tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-68257679077736235172012-02-16T01:04:07.392-08:00Typo/graphic interventions in literary writingZoenoreply@blogger.comBlogger71100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6825767907773623517.post-28401312650735202892009-05-28T19:31:00.000-07:002009-05-28T20:41:40.237-07:00

Anna Gerber and Teal Trigg's excellent article 'Acrobat Reader', in Print magazine (July/August 2006) is a valuable text to start conversations about hybrid novels, and how integrating graphic devices in fiction challenges the practice of reading: do we begin to look at, rather than read, these books? And ask whether reading is more important than looking:

Zoenoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6825767907773623517.post-84096869906906099672007-09-02T05:35:00.000-07:002008-05-14T20:22:55.203-07:00

Hugo Cabret has been beautifully and visually connected to its subject – early French cinema. Black and white throughout, 300 out of 525 pages are double-page pencil illustrations across spreads (a canvas reminiscent of the cinema screen). These are in sequence, and are read as a flick-book, advancing the action to a point where text is needed – when, for example, the reader needs to know what

greghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04077566603593322199noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6825767907773623517.post-7785281950670057942007-08-12T07:07:00.000-07:002008-05-14T20:22:17.757-07:00

In The Frankenstein Dairies, Mary Shelley’s original story has been abridged, annotated and re-presented in a different form, with graphic elements given at least as much room as the text. So, unlike the other novels discussed so far in this blog, the visual devices in this book were not conceived at the time the story was written.The point of this new form becomes clear at the outset. The ‘

greghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04077566603593322199noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6825767907773623517.post-84951622536209012312007-07-23T21:19:00.000-07:002008-05-14T20:18:07.752-07:00

Jonathan Safran Foer’s second novel, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, is composed by three narrative voices: Oskar Schell, a precocious but fragile 9-year-old whose father is killed in the September 11 World Trade Centre attack; Oskar’s adoring Grandmother, who lives across the road, and; Oskar’s mute Grandfather, who abandoned his wife when she was pregnant with Oskar’s father. The different

Zoenoreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6825767907773623517.post-90433275054949673002007-07-12T22:51:00.000-07:002008-05-14T20:16:57.746-07:00

The title of Steven Hall’s much hyped debut novel, The Raw Shark Texts, is a play on the Rorschach Test – appropriate for a thriller about an amnesic man that openly embraces its many allusions to other fiction. The original UK edition sports a Post-it note quote from Mark Haddon (The Curious Incident of the Dog and the Nighttime) stuck to the title page, describing the book as: "The bastard

Zoenoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6825767907773623517.post-3466231547117638442007-07-04T09:44:00.000-07:002008-05-14T20:16:10.997-07:00

Poor things, published in 1992, won Alasdair Gray the Whitbread Novel Award and the Guardian Fiction Prize. Simultaneously gothic fantasy, social commentary, pastiche and satire, the book is also a beautiful object, filled with the author’s illustrations and visual devices. As Newsweek put it: ‘A master of pastiche and collage in words and pictures, Gray has found a way to perfectly evoke a

greghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04077566603593322199noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6825767907773623517.post-48132149669765113912007-05-12T19:27:00.000-07:002007-05-21T20:20:02.527-07:00

Novelists use a bigger toolkit these days. The use of visual devices such as photos, maps, quirky type-setting, experimental layout and printed ephemera has given rise to a new narrative style. This is used sometimes to show readers what characters are seeing; sometimes to expand upon or to subvert the written text; but always to further immerse readers in the story.This new type of book occupies

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