Experiments in Literature
In two months time our digital adaptation of John Buchan’s The Thirty Nine Steps will be released, and we’re waiting with bated breath to find out what everyone thinks of our interactive twist on literature. Of course, we’re not alone in our desire to break some of the rules and present the notion of story in a new way…
Jonathan Sfran Foer’s The Tree of Code
So, while being in no means comprehensive list, we wanted to share with you a few of our favourite anarchic takes on storytelling. In no particular order (and with Wiki links):
1) Daniel Z. Danielewski’s House of Leaves (2000)
Incredible depth, multilayered storytelling, constantly surprising, amzing use of text-layout and genuinely terrifying
2) B.S. Johnson’s The Unfortunates (1969)
A book in a box… non-linear and genius. From the start we’re told there is no intended structure. A wonderful thing to own if you can get one
3) Max Frisch’s Man in the Holocene (1979)
Superb premise and a brilliant use of reprints within the text, which explores the notion of memory and the limits of man
4) Jonathan Sfran Foer’s The Tree of Codes (2010)
A new story literally carved out of an existing one. A work of literature and a physical work of art
5) Italo Calvino’s If on a Winter’s Night a Traveller (1979)
Challenges the very nature of reading, and will stick with you for a long, long time
If you haven’t had the pleasure to read/experience any of the above, we highly recommend it! And, as ever, we’d love to hear from you about anything that should be put on our radar.
Author: Simon Meek
Try Milorad Pavich’s fairy-tale like Dictionary of the Khazars. It purports to be 3 conflicting attempts to recreate a lost encyclopaedia. I think you’d like it.
And this list wouldn’t be complete without The Raw Shark Texts (Steven Hall). As a glib comparison, it is to House of Leaves as the Da Vinci Code is to Foucault’s Pendulum. Though that’s unfair: RST is shorter, funnier, & easier to read; good holiday-book material. But it’s also brilliantly inventive in it’s own way, and it contains – as it had to really – a flipbook section of a shark attack.