10.13125/2039-6597/1313
The 2013 publication of S, J.J. Abrams’ and Doug Dorst’s “love letter to the written word,” represents a particular intervention in the debates surrounding the future of the book and the relationship between analogue and digital publication. In S we see how the analogue nature of this particular book drives much of the narrative structure of the text, indeed the physical presentation of the book informs much of the imaginative contents of the narrative. In this article I would like to consider the theoretic bounds of this novel and its form, from the question of marginal (and fragmented) writing that is evoked in the work of Jacques Derrida, to the importance of the medium and the message that it carries as described by Marshall McLuhan. One could furthermore consider the manner in which S integrates itself into the imagination of the reader both in textual and in literal terms in light of Umberto Eco’s notion of the “open work.”
application/pdf
2039-6597
1313
8
en
Brendon John Wocke
Between
Narrative form
The Analogue Technology of <i>S</i>: Exploring Narrative Form and the Encoded Mystery of the Margin
Text.Serial.Journal
https://ojs.unica.it/index.php/between
4
Metamorphoses of Narration
2014-12-17
2014-08-30
2014-11-30
2015-01-13
1
Brendon John Wocke
2014/12/17
10.13125/2039-6597/1313
University of Perpignan Via-Domitia
2039-6597
8
Narrative form
en
The Analogue Technology of <i>S</i>: Exploring Narrative Form and the Encoded Mystery of the Margin
https://ojs.unica.it/index.php/between/article/download/1313/1170
4
     The Analogue Technology of S:
    Exploring Narrative Form and the
     Encoded Mystery of the Margin
                             Brendon Wocke


      The 2013 publication of S, a novel which the authors, J.J. Abrams
and Doug Dorst, describe as their «love letter to the written word»,
represents a particular intervention in the debates surrounding the
future of the book and the relationship between analogue and digital
publication. In S we see how the analogue nature of this particular
book drives much of the narrative structure of the text; the physical
presentation of the book informs much of the imaginative contents of
the narrative.
      S presents itself as a found object; a (fictional) library book
entitled Ship of Theseus by V.M. Straka. Within Ship of Theseus, two
readers (Eric and Jennifer) correspond, leaving notes for one another in
the margins of the book as they work towards uncovering the true
identity of the author V.M. Straka. Their notes encompass three distinct
narrative moments, appearing in blue and black, orange and green,
and finally, in red and purple, detailing not only the various phases of
their search for the identity of V.M. Straka as they unravel a series of
encrypted clues buried within the text, but also their growing affection.
These narratives appear in parallel, the three sets of notes share the
margins of Ship of Theseus, and thus require the reader to not only
decode the chronological complexity of Eric and Jennifer’s story, but to
choose how to read it. Ship of Theseus is furthermore accompanied by a
number of marginalia: photographs, maps, postcards, newspaper
clippings, and private correspondence, all of which play into the



Between, vol. IV, n. 8 (Novembre/November 2014)
Brendon Wocke, The Analogue Technology of S



central thrust of the novel. Taken together, these various elements, the
library book (Ship of Theseus), the marginal notes, and the additional
artifacts, comprise S.
      In interviews with The New York Times and with the New Yorker,
Abrams and Dorst have emphasized the beauty of the book and its
materiality, implying that their novel represents something of a
response to the increasingly digital distribution of popular novels.
There is however a degree of irony in this as it is only with digital
typesetting and printing that such a book could be brought to market.
In this article I would like to consider the theoretic bounds of this novel
and its form, from the question of marginal (and fragmented) writing
that is evoked in the work of Jacques Derrida, to the importance of the
medium and the message that it carries as described by Marshall
McLuhan. S integrates itself into the imagination of the reader both in
textual and in literal terms that can be read in light of Umberto Eco’s
notion of the “open work,” but can also be considered in terms of the
work undertaken by Barthes in S/Z and in “The Death of the Author,”
emphasizing the creative role of the reader faced with certain types of
texts. S evokes an aesthetic, analogue technology, which may seem at
odds with the future of the book but which, in embracing interactivity
and hypertextuality on a fundamental narrative level, reflects much of
what is at stake in the development of digital literature.


      The future of the book and the decentered novel
      As a creative intervention in the debate surrounding the impact of
digital technology on the printed novel, S echoes many of the questions
that are brought to the fore by the numerous contributors to The future
of the book, as well as by authors such as Katherine Hayles in Writing
Machines, and Janet H. Murray in Hamlet on the Holodeck: The Future of
Narrative in Cyberspace.
      Whereas many of the aforementioned authors and contributors
are clear that the book as such is here to stay, George P. Landow, for
instance, in his contribution to The Future of the Book entitled “Twenty



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                                  Between, vol. IV, n. 8 (Novembre/November 2014)



minutes into the future, or how are we moving beyond the book,”
states that «printed books are technology, too» (Landow 1996: 214);
both the conceptualization of the book as a cultural artifact, and the act
of reading are nevertheless set to change. The longevity of the book as
such is related to its status as a symbolic object, as Regis Debray
underlines in his contribution to The future of the book. At stake in the
hypertextual future is what Debray terms “textual dematerialization”
in which thought is released from “the weight of things,” its mobility
increased, its possibilities multiplied. The reader is «no longer simply
spectator […] but coauthor of what he reads» (Debray 1996: 145).
Similarly Patrick Bazin, in reading the borders associated with the
printed text, considers the implications of what he terms
“polytextuality,” the integration of «diverse types of texts and images,
sounds, films, databanks, mail services, interactive networks» which
interfere and mutually resist one another, and which result in a
progressively new dimension of reading that is «polymorphic,
transversal and dynamic.» (Bazin 1996: 154)
      The reinvigoration of reading and the emphasis on the agency of
the reader is a theme that underlies much of Janet H. Murray’s work in
Hamlet on the Holodeck: The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace. The
reader’s immersion (Murray 1997: 97) and agency (ibid.: 126), together
with an emphasis on the experience of reading, ultimately underscore
what Murray describes as the procedural nature of authorship in
electronic media (ibid.: 152). That is to say that electronic or digital
authors define «the rules for the interactor’s involvement, […] the
conditions under which things will happen in response to the
participants actions» (ibid.), creating a world of narrative possibility.
The experience of a given text can also be seen to be at the heart of
Katherine Hayles’ Writing Machines in so far as she refers to the special
role that artists’ books play in the conception of the future of the book,
opening up new structural and expressive possibilities (Hayles 2002:
64). Coining the term “technotext,” Hayles considers this to be «when a
literary work interrogates the inscription technology that produces it»
thereby mobilizing «reflexive loops between its imaginative world and



                                                                               3
Brendon Wocke, The Analogue Technology of S



the material apparatus embodying that creation as a physical
presence» (ibid.: 25).
     As a creative intervention in this debate, S, as we shall see,
deploys not only a sophisticated understanding of the reader’s agency,
but in the inclusion of a number of artifacts, recalls Bazin’s
“polytextuality,” as well as well as Murray’s notion of procedural
authorship. The central interest of S however lies in the manner in
which it remains decidedly analogue despite being cast as a
“technotext.” S evokes the epistolary novel, the found object and its
own coded creation in the complex process of reading it invites,
generating a reflexive loop between the physical notion of the book
and the complex interweaving elements of which this particular book
is composed. Despite the analogue nature of S it should be noted, as
both Geoffrey Nunberg (in his introduction to The Future of the Book)
and Luca Toschi (1996: 193) in his contribution to the same volume
mention, that electronic media and digital printing technology are
precisely what facilitate the production of such advanced books. S is
once again a particularly salient reminder of this, in so far as the color
coded marginal texts and the various artifacts, including a map on a
paper napkin, could not have been (mass) produced without the aid of
modern digital printing processes.
     The particular interest of S, as a work of popular fiction is not only
in the manner in which it decenters certain aspects of the debate
surrounding the future of the book (in proposing a thoroughly
analogue vision of the digital future), but in the manner it proposes a
decentered narrative structure. This decentered narrative structure and
its concern with the margin can be understood in terms of what
Jacques Derrida in his essay “Structure, Sign and Play in the Discourse
of the Human Sciences” considers as one of the central problems of the
Western thought: its articulation in terms of a point of origin or center.


        The function of this center was not only to orient, balance, and
      organize the structure-one cannot in fact conceive of an
      unorganized structure but above all to make sure that the
      organizing principle of the structure would limit what we might


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                                   Between, vol. IV, n. 8 (Novembre/November 2014)



     call the play of the structure. By orienting and organizing the
     coherence of the system, the center of a structure permits the play
     of its elements inside the total form. (Derrida 2001: 352)


      To this Derrida opposes what he terms a rupture in the thinking
of structurality, which opens the structure to a «process of signification
which orders the displacements and substitutions» (ibid.: 353). The
center is no longer «a fixed locus but a function, a sort of non locus in
which an infinite number of sign-substitutions» (ibid.). That is to say
that «the original or transcendental signified, is never absolutely
present outside a system of differences» (ibid.: 354), rather it can be
seen as a result of the play between these differences. While Derrida, in
his argument, refers primarily to the Western philosophical tradition
(in general) and to Claude Lévi-Strauss (in particular), we could ask
ourselves how this play of signifiers might translate in literary terms,
not merely as concerns the structure of meaning and the play that
Derrida evokes, but rather in terms of the manner in which the
structure of a novel might become a function of sign substitutions.1
      Such an example might be found in Laurence Stern’s The Life and
Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman (1759) in which the narration of
the birth of the title character is constantly deferred, only taking place
in volume III. Moreover, towards the end of volume IV Tristram offers
a number of squiggled plot maps as a means of explaining his various
digressions, promising the reader a more linear plot, before himself
becoming lost in a digressive explanation and finally abandoning the
chapter. Tristram Shandy is however a notable exception, breaking the
structure of a singular central organized in terms of an originary
structure. Rather the plot digresses, and ultimately turns on itself; the
fictional narrator addresses the reader, fraying the thread of what one



     1In the course of his essay Derrida makes particular reference to Claude
Lévi-Strauss’ The elementary structures of Kinship (Lévi-Strauss 1971) and to
The raw and the cooked (Lévi-Strauss 1983).



                                                                                5
Brendon Wocke, The Analogue Technology of S



could consider the linear and centrally structured narrative of
Tristram’s life.
     If the revolutionary nature of Tristram Shandy remains a
touchstone for many of the authors mentioned in the context of the
debate on the future of the book, the “New Novel” movement presents
us with series of more contemporary examples which explore a
decentered notion of the genre, and of which Alain Robbe-Grillet is
seen a primary exponent. The structural displacements that underscore
this movement can be seen in Robbe-Grillet’s 1957 novel La Jalousie.
Eschewing a chronological structure, La Jalousie confronts the reader
with an absent narrator whose painstaking descriptions of objects,
scenes, and shadows is at odds with his lack of self reflectivity. The
silent observations that the unnamed narrator makes of his wife («A..»)
and his neighbor Franck are interspersed with what could be
interpreted as imagined scenarios (such as a centipede attack),
although the novel makes no distinction between these various
moments which seem to exist suspended in time, without order or
governing structure. These are but two examples of what could
otherwise be an extensive examination of revolutionary textual forms,
evoking the experiments of William Burroughs in Naked Lunch
(Burroughs 1959) and his subsequent novels, or of Vladimir Nabokov
in Pale Fire (Nabokov 1962), to name but two examples.


         S and the encrypted textuality of dislocation
     S comes to us in the wake of this experimentation as a decentered
novel, one in which the strict linear narrative structure makes way for a
veritable field of play, and the novel, in very literal terms arises as a
function of the “system of differences” at work within the text. The
reader is confronted with a disparate system, introduced on the title
page when Jen, reading Eric’s pencil note («If found please return to
workroom B19, Main Library, Pollard State University»), replies:




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                                   Between, vol. IV, n. 8 (Novembre/November 2014)



        Hey – I found your stuff while I was shelving. (Looks like you
     left in a hurry!) I read a few chapters + loved it. Felt bad about
     keeping the book from you, though, since you obviously need it
     for you work. Have to get my own copy! – Jen. (Abrams 2013: i)


     This short exchange sets the scene for the decentering of the novel;
the narrative structure becomes increasingly dislocated by the
marginal comments of Eric and Jen as their romance blooms and their
writing fills the margins. The notes operate on a meta-narrative level:
they inaugurate a form of structural play, a series of commentaries on
the novel Ship of Theseus in the manner of a medieval manuscript. In
seeking to uncover the identity of the author of the book, Eric and Jen
explore various codes and ciphers that are hidden in the book,
ultimately uncovering a series of messages that are sent by the fictional
“translator” of Ship of Theseus (using the printed book and the
footnotes) to the author. Consider for instance the handwritten notes
on page 27 of Ship of Theseus wherein Eric and Jen discuss the message
“Argosy every 19th 19Hrs” which the “translator” of the fictional novel
Ship of Theseus (FX Caldeira) has encoded into the footnotes of the
preceding pages. Their discovery is evidence of the metanarrative
qualities of the marginal notes, Eric and Jen exchange notes in the
margins of a book only to discover notes which are already encoded
within the text. This forms part of the structural displacement at work
within the text – we come to doubt the integrity of Ship of Theseus
through the marginal notes, which furthermore sensitize us to a
number of parallel narratives at work within the integrated text. We
are thus confronted with, not only the shipwreck narrative of Ship of
Theseus, but with a narrative detailing Eric and Jen’s search of the
identity of the author (a narrative which is itself expressed in two
different time-scapes), and a narrative regarding the writing and
translation of the novel as encoded in the footnotes of Ship of Theseus.
     The marginal structure which decenters the narrative and
incorporates an element of play interlacing the various elements of the
novel, without ever moving towards a definitive interpretation of the
identity of V.M. Straka (the fictive author). That is to say that the


                                                                                7
Brendon Wocke, The Analogue Technology of S



marginal notes act as a supplement, to employ a Derridean term. The
supplement which Derrida details in Of Grammatology2 is not merely
that which augments the subject at hand, rather it may act in a
dangerous and unpredictable manner.3 The supplementary nature of
the handwritten notes lies in the manner in which they at once
augment and enhance our reading of the work, not only uncovering
the ciphers and codes that are embedded within Ship of Theseus, but
aiding in the integration of this work into the readers world. For Ship of
Theseus presents itself as a “found work,” a book upon which we have
stumbled and it seeks to reach beyond the literary imaginary and
integrate itself into our world. The danger of the supplement lies in the
manner in which it destabilizes the whole, and in this case the
marginal notes deeply problematize the reading experience, distracting
the reader and undercutting the perceived unity of the novel. This can
however also allow the reader to enter into what Richard Lanham
describes as an economy of attention, a creative space in which the
reader is drawn into a constant oscillation between style and substance.
For Lanham this state of oscillation is a key driver of productivity in
the age of digital media (Lanham 2006).
     The marginal notes between two ‘real’ people (Eric and Jen) are
accompanied by a large number of artifacts (photos, postcards, letters,

      2  “The supplement adds itself, it is a surplus, a plenitude enriching
another plenitude, the fullest measure of presence. It cumulates and
accumulates presence. It is thus that art, techne, image, representation,
convention, etc., come as supplements to nature and are rich with this entire
cumulating function. This kind of supplementarity determines in a certain
way all the conceptual oppositions within which Rousseau inscribes the
notion of Nature to the extent that it should b e self-sufficient. But the
supplement supplements. It adds only to replace. It intervenes or insinuates
itself in-the-place-of; if it fills, it is as if one fills a void.” (Derrida 1997: 144-
145)
       3
         “The dangerous supplement, which Rousseau also calls a ‘fatal
advantage,’ is properly seductive; it leads desire away from the good path,
makes it err far from natural ways, guides it toward its loss or fall and
therefore it is a sort of lapse or scandal (scandalon).” (ibid.: 151)


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                                  Between, vol. IV, n. 8 (Novembre/November 2014)



maps and a cipher wheel) that bring the integrated book to the fullest
degree of presence moving it from the realm of the strictly imaginary
into the tactile and thus problematizing the ‘fictional’ nature of the
book. Not only do we have the notes between Eric and Jen, but we also
have the ‘proof’ of their interaction. The dual nature of the supplement,
both beneficial and dangerous, opens up a field of play in which the
originary, central or foundational structure is called into question. This
movement is furthermore reflected in the inserts and marginalia
which, while enhancing the ‘presence’ of the book, derail any notion of
a centralized or unified structure. The reader’s attention is constantly
drawn to the marginalia, literally seduced by the mise-en-page. It is not
by accident that in Glas the inter-columnar paragraphs that disturb the
structure of the work (and problematize the bi-columnar layout) are
referred to by Derrida as the “Judas,” a biblical reference to the
(necessary) betrayal from within. Likewise, the marginalia and inserts
in S betray the structure of Ship of Theseus.
      The structure of betrayal, displacement and dislocation that forms
the crux of the mise-en-page of S underlies a powerful intervention in
the conception of the influence of technology on imaginative and
narrative form. It is clear that the commercial publication of this novel
(given the elaborate mise-en-page and the large number of inserts) has
only been made possible given the advances in digital typesetting and
printing. While a digital version is available, complete with digital
inserts and rotating cipher wheel, J.J. Abrams, in his New York Times
interview, nevertheless recommends the hardback version in order to
get the full tactile and aesthetic experience of the book (Hill 2013).
Whereas the visual aspect of the book can be understood in terms of
the author’s vision of the future of the printed word, in which ink-on-
paper books become works of art, we can however also read S as an
experiment in the deployment of an analogue literary technology. This
technology is a product of the strategy of dislocation and layering that
is reflected in S. The decentered narrative and the particular mise-en-
page, both marginal and supplemental in Derridean terms, open up a
space of play which favors the construction of what one may
(following George Landow) consider a “hypertext.” In underlining the


                                                                               9
Brendon Wocke, The Analogue Technology of S



convergence between the ideas of Jacques Derrida, Roland Barthes and
Michel Foucault and those which underlie the technology which
powers the world wide web, Landow sketches an integrated view of
the hypertext as non-hierarchically, dynamically, and non-sequential
linked.


         One of the fundamental characteristics of hypertext is that it is
      composed of bodies of linked texts that have no primary axis of
      organization. In other words, the metatext or document set – the
      entity that describes what in print technology is the book, work, or
      single text – has no center. Although this absence of a center can
      create problems for the reader and the writer, it also means that
      anyone who uses hypertext lakes his or her own interests the de
      facto organizing principle (or centre) for the investigation at the
      moment. One experiences hypertext as an infinitely decentreable
      and recenterable system, in part because hypertext transforms any
      document that has more than one link into a transient center, a
      partial sitemap that one can employ to orient oneself and to decide
      where to go next. (Landow 2006: 56-57).


     Landow touches on two key issues that will frame our
consideration of S from this point on. First is the question of
technology as expressed through hypertextuality, and the manner in
which we can read this in S. Derrida similarly refers to the text as being
the result of a function, or of a process, and this process can not only be
seen (more generally) in the layering of the text and its marginal,
dislocative mise-en-page, but also (more particularly) in the manner in
which encryption plays a role within the text. The second key issue
raised by Landow is that of interactivity. The interactivity which
underlies S is a consequence of the highly material and highly
hypertextual nature of the book, and plays a particular role in the
reader’s reception of the work and in the manner in which the work
can be seen to interpolate the reader’s imagination.
     One of the key intrigues contained within the marginal narrative
concerns Eric and Jen’s detailed study of the encrypted notes left by the


10
                                  Between, vol. IV, n. 8 (Novembre/November 2014)



fictional translator of Ship of Theseus in the footnotes of the book. Each
chapter contains a specific message pertaining to the circumstances
surrounding the writing and the translation of the book and which Eric
and Jen hope will shed light on the identity of the author V.M. Straka,
and their study is structured in such a way as to interpolate the reader.
That is to say that the reader is drawn into the fictional universe of Ship
of Theseus in trying to understand or work out the codes themselves,
raising the interactivity of the novel in much the same way that a
childhood puzzle book might. The reader is not left completely in the
dark and book is peppered with clues as to the ciphers used in order to
encode the message in each chapter. Chapter 1 for instance contains a
message which is hidden in the first and the last letters of each
footnote, taking its clue from the title of the chapter “What begins,
what ends.” Eric and Jen solve this cipher on page 27, and their
discovery, as with each code they uncover, represents a form of
apprenticeship in which the reader is sensitized to the particular
dynamics of the text. The hypertextual element arises out of the
manner in which the cipher invites a particular re-reading of the
chapter in terms of the parameters given. So the encrypted structure of
chapter 1 (which runs from page 3 to 35) is only given on page 27, and
while Eric and Jen share their discovery with the reader («ERIC – check
this out! First + last letters in Ch. 1 footnotes gives you: [AR GO SY EV
ER Y19th 19 00 H RS] and there was an Argosy Hotel on East 38th
Street!!») this is not always the case. The hypertextual nature of the
codes and ciphers embedded within the text extends beyond the limits
of individual chapters. Take for instance the encrypted message
embedded within the final chapter. The solution of this cipher relies on
the use of the code wheel or “Eötvös wheel” (as mentioned in the notes
on page 3 and page 270 by Eric). The clue for the solution of the cipher
can be found in the words “Spinning compass” and “locate” which
appear in italics in the first footnote of the chapter (Abrams 2013: 415).
In selecting the latitude and longitude of each of the locations




                                                                              11
Brendon Wocke, The Analogue Technology of S



mentioned in the footnotes, the cipher wheel decrypts a series of letters
which can be read if written in a grid4.
      By arranging the longitude and latitude of the locations, the
cipher wheel produces a series of letter groups which can be arranged
to produce the following message: «I HAVE *OVED YOU FR*M THE
BEGIN*ING I WILL L*VE YOU TO TH* END.» The missing letters
(here represented by asterisks, concern note 6 where the location given
as Calais produces a letter group that does not match the encrypted
sentence. Rather another letter group, elsewhere in the cipher wheel,
completes the missing letters, allowing us to read the message as: «I
have loved you from the beginning I will love you to the end.»
However, this letter group (LONDOE) corresponds to a location at 14S
39W, near the town of Maraú in Brazil where Eric, in the postcard
dated 20 April (and inserted on page 201), says «I have found her»
(ostensibly referring to Caldeira, the translator). One could consider,
within the context of the story that the final location was double
encrypted into chapter 10 as a “message” to the V.M. Straka character,
enabling him to find F.X. Caldeira, his translator with whom (in the
fictional universe described by S) he was romantically involved.
      The complexity of the double encryption and the decryption
process tie together the information contained in the footnotes, the
cipher wheel, and other inserts such as the postcard on page 201. This
hypertextual relationship undercuts the reader’s understanding of the
book; the book is decentered, recast in terms of a hidden metatext


      4 Note 1 refers to Bergen, Norway (Abrams 2013: 415) which is 60N 5E;
note 2 refers to Biabou St. Vincent (ibid.: 416) at approximately 15N 60W (the
longitude and latitude are approximate in order to account for a degree of
play in the cipher wheel); note 3 refers to Portland, Oregon at 45N 121W
(ibid.: 418); note 4 refers to Thunkar, Bhutan at 26N 91E (ibid.: 420); note 5
refers to Santiago, Chile at 34S 70W (“the prince of Santiago” on page 422);
note 7 refers to Morondava, Madagasgar at 20 S 44E (ibid.: 433); note 8 refers
to Havana, Cuba at 23N 83W (ibid.: 437); note 9 refers to Sofia, Bulgaria at
40N 25E («Victor and Sofia», ibid.: 440) and note 10 refers to New York City
at 40N 74W (ibid.: 446).


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which acts as a partial node or sitemap. One can furthermore pursue a
reflection on the analogue technology of the encryption process in
referring to the cipher wheel as a ‘technological’ tool, assisting the
reader in the resolution of the forward and backward looking
cryptographic problem. Reading S as a hypertext evokes the second
key issue upon which Landow touches in his Hypertext 3.0:
interactivity. For ultimately in decoding the hidden messages, or
merely in paging through Ship of Theseus and leafing through the array
of documents that accompany the book, the reader becomes unusually
active. It is not a coincidence that, in many respects, S resembles a
childhood puzzle book which requires a certain degree of action on
behalf of the reader in order to give the story meaning. Over and above
the obviously interactive nature of the encrypted aspects of the text, the
particular nature of the text, the inserts and the mise-en-page of the
marginalia invite a certain aesthetic interactivity. That is to say that (to
a degree) the reader is integrated into the fictive world through his
interaction with objects from the fictive world of Ship of Theseus. In its
tactile interactivity, S recalls Raymond Queneau’s Cent mille milliards de
poems (1961), a book in which Queneau constructs a system in which
the reader is free to compose a poem of their own. Each line can be
turned, allowing the reader to select the lines of his choice generating a
single poem among the hundred thousand billion unique poems that
can be generated using the book. In the same manner, leafing through
the objects, the inserts and the pages of this abundantly tactile novel,
allows the reader to experience his own particular version of the story,
focusing on one nodal element or another.
      In Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, Marshall McLuhan,
while considering the manner in which content has become secondary
to form (“the medium is the message”), establishes what Lewis H.
Lapham, in his introduction to the MIT Press Edition of McLuhan’s
book, considers a dichotomy between print and electronic media. This
dichotomy is, in no small part, based on one of McLuhan’s Delphic
maxims that Lapham cites in his introduction: «We are moving out of
the age of the visual into the age of the aural and tactile» (McLuhan
1994: x). McLuhan associates print media with the visual (including the


                                                                               13
Brendon Wocke, The Analogue Technology of S



technology of typography), while considering that electronic media,
notably radio and television, are evocative of the tactile.


         The stipple of points of Seurat is close to the present technique
      of sending pictures by telegraph, and close to the form of the TV
      image or mosaic made by the scanning finger. All of these
      anticipate later electric forms because, like the digital computer
      with its multiple yes-no dots and dashes, they caress the contours
      of every kind of being by the multiple touches of these points.
      Electricity offers a means of getting in touch with every facet of
      being at once, like the brain itself. Electricity is only incidentally
      visual and auditory; it is primarily tactile (ibid. 249).


      Electronic media, according to McLuhan, is tactile in so far as it
engages with «every facet of being at once», it allows the phantasmal
presence of an object to be projected, permitting the sensation of
having a performing instrument «right in the room with you»
(McLuhan 1994: 282). Read in light of McLuhan’s definition it is
interesting to note how the particular structure of S reflects many of
the elements that McLuhan ascribes to electronic media. Not only is S
interactive, but through this it is abundantly tactile, concerned with the
production of a fictive presence through the myriad inserts and
marginalia. As concerns S the “medium is the message” in so far as it
reflects the particular destiny that J.J. Abrams sees for the book. Let us
not forget that S represents, as he states on the back cover of the book
jacket, his “love letter to the written word.” The aesthetic of S implies a
vision of the book as an object, and more particularly as an object of
entertainment. Given the debate surrounding the future of the printed
word and the manner in which electronic publishing affects the
distribution of print editions,5 the message contained within the from


      At the time of writing an on going public feud has, over the past few
      5

months, simmered between Amazon and the Hachette publishing group.
The nature of the dispute is primarily centered on the model used to
determine the sales price of electronic books. It goes without saying that the


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of the novel points to an understanding of the book as occupying a
particular aesthetic space, an objet d’art, or an imaginative springboard
that would lose something in being rendered electronically. The
existence of an iPad version of S notwithstanding, the tactile
interactivity of the book, its “electronic presence,” to paraphrase
McLuhan, (perhaps ironically) loses something when published and
distributed in a digital and ephemeral form.
       The dynamic and organic form at work within S furthermore
reflects the core of what McLuhan considers as the underlying nature
of modern electronic media. Once again, the degree of engagement that
McLuhan sees in electronic media should be underlined even if he
considers paperbacks to be tactile, and thus engaging (ibid. 325), and
we should be mindful of the manner in which he contrasts this to
“older mechanical time” (ibid. 147).
      In so far as the “medium is the message,” the changing
technological paradigm can alter (even if subtly) the very structure of
our imagination. This is what is at stake in the structure and the layout
of S, in the hybrid and fragmented vision that it brings forth, and in the
place that this book carves out for the printed word and the manner in
which ink and paper books can evolve as we move forward.


     The death of the author and the resultant agency
                       of the reader
     In his seminal essay, “The death of the author,” Roland Barthes
argues for the restoration of the place of the reader, for writing which
«is the destruction of every voice of every point of origin» (Barthes
1977: 142). Barthes identifies the reader as a convergent space, as a
nexus of agency where the removal of the authority of the author
renders the claim of deciphering a text redundant. Rather than

result of this dispute will have a substantial impact on the nature of
electronic book distribution and thus, upon traditional paper and ink
publication.



                                                                              15
Brendon Wocke, The Analogue Technology of S



imposing a limit on the text (as a author might propose a final
signified) the “space of writing is to be ranged over,” ceaselessly
positing meaning which is infinitely deferred.


        The reader is the space on which all the quotations that make
      up a writing are inscribed without any of them being lost; a text's
      unity lies not in its origin but in its destination (ibid.: 148).


Barthes concludes in saying that «to give writing its future, it is
necessary to overthrow the myth: the birth of the reader must be at the
cost of the death of the Author» (ibid.). This powerful literary agenda,
blending the agency and proposed power of the reader with the
reinvigoration of the subject (in the exclusion of a final signified), is no
mere theoretical position, as Barthes’ seminal work S/Z testifies.
       In proposing a radically novel form of interpretation, of reading,
and of textuality, in S/Z Barthes separates Sarrazine, the short story by
Balzac into a series of lexias which he uses to illustrate a number of key
concepts. For Barthes, «the goal of literary work (of literature as work)
is to make the reader no longer a consumer, but a producer of the text»
(Barthes 1974: 4) and in this he defines the “writerly text” as


        a perpetual present, upon which no consequent language
      (which would inevitably make it past) can be superimposed; the
      writerly text is ourselves writing, before the infinite play of the
      world (ibid.: 5).


Dynamism and readerly agency are equally at the heart of what
Barthes terms the plural text in which «the networks are many and
interact, without anyone of them being able to surpass the rest; this text
is a galaxy of signifiers, not a structure of signifieds» (ibid: 5). Barthes’
understanding of the structures and forms which shape the texts to
come and the nature of the future of the book allows us, once again, to
measure the issues at stake in the vibrant and multifocal novel penned
by J.J. Abrams and Doug Dorst. Their plural, writerly text invites an


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active reader, offering the him a particularly powerful experience of
exploratory agency and freedom.
      In conclusion, S can be seen as representative of a popular work of
fiction which gestures towards an underlying theoretic debate. It is in
the movement beyond itself that S echoes aspects of Umberto Eco’s The
Open Work. For Eco, referring to a number of contemporary musical
compositions one of the key elements of an “open” work is the manner
in which «considerable autonomy [is] left to the individual performer
in the way he chooses to play the work» (Eco 1989: 1). Certainly this is
reflected in the manner in which S leaves the reader to solve many of
the codes and to construct his own path through the labyrinth of
intersecting narratives. Reading Mallarmé, and the use of space in
works such as Un coup de dés, Eco underlines the importance of the
typographical and visual layout of the word upon the page and the
manner in which the form informs much of a given work’s message.


        The important thing is to prevent a single sense from imposing
     itself at the very outset of the receptive process. Blank space
     surrounding a word, typographical adjustments, and spatial
     composition in the page setting of the poetic text—all contribute to
     create a halo of indefiniteness and to make the text pregnant with
     infinite suggestive possibilities (Eco 1989: 8-9).


     Eco recalls the approach that Derrida takes in Of Grammatology
and in Structure Sign and Play. He stresses the interactivity that is
implied in a given “open” composition, that is the nature of the text
dislocative and open to possibility, opposing the formation of closed
structure or interpretation. This approach is common to both Derrida
and Eco (as well as McLuhan and Landow together with Hayles,
Barthes and Murray) who all emphasize the dynamic nature of what
Eco might term an “open” text. The layering of S and the interweaving
of an untold number of hidden codes, artefacts and marginalia, make
of this novel a dynamic system in which the various nodes compete for
the attention of the reader. The book demands an active reader, one



                                                                                17
Brendon Wocke, The Analogue Technology of S



who engages with the material, who is interpolated by the mystery in a
very real sense. Yet this is not in order to solve the mystery, in the
manner in which a stereotypical detective might, at the end of an
investigation, calmly explain the chain of clues which led him to his
ultimate conclusion. Rather the reader’s activity only serves to deepen
the mystery. The double encrypted final location of F.X. Caldeira does
not reveal the ultimate identity of the author V.M. Straka, rather each
clue brings a new dynamic into play, opening the space of new
ambiguity. The message of the book is that of the future of tactile
entertainment, rendered as an imaginative labyrinth for the adept in
this modern melange of analogue technological invention.




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                                Between, vol. IV, n. 8 (Novembre/November 2014)




                           Works cited
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     Geoffrey Nunberg, Berkeley and Los Angeles, The University of
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                                                                            19
Brendon Wocke, The Analogue Technology of S



Lanham, Richard A., The Economics of Attention: Style and Substance in
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                                   The author
Brendon Wocke

       Brendon Wocke received his doctorate in Comparative
Literature summa cum laude from the University of Perpignan (France)
and the University of Tuebingen (Germany) as an Erasmus Mundus
Joint Doctorate Cultural Studies in Literary Interzones fellow. His
thesis was entitled De la jouissance au jouis-sens: le jeu de mots dans
l’oeuvre de Jacques Derrida. He is currently a visiting assistant professor



20
                                   Between, vol. IV, n. 8 (Novembre/November 2014)



at the University of Perpignan attached to the Voyages, Échanges,
Confrontations, Transformations (VECT) research group.

      Email: brendon.wocke@gmail.com



                              The paper
Date sent: 30/08/2014
Date accepted: 30/09/2014
Date published: 30/11/2014



                     How to quote this paper
Wocke, Brendon, “The Analogue Technology of S: Exploring the
Margins of Narrative Form”, Tecnologia, immaginazione e forme del
narrare, Ed. L. Esposito, E. Piga, A. Ruggiero, Between, Vol. IV.8. (2014),
http://www.betweenjournal.it.




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