Reading and Choice: Ali Smith’s How to Be Both and Marlene van Niekerk’s Memorandum (2024)

Forms of Modernist Fiction: Reading the Novel from James Joyce to Tom McCarthy

Derek Attridge

Published:

2023

Online ISBN:

9781399512473

Print ISBN:

9781399512459

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Forms of Modernist Fiction: Reading the Novel from James Joyce to Tom McCarthy

Derek Attridge

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Derek Attridge

Derek Attridge

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Pages

165–184

  • Published:

    August 2023

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Attridge, Derek, 'Reading and Choice: Ali Smith’s How to Be Both and Marlene van Niekerk’s Memorandum', Forms of Modernist Fiction: Reading the Novel from James Joyce to Tom McCarthy (Edinburgh, 2023; online edn, Edinburgh Scholarship Online, 23 May 2024), https://doi.org/10.3366/edinburgh/9781399512459.003.0012, accessed 24 May 2024.

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Abstract

What have been termed ‘ergodic’ novels are those in which the experience of reading includes elements that need to be taken in separately at a time of the reader’s own choosing. This chapter provides a survey of some examples of ergodic novels, and asks whether this feature can operate independently of the work’s content to enhance the reader’s experience. Two novels are given special attention: Ali Smith’s How to Be Both, in which two different reading experiences are possible depending on the order in which the two halves are read, and Marlene van Niekerk’s Memorandum, which includes a set of paintings by Adriaan van Zyl and two addenda. Three different narrative strands in Memorandum are identified, in addition to the complicating presence of the paintings.

Keywords: ergodic novel, form and content, reading, Ali Smith, Merlene van Niekerk, Adriaan van Zyl

Subject

Literary Studies (20th Century onwards)

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