Night Film by Marisha Pessl

Marisha Pessl (*October 26, 1977) is an American novelist, who started working as a financial consultant and just wrote in her free time. Her first novel “Special Topics in Calamity Physics”, published in 2006, almost exclusively got good reviews and criticism (especially in US-American literature criticism). Her second novel “Night Film” (2013) features some interesting structural peculiarities.
     The novel is a mystery thriller and as well as her first novel, a New York Times bestseller. It is about the young Ashley Cordover (24), who was found dead in a not working elevator in Manhattan warehouse. Her dead was ruled a suicide. Her father is the cult-horror-film director Stanislas Cordova, who hasn’t been seen in public for 30 years. He is a mysterious man who is despised by many people because of his harrowing movies. The Journalist Scott McGrath wants to investigate the death of Ashley Cordova with the help of two acquaintances of Ashley, Nora and Hopper, because he beliefs that there is lying more behind her death and Stanislas Cordova. McGrath’s life took a turn for the worse during his first researches about Cordova, this time he could lose his mind.
     The structural peculiarities of this book are its connections to the material McGrath is researching in and its interactivity with the reader. On one hand this book offers next to the normal text some experts and details of the things the figures in the book are looking at. These are excerpts of telephone books, letters, text message-chats, photos or magazines. By these little images, the reader can have a look at the material by his- or herself. Moreover, Pessl included some screenshots of author created web pages. There are many pages of this book which just contain web pages, belonging to the story (for example online blogs or a web page of Cordova votaries), which Pessl invented all by herself. On the other hand, Pessl published an app, the “Night Film Decoder” app belonging to this book  On some pages the reader can find an image of a bird, which Pessl calls Ester eggs. If the reader scans these images with the Night Film Decoder app, it unlocks additional texts, PDFs, videos and audio files by which the reader can get deeper insights into the story.
     Some reviews of the connection of this book and the app claim the interactivity as a distraction. They state that the reading experience would be interrupted too often and that the app and the technical device, the mobile telephone, lead the reader to lacking of concentration. Supporter however state that the huge amount of information keeps the reader interested, that the search of these Easter eggs is entertaining and that this interactivity intensifies the reading experience instead of distracting it. Pessl explained, that she mentioned the app at the end of the novel, because she wants the reader to read though the novel without getting interrupted and use the app afterwards to have a closer look at some details. 

S. Lamouchi

Further Reading to 'A Visit From the Goon Squad' and 'Black Box'

Ewald, Morgan. "Dirtied Hands: A Look at Time and Change in A Visit From the Goon Squad." (2013).
     In this article Ewald investigates the time and change in the novel ‚A Visit From the Goon Squad‘ by Jennifer Egan. The author aims to outline how the passing of time is depicted in the work of Egan and how this connects to the changes in the American society. The paper focuses on the meaning of technology in the novel and how the characters view the advancing of technology. The article is useful to gain further insights into the many connections of Egan’s novel to the ongoing changes concerning time and technology that have happened in America during the recent years and those that might be still to come.

Kedaitis, Kirstyn. "Somewhere Over the Rainbow: The Significance of Color in A Visit From the Goon Squad." Performance. millikin. edu.
     In her article Kedaitis outlines the meaning and importance of the color yellow in Jennifer Egan’s novel ‘Visit From a Goon Squad”. According to the author Egan uses colors to document the maturity of her characters. The paper suggests that yellow represents youth and nostalgia and darker colors symbolize the accepting of the past and moving on. Additionally, Kedaitis proposes the idea that some of the characters are indirectly characterized by their hair color. The article offers new ways of reading and interpreting certain descriptions and encourages the reader to read between the lines for a deeper meaning.

Bao-yu, N. I. E. "Exploring image culture through narrative: A study on Jennifer Egan’s Twitter fiction black box." Journal of Literature and Art Studies 5.10 (2015): 820-829.
     This article discusses the possibilities of the narrative in Jennifer Egan’s Twitter novel ‘Black Box’. The author classifies the novel as a serial “new media narrative”. However, he points out that Egan did not compose ‘Black Box’ as a real time Twitter narrative. Bao-yo stresses that the novel achieves an immediate reading experience by allowing the reader to sense the same feelings as the protagonist. In the article the different functions and possibilities of Twitter are laid out in detail what enables the reader an in depth understanding of the novel ‘Black Box’.

J. Ost

Adam Hammond - Literature in the Digital Age: an Introduction

Hammond, Adam. Literature in the Digital Age: an Introduction. New York, NY: Cambridge U Press, 2016.

Adam Hammonds Literature in the Digital Age is, as the title of the work already states, an introduction to the topic of digital literature. Beginning with a discussion of Marshall McLuhan’s argument that the medium is the message as well as Nicholas Carr’s Atlantic cover story Is Google Making Us Stupid?, the book provides the reader with two arguments which provide a good basis for discussion. McLuhan argues that the way in which something is presented is more important than the actual information being delivered, indicating that an e-book carries a very different message to a print book. Carr uses this statement as a basis for his article, arguing that the digital medium is distracting us from reading itself. He indicates that text presented in a digital format can often be distracting and is influencing the concentration we have on texts, to a negative standard. This chapter is a great example of digital reading itself as Hammond presents a continuous string of information without ever fully analysing one thought. He moves from McLuhan, to Carr and then quickly moves onto Clay Shirky, a reader of the Atlantic who disagrees with Carr’s arguments. Through this the reader is subjected to a large range of initial arguments and thoughts while indirectly being presented with what Carr refers to as superficial reading. 

     The second part of the book, titled Digitalization, continues thoughts from Part I, talking about the shift from print medium to digital literature and the advantages as well as disadvantages that come with it. Hammond argues that while the transfer from print to digital makes the text lose all the physical properties of a book, such as the feel of the pages or the smell of paper, turning a book into a digital medium means greater availability, as the text can be spread more easily and more cheaply than it could be in a physical format. Adding to this he lists a big social issue that arises with the print medium, stating that the physical book or text is always limited to certain social groups. Where a digital text can be accessed by nearly anyone for free, a library will often be limited to certain groups of people such as university students or members.

     The reader is then introduced to one of the issues that come with the transfer of text to the digital medium with the discussion of the digital libraries Project Gutenberg, JSTOR and Google Books.  Legal issues arose due to the copyright laws in certain countries, as these often would not allow the digitalization and free publication of texts. Once again this allows the reader to see both arguments for and against the digital text. Hammond then gives further tools for analysis introducing elements such as the “Type-Token Ration” which is the number of unique words in a text divided by the total number of words. This is used in order to measure lexical diversity and is presented here as one of the tools used in order to better understand texts, the way they appeal to the reader and possibly even in order to indicate their complexity.

     The final part of the book, Born Digital, returns to social analysis as well as discussing the impact digital literature and hypertexts have on the print medium and the way literature is understood. This final chapter serves as a springboard for the reader as Hammond introduces the reader to a large amount of ideas or discussion points which are extremely useful when digital literature is analysed. For example, a large discussion on video games is featured, including presentations of The Stanley Parable or Gone Home and a discussion if video games can be considered as literature. While Hammond provides his own conclusion, stating that while carrying literary elements, video games still have large differences to other forms of literature, he is very brief, allowing the readers to form their own thoughts and come up with their own conclusion. In summary Literature in the Digital Age is essential when studying digital literature and hypertexts as it provides not only an introduction to the subject but presents the reader with food for thought, giving inspiration and asking important questions which are left partially open in order for the reader to be able to answer for themselves. 

J. Petri

Program

Symposium -  21.01.2017

10:30     Arrival – Coffee

11:00     Welcome - Bettina Soller 

11:10     Presentation - "Social Media Fiction: Designing Narrativity on Social Media” by Simona Venditti - Ph.D. candidate in Design at Politecnico di Milano.

11:40     Coffee Break

11:50     Interview  with  Christiane Frohmann - Orbanism, Frohmann Verlag

12:30     Lunch

14:00    Experiment - "Authorship and Moral Rights in The Beginner's Guide - A Live Let's Play" by Jens Bonk-Wiltfang - Research Assistant, American Studies

14:40    Coffee Break

15:00  Presentation - "Reading Marisha Pessl's Night Film: A Reconsideration of Intermedial Gaps"   Bogna Kazur - Ph.D. candidate at the University of Göttingen

Please find the link to our flyer below

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B9lxS1cWdOqVNHZqak40QWJ4MFE/view?usp=sharing

The Garden of Forking Paths by Jorge Luis Borges

The short story The Garden of Forking Paths was written by Jorge Luis Borges. The author was born in Argentina in 1899 and a key figure in Spanish-language literature. Most of his works are rather short and were published in story collections. Reoccurring themes in his works are eternity, time, books, reality and illusion.
     The short story The Garden of Forking Paths was published first in 1941. However, the plot of the story is set in 1916. Doctor Yu Tsun, the main character, is a spy for the German Empire who lives in the United Kingdom during World War I. Tsun is pursued by an MI5 agent called Captain Richard Madden. In order to convey an important message to his German handlers he meets his old friend Doctor Stephen Albert. When walking to his house Tsun reflects on his great ancestor Ts'ui Pên. While his talk with Albert Tsun realizes that the unfinished notes that Ts'ui Pên left before his death are actually the intricate labyrinth that he wanted to create. These notes are his attempt to describe a world where all possible outcomes of an event occur simultaneously. Following this realization Tsun kills Albert in order to pass on his important message to his handlers.
     The vision of the “forking paths” that are described by Borges in his text has been cited as inspiration within the field of hypertext fiction. Further parallels can be drawn to the internet. In this new medium the user has unlimited choices by using links and hyperlinks as described in the text by the example of the story fragments that form a labyrinth. 

     To read the full short story follow this link.

J. Ost

"Inhabiting House of Leaves" by N. Katherine Hayles

N. Katherine Hayles' text "Inhabiting House of Leaves", published in her book Writing Machines in  2002 is an analysis of Danielewski's novel House of Leaves. Hayles interprets the novel with regard to mediation and remediation techniques and the book´s materiality.
     According to Hayles, the novel can be considered a physical artifact which incorporates all kinds of different media (film, video, photography, tattoos, handwriting etc.), as well as various different inscription surfaces. At the same time a constant process of remediation is taking place. The incorporation of all these different kinds of media in one print novel makes the novel unique, opening up questions about the format of the novel being reinvented or leading to something new.
Alongside the remediation techniques, Hayles interprets the novel as a mediation plot which is highly self-aware of its materiality. The subjects in the plot are constantly mediated and mediation brings the characters into being through film, footnotes, critique and various other inscription devices. Hayles henceforth calls the narrator of the novel a remediated narrator making inscription technologies visible and making the reader conscious of their various effects.  
     All these processes of mediation and remediation lead to the effect that the novel takes the shape of a labyrinth mirroring the house in The Navidson Record. The various alternative paths and multiple layers of the novel are mirroring the style of a labyrinth, which are impossible to bring into a coherent order. The materiality of the book is constructed through the interlinking of words, nonverbal marks and physical properties.
     All in all, the novel positions itself through its techniques of remediation in the digital era. Hayles describes the novel as a physical artifact which incorporates messages which are transformed through mediation and remediation and in which technology constructs the novel as a material artifact.    
     Additionally, in her text Hayles mentions a shared performance of Danielewski and his sister, who performs under the name Poe, in which the singer incorporates a reading of her brother into the performance of one of her songs. Indeed, this concept was further realized in a music video of the same song.

 

Hey Pretty by Poe 

 

Hayles, N. Katherine. Writing Machines. "Inhabiting House of Leaves." 108-132. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2002.


M. Barbod

"The Right Sort" by David Mitchell

 The short story The Right Sort, written by David Stephen Mitchell - author of the famous novel Cloud Atlas - was posted to Twitter in a course of seven days. The story, which consists of over 280 Tweets, generated some excitement when it first started out. However, later Tweets received fewer and fewer Retweets and Likes. The idea for the project had come from Mitchell's publisher and served as means to generate excitement about Mitchell's forthcoming novel The Bone Clocks. Nevertheless, Mitchell turned the short story into a novel of its own called Slade House, a year after publishing it on Twitter.

     In an interview with The Guardian, Mitchell described reading a story on Twitter as “looking through a narrow window from a train speeding through a landscape full of tunnels and bands of light and dark.“ He refers to the feeling the reader develops when waiting 24 hours for the story to continue. The reader is left in the dark until the next piece of t he story comes online and you finally know what happens next. To read the full interview follow this link. 

     Furthermore, The Guardian published the collection of Tweets that form the short story on their website. Unlike the representation of Black Box on the web page of The New Yorker, the Tweets are marked as such and function as hyperlinks to the Twitter platform. However, the sequence of Tweets is occasionally interrupted by images added by the editor of the site. The captions of these images pose questions like "Could this be Slade Alley?..." and hereby open up another dialogue: one between the editor and the visitor of the page. 

David Mitchell on Twitter: promotion, network, dialogue

Hyperlinks next to the image invite the reader to share, pin or re-post the article, using the image as a cover photo, on platforms such as Facebook, Pinterest or Twitter. Thereby the added photos become showpieces of Mitchell's short story provided by the editor of the page.

     Ian Crouch also addresses the matter of The Right Sort in his article The Great American Twitter Novel. Crouch separates Mitchell's story from other narratives published on Twitter, remarking that the "best way to read the story was, ultimately, to wait until the whole thing was published." The short story was not designed to be published on Twitter, not intended for its format, but means of promotion of another novel. Mitchell has been quite upfront about the matter. Although Mitchell has not designed this short story for Twitter, his Twitter appearance is not limited to the promotion of new works. He engages with other public figures and fans alike. Indeed, the majority of Mitchell's posts are responses to posts by fans. The author uses the platform to be in direct dialogue with his readership although he does not usually publish his works on the page. To read Crouch's full article please follow this link. 

V. Rust and S. Plum