Meander, Spiral, Explode: Design and Pattern in Narrative

by Jane Alison

repeating shapes that fit together because there are only so many ways geometrically that matter can fill space. You can call the pattern cellular if you focus on the shapes (bubbles, chips of bark); or you can focus on the lines defining those shapes and call the pattern nodular, a network. Either way, the look’s about the same: polygons in a plain. The pattern is a field, not a shape made by a single line, like a meander or spiral. The relevance for narrative? Some texts don’t give you a line to follow, however loopy or coiling. They don’t give you a hot core around which to circle, either. Instead, you gaze upon many segments, or a web. Instead of following a line of story, your brain draws the lines, makes connections. Any literary narrative of depth asks your brain to pull threads across the whole, so, in a sense, all complex narratives are networks; your experience moving through them is never purely linear, but volumetric or spatial as your thoughts bounce across passages. In the texts I’ll look at now, though, your synaptic linkings alone give each narrative its greatest sense of forward motion. You’re thrown in to flail and find your way: