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E-books could learn from wordless narrative
September 6, 2010 | 7:15 am
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By Chris Meadows
Sammy Perlmutter at The Huffington Post has an interesting piece looking at the innovation of Lynd Ward’s wordless graphic novels, which are being reissued in a 1,600 page boxed book set. (If ever there was a case for e-books, that would be it!)
Perlmutter talks about the device of narrative told entirely in pictures with no words, and suggests that makers of e-books could learn from it. He explains that the illustrative nature of the story gives it a kind of universality that surpasses native language, and also draws the reader deeper into the narrative. The reader has to construct for himself what is going on rather than having it fed to him, which Perlmutter says makes the books “interactive”:
Put differently: a novel without words can elevate its reader to a level of authority equal to — or beyond — that of the author. One message of wordless books, then, is that the reader is simultaneously an author … or, at the very least, an active participant who can think critically about, question and critique the story in front of her. As a result, when a child reads a wordless book, she inherently learns how to be a critic, not just a passive observer, of a text.
Books lacking this interactivity are not only boring, but can also be dangerous, especially in our digital age when messages and media spew at us from a million directions at a mile a minute.
I’m not entirely sure I’d agree with that definition of “interactivity” but will definitely agree that wordless graphical stories can do more to engage the reader than those with dialogue. I’ve long had similar feelings about animated narratives without dialogue, such as Daft Punk and Leiji Matsumoto’s Interstella 5555, or Chage & Aska and Hayao Miyazaki’s On Your Mark. (Probably not coincidental that these are both essentially music videos.)
Permutter makes the point that interpretation-required graphic novels do more to challenge the reader than the more traditional definition of “interactive” hypertext and multimedia works. I can’t really argue with that, but I’ll also note what a pity it is that these stories apparently aren’t available in a form that can be read by e-book readers even though, at 1,600 pages of black and white art, they would seem to be a prime candidate for e-ink displays.
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Comments:
Chris, from a different angle, this same argument has often been made in favor of text-only narratives, generally during arguments against video and graphic novels. When reader is in charge of visualizing the scene only hinted by the text descriptions, then the fabric of the story is, by necessity, a much richer experience–for that reader.
That said, “The Princess and the Giant” is in my daily RSS feed. Probably the optimum mix of text and graphics is as individual as everything else.
This is more of the same thing that we have been reading a lot of recently. Writers et al. who cannot seem to get their head around the meaning and significance of eReaders, and who appear not to grasp that eReaders are just another medium. That is all. Yes they offer additional options and opportunities for presenting material/text/graphics/video, but a novel presented on an eReader is no different from that presented on paper.
Invention and edification ? Is Perlmutter really claiming that a reader who views the series of images that make up one of the graphic-books he refers to, in any way differently to viewing the same series of images on a printed page ? In what way ? Because I cannot for a second see how.
On the subject of Graphic Novels which Perlmutter seems so enthralled by, they are a very interesting medium there is no doubt. I am reminded of the great silent movies and clearly there is a strong parallel going on there.
I myself cannot buy into his evangelical claims however.
No I don’t buy into all that. It does require the reader to use her imagination in a wonderful way, just as the reader of a text novel has to use her imagination to construct a visual ‘narrative’. But interaction ? please!
… utter utter fantasy.
I see the Graphic Novel as the Ying to the novel’s Yang. One provides the detailed narrative, allowing the reader to construct a visual setting in our imagination. The other provides the visual narrative, allowing the reader to construct an internal narrative.
An eReader is simply a new medium on which to view either. I agree fully with Chris, in that this would be an excellent opportunity to bring Graphic Novels to a wider public through eReaders. However it is clear that the LoA is producing an objet d’art in and of itself quite separate from the content, which I get. It is a pity that in doing so it is being limited to such a tiny range of potential viewers.