the entire shape and direction of this conversation, reaching its
apex/nadir [depending on one's p.o.v.] in the bizarre concept of
"inter-subjective intentionality, seems to overlook the importance
of distinguishing between what, for convenience, i want to
call NARRATIVE [on the one hand] and GAME [on the other]
. . . . both novels and video games develop narrative trajectories . . .
the fundamental difference between them is that one is scripted
by someone else, the other is not . . . as a result when we
read/experience the one we are, by program, placing ourselves
and our subjectivities into the hands of someone else whom
we trust to lead us on an interesting or entertaining or rewarding
path . . . it is precisely this act of willingly submitting to the
volition of another's narration that constitutes the core of the
western narrative tradition -- from the bible to disney . . .
that the subjectivity we submit to is itself a kind of fake, a
pretense if not a pretext, i do not doubt . . .
that there have always been ways of rearranging the materials
of this narration to please the audience is certain -- think of
multi-versioned folk tales at one extreme or--at the other
extreme-- recent experiments in the novel with the pages
published unbound to be arranged by the reader in a
different sequence each time the novel is "read" . . .
but the inverted commas around that "read" are at the heart
of the matter . . . when we arrange the pages in OUR order
we are not "reading" the novel so much as "writing" it . . . the
act of reading anything -- a book, a painting, a glyph, a movie --
presupposes a determinate [if, in practice, indeterminable] core
or what we have traditionally called meanings . . . new
technologies may make us less interested in this process but
it cannot, in the nature of things, change it, for it's based on
our intuitions [however misguided] about inter-subjectivity itself
mike
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