Meander, Spiral, Explode: Design and Pattern in Narrative

by Jane Alison

although we think of narrative as a temporal art, experienced in time like music, of course it’s interestingly visual, too; a story’s as much house or garden as song. Northrop Frye puts it this way: “We hear or listen to a narrative, but when we grasp a writer’s total pattern we ‘see’ what he means.” John Berger atomizes further: “Seeing comes before words.” Glancing at a page, we first see text as texture: marks in a white field leave enough space to feel airy or form dense blocks, even weighted with a sludge of footnotes. Looking closely, we see each word as a picture: the part of our brain that recognizes words has a twin that recognizes faces, and if we never learned to read, both parts would focus on faces. As we pass through the words’ looks and into their meanings, our way of “seeing” shifts, now absorbing a stream of visual images conjured by the language. We might develop another layer of vision, too, growing aware of elements that give the story structure: a late scene might mirror an earlier one, creating a sense of symmetry, or a subtle use of color might render an overall hue. Reading on, we travel not just through places conjured in the story, but through the narrative itself. It might feel like gliding in a bayou, pacing a labyrinth, hopping from block to block. Neuroscientists have recorded the inner sensations of reading as “a felt motionless movement through space.” Once you’ve finished reading, that motionless movement leaves in your mind a numinous shap...