Novel with shuffleable table of contents?
November 30, 2010 3:25 PM Subscribe
I remember a college professor telling me about a book, probably Latin American, possibly magical realism, in which the table of contents could be shuffled around according to some provided lists, and the book re-read accordingly, acquiring new meanings and interpretations with each shuffle. What is it called? Also welcome: suggestions for novels with a similar style or feeling, or which play with the medium in a similar way (I've already read House of Leaves).
I would have sold the shuffling directions one-by-one.
posted by klausman at 3:27 PM on November 30, 2010
posted by klausman at 3:27 PM on November 30, 2010
Best answer: You might be thinking of Julio Cortázar's Hopscotch.
posted by pmdboi at 3:27 PM on November 30, 2010 [3 favorites]
posted by pmdboi at 3:27 PM on November 30, 2010 [3 favorites]
Best answer: Novels with a similar method: Dictionary of the Khazars by Milorad Pavić.
posted by Nomyte at 3:31 PM on November 30, 2010
posted by Nomyte at 3:31 PM on November 30, 2010
Best answer: Ana Castillo's Mixquiahuala Lettersis an homage to Cortázar's Hopscotch.
posted by pickypicky at 3:32 PM on November 30, 2010
posted by pickypicky at 3:32 PM on November 30, 2010
Best answer: You may also like Dictionary of the Khazars by Milorad Pavić. You can read it sequentially, or follow the narrative threads through the book non-sequentially.
posted by lekvar at 3:35 PM on November 30, 2010
posted by lekvar at 3:35 PM on November 30, 2010
Best answer: Ana Castillo's The Mixquiahuala Letters is an epistolary novel written in tribute to Hopscotch, and includes three alternate suggested Tables of Contents.
posted by amelioration at 3:35 PM on November 30, 2010
posted by amelioration at 3:35 PM on November 30, 2010
Best answer: As to other novels with shufflable contents, there's 253: "a novel for the Internet about London Underground in seven cars and a crash". You choose the way you click through the story.
posted by squishles at 3:52 PM on November 30, 2010 [1 favorite]
posted by squishles at 3:52 PM on November 30, 2010 [1 favorite]
Best answer: McSweeney's Issue 16 has a story that is an actual deck of cards this shuffled up and read.
posted by Brent Parker at 3:53 PM on November 30, 2010
posted by Brent Parker at 3:53 PM on November 30, 2010
Best answer: Italo Calvino's Castle of Crossed Destinies consists of several stories drawn from different interpretations of tarot card draws.
posted by pickypicky at 4:29 PM on November 30, 2010
posted by pickypicky at 4:29 PM on November 30, 2010
Best answer: From memory, Castle of Crossed Destinies is based on reading the same grid of cards, but in different directions (L to R, R to L, top to bottom, etc).
Georges Perec's Life, a User's Manual also adopts a similar kind of conceit, being based (again, from memory a while back) on a jigsaw puzzle, and also on a crossword, and you could read it (like Dictionary of the Khazars) in whichever order you like, although the overall 'meaning' wouldn't really change.
That approach, of making a story dependent on a relatively arbitrary external structure derived from things like a deck of cards or a crossword, was one of the constraints that writers within the OuLiPo tradition imposed upon themselves (probing the "mathematical" permutations of narrative based on some self-imposed constraint or other) so that might be a vein that you could mine for information about similar kinds of novels.
posted by UbuRoivas at 5:06 PM on November 30, 2010 [1 favorite]
Georges Perec's Life, a User's Manual also adopts a similar kind of conceit, being based (again, from memory a while back) on a jigsaw puzzle, and also on a crossword, and you could read it (like Dictionary of the Khazars) in whichever order you like, although the overall 'meaning' wouldn't really change.
That approach, of making a story dependent on a relatively arbitrary external structure derived from things like a deck of cards or a crossword, was one of the constraints that writers within the OuLiPo tradition imposed upon themselves (probing the "mathematical" permutations of narrative based on some self-imposed constraint or other) so that might be a vein that you could mine for information about similar kinds of novels.
posted by UbuRoivas at 5:06 PM on November 30, 2010 [1 favorite]
Best answer: That's Rayuela (Hopscotch) by Cortazar.
posted by cobain_angel at 6:52 PM on November 30, 2010
posted by cobain_angel at 6:52 PM on November 30, 2010
Best answer: There is a whole genre of experimental fiction called hyperfiction (or sometimes "interactive hyperfiction") that aims at this same shake-up of the traditional narrative structure, through electronic hyperlinks. You might find some of that work interesting. This article offers a survey of the genre along with a discussion of some in-print works that are precursors to electronic hyperfiction.
posted by aka burlap at 2:50 PM on December 1, 2010
posted by aka burlap at 2:50 PM on December 1, 2010
Response by poster: These are all fascinating, and I'm grateful to everyone that's contributed!
aka burlap, thanks for reminding me about hyperfiction, which I was actually into in high school but completely forgot about. There was recently a neat choose-your-own-adventure-type audio mystery story that used Spotify tracks to provide the same kind of branching, which I enjoyed immensely.
posted by lhall at 3:22 PM on December 1, 2010 [1 favorite]
aka burlap, thanks for reminding me about hyperfiction, which I was actually into in high school but completely forgot about. There was recently a neat choose-your-own-adventure-type audio mystery story that used Spotify tracks to provide the same kind of branching, which I enjoyed immensely.
posted by lhall at 3:22 PM on December 1, 2010 [1 favorite]
Best answer: McSweeney's again: issue 22 has a whole book of Oulipo works based on mathematical constructs. Not a direct parallel to what you asked for but since both McSweeney's and Oulipo are mentioned above I thought I'd point out where they crossed paths.
posted by kostia at 8:30 PM on December 4, 2010
posted by kostia at 8:30 PM on December 4, 2010
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by Merzbau at 3:26 PM on November 30, 2010 [4 favorites]