We like our stories to be a little bit conventional. We like beginnings and middles and ends, and catchphrases and slow motion explosions and kisses in the rain. We want to see heroes win and villains get steam pipes thrown KOBE 9 through them and dogs cover their eyes with their paws when something embarrassing happens.
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Cracked has broken this down before, discussing how Hollywood scripts in particular are assembled almost like Mad Libs, major story elements laid out according to precise minute by minute formulas. And yet almost no one notices this because of how comfortable we are with the formula; we expect stories to be laid out Air Jordan CDP this way.
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“A Battle of the Bands? That’s just crazy enough to work!”
But other than our own cognitive laziness, there’s nothing that says stories have to be so formulaic, that tales can’t be spun around innovative, inventive structures. Not in the movies, of course those are doomed. But in a word movie, the so called “book”? Holy shit, yes. Here are five of the most mind bending.
5. If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler Italo Calvino
If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler is a book about a Air Jordan 18s person reading a book called If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler.
If your hand instinctively made a jerking off motion when you read that, well, that’s not an uncommon reaction.
The book is told in interleaving chapters, with the odd numbered chapters, about the person reading If Air Jordan 19s on a Winter’s Night a Traveler, told in second person. As in, “You are enjoying reading this book. You’re not feeling annoyed at all by this and are definitely Air Jordan 2011 going to be recommending this book to your friends.”
“You also definitely aren’t making a jerking off motion with your hand right now.”
The rest of the chapters, which you might expect to contain an actual story, are in fact 10 different first chapters of 10 completely different novels, which for various reasons the reader (you?) never got around to finishing. There is some structure, though, curious parallels and themes crossing over between the interleaved chapters. For example, after the “detective novel” chapter, the second person chapter features the reader (me?) doing various detectivey things.”What’s making that ‘fap fap fap’ sound?”
It might sound like a hot, fapping mess, but it’s not, at least not completely. If you go into the book with an open mind (and maybe some ice for your elbow), you just might enjoy it.
4. “For Sale: Baby Shoes, Never Worn” Ernest Hemingway
“For Sale: Baby Shoes, Never Worn” is both the title and the entire text of a “novel” purportedly written by Ernest Hemingway.
“Who wants to bet that I can’t drink this baby?”
Whatever its origin, “For Sale: Baby Shoes, Never Worn,” considering the limitations of its structure, is a staggeringly good novel.
So the next time you’re at the movies and see a passionless romantic comedy, a trite heroic sacrifice, or anyone learning a lesson about anything, ever, just remember the time Hemingway (or someone) captured 12,000 times the emotion with six measly words.
3. A Void Georges Perec
A Void is a novel written using a stunt that I can barely contemplate. If someone asked me to try this with one of my columns, I’d say it was impossible and spit in their face.
What is it that Georges Perec did that’s so impossible? He wrote La Disparition, a 300 page novel, without once using E.