I’ve spent some time in the think tank

Lately, I’ve been doing a whole lot of thinking on my research topic: Technology and its impact on the contemporary novel.  The Keep is a pretty obvious choice for this one, seeing as it forced me to really consider the role of technology in both the novel and society.  The more I thought about it, the more connections I drew with personal experience and my reading history because let’s face it; almost everyone has a cell phone and Internet access.  In other words, unless you’re down with the idea of a commune in the woods somewhere, technology is pretty much inescapable.  As a result, it exerts an influence (probably more profound than we even realize) on everyone’s lives.  Consider what your life would be like without any of the products you’ve ordered online or without any of the lightning fast knowledge you’ve gained via Google and Wikipedia, let alone the rest of the web.  Scary, right?

 

As I contemplated the role of technology and gadgetry in other novels I’ve read, Jerzy Kosinski’s Being There and Mark Z. Danielewski’s House of Leaves pop into mind.  Although they are both very different books (besides the 700+ page difference in length) both Kosinski and Danielewski incorporate the idea of technology into the form and content of the novel.  Being There is the story of a man who has grown up isolated in a house and for all purposes, does not exist as a member of society.  He does nothing but watch TV and garden and has no birth certificate, driver’s license, or any real interaction with the outside world except for his television.  Eventually, he ends up being integrated into the real world and becomes popular for his insular world view and proceeds to be filmed on TV, giving him an unreal sense of being one of those magical beings whom he has always watched.  It’s a pretty interesting book and it’s just a little over 100 pages, so it’s a really quick read.  House of Leaves is an out of control post-modern mega-text that incorporates at least four frames of reference, hundreds of outside sources both real and imagined, and enough metafictional elements to make Jennifer Egan puke.  While not focused directly on technology as a theme, Danielewski’s play with typeset, the orientation of text on the page, and the inclusion of visuals and obscenely long appendices and lists places it firmly in the 21^st century. 

 

What all three of these novels have in common is a departure from the standard form and content of say, a narrative along the lines of Madame Bovary.  Personally, I’m much more interested in contemporary literature because I want to see the result of modern minds at work, as strange and pointless as it can often end up being.  I think my big question is whether the inclusion/imitation of technological mediums for narrative will carry over into the novel successfully, forcing the form to evolve, or if the Internet and movies are slowly putting the novel out to pasture.  Who knows?  I hope it’s the first option, but only time and a lot of silly (also mostly dead, mostly post-modern) French literary critics will tell.   

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~ by cosmatorium on April 9, 2009.