narrative and Life" from The Cambridge Introduction to Narrative. In the book, "Narrative" is defined as "the principal way in which our species organizes its understanding of time." (p. 3) "Narrative time" differs from "clock time" in that clock time relates only to itself and is marked off in regular intervals, be it seconds, hours, days, moons or seasons, etc. Narrative time relates to events or incidents and is not necessarily any time at all.

Those definitions got me thinking about Anne Rice. I get lost in her writing sometimes because she'll spend five pages during which time someone will have walked a city block, then two sentences later a year has passed. That's not a complaint about Anne Rice. It's just an example of the fluidity of narrative time in the hands of an author and the power to mold time to his or her desires. Very cool!

The other interesting bit I had never considered before was how we tend to look for narrative in nearly everything in our lives, consciously or unconsciously. We see a sneaker laying in the middle of the road and wonder how it got there. We look at a painting or a photograph and we create narratives to explain what we're looking at. The more difficult it is for our minds to explain, the more impact the image tends to have. I especially liked one of the examples he used. This is "Dr. Syn" by Andrew Wyeth:


I'll bet some interesting narratives popped into your head to explain that one! What are some of the things you see that you find yourself creating stories around?

While you consider that, I'm going back to my texts to find more light bulb moments. See you tomorrow for more Class Notes!