Author's Note - fleshthresholdnarrative


The texts which appear here in the New River constitute part of a larger interest I have in modes of appropriation, montage/collage, assemblage, cut-ups, and other techniques which explore the uses and dynamics of various heterogeneous elements within a given discursive context. The particular concern with the "fleshthresholdnarrative" series is with the limit-sites of narrative (where narrative spills over into theory, poetry, data/information, the sciences,history, etc.). Rather than (re)constructing a more familiar form of narrative (those forms of chronological, causal, and organized events inherited from the 18th century), my interest was to explore the non-narrative aspects of narrative, and the narrative aspects in non-narrative within a context akin to J.G. Ballard's "condensed novels" (e.g., "The Atrocity Exhibition"). The highly aphoristic and dense quality of these segments was also well-suited to the medium of hypertext and the net in terms of establishing in the act of reading a range of inter-relationships. These texts are also a part of a website project currently underway (also involving more theoretical hypertexts, as well as other series like "fleshthresholdnarrative"), and are part of the work I'm doing as a graduate student in comparative literature at Rutgers.