narrative beginnings

In this article I relate Gérard Genette’s paratext theory Paratexts: Thresholds of Interpretation (1997) that was originally published in French as Seuils in 1987 to theories that relate to what presumably constitutes narrative beginnings (Kellman; Richardson; Rabinowitz). Genette’s theory considers different liminal devices as that which “guide a reader’s reading” such as for example a book cover. Among other’s, I explore reader comments that reflect on their reading experience of book covers expressed in social media environments such as goodreads.com and the blogosphere. I propose that the book cover potentially foreshadows it’s content proleptically (Genette) and in a centripetal (McCracken) notion draws to a book’s content. Two examplary “openings” as thresholds to a narrative are considered: the book cover of the paper-based publication Borgerligt tusmørke by Simon Fruelund and Voyage into the Unkown (Roderick Coover), a work of literature published in programmable media. Based on what Anette Retsch identifies as graphostylistic elements that signal a text’s beginning, the latter is choosen based on it’s graphostylistic elements presented on the opening screen to the work. Opening screens to works of electronic literature which precede a work function as book covers that too provide paratextual elements from which a reader’s reading as envisoned by Genette is guided literally by way of navigation – straight into a narrative’s beginning.

Source: author's abstract

This study relates to Gérard Genette’s book-based theory on paratexts published with Seuils in ’87 and proposes to adapt it to literature in programmable media. Electronic literature often is experienced and in theory discussed as “works without end”. An article by Yellowlees Douglas, author of The End of Books – or. Books without End (2001) investigates the reading experience of interactive narratives and tellingly asks: “How Do I Stop This Thing?” (1994). Similar to the nature of endings, fixed beginnings in turn often are not a given in electronic literature: Some works randomly generate beginnings according to programmed algorithms such as in ingen elge på vejen den dag http://www.loveis-in-the-air.dk/digidrama/ (Sonja Thomsen) in which the works development is dependent on the weekday it is accessed at. Other works such as hypertexts offer readers a choice of links to choose from to begin a reading (e.g. Twelve Blueby Michael Joyce). In a sense, there are often non-beginnings and non-endings that readers encounter in a number of e-lit works. In this presentation I paraphrase Douglas and ask: how do I begin "this thing"? I propose how narrative beginnings in electronic literature can be approached paratextually - by reading at the threshold: the opening pages to works of electronic literature.