The Metanarrative Hall of Mirrors: Reflex Action in Fiction and Film

Description

With its laser-focus on the requirements and structure of narrative, The Metanarrative Hall of Mirrors is the first sustained comparative study of how images are created in prose and cinema. In film examples ranging from Citizen Kane through Apocalypse Now to Blade Runner 2049, then on to Christopher Nolan’s 2020 Tenet, Garrett Stewart tracks the shift from celluloid to digital cinema through various narrative approaches to the image, from freeze-frames to computer-generated special effects. By bringing these insights into dialogue with contemporary literature, Stewart discovers a common tendency in contemporary storytelling, in both prose and visual narrative, from the ongoing trend of “mind-game” films to the often puzzling narrative eccentricities of such different writers as Richard Powers and Nicholson Baker. The Metanarrative Hall of Mirrors is an important new work for anyone studying contemporary fiction and film and how narrative works, on screen and page alike. Cover Contents Preview \ Beveled Planes of Response 1 / 1\ Picture Shows 2 \ Cross-Fade to Prose 49 / 3 \ Understories 79 / 4 \ Wording Unbound 105 / 5 \ Writing Unpent 139 / 6 \ Reading: In Decent Exposure 179 / Afterthoughts \ The Angle of Incidents Index