Ergodic Literature

As Term 4 approaches I'm about shoulder-deep in preparing resources for HSC Extension English 1 and enjoying the opportunities afforded by the new syllabus. It's one of those things where the more you look, the more you find, and part of the challenge is in parsing the seemingly infinite bounty of literature that's on offer and figuring out what will work with my particular class when exploring the mandatory Literary Worlds module. There has been some excellent Professional Learning courtesy of the English Teachers Association that I found very helpful, and the networks of hardworking Extension teachers sharing resources on Facebook has been quite a boon as well, but, as with all things, I just can't get my head completely around something until I start trying to do it myself. 

One of the joys of Extension English 1 is that the course is broad enough to allow for a multitude of cautious creepings down various literary back-alleys. One such alleyway that stood out to my sensibilities as a 'must' was ergodic literature. In exploring what a writer does, and how literature is read, the most extreme avenue to travel down must surely be those narratives that require the most effort to read.

What Is It?

The most common definition (and like its grandfather, postmodernism, its a definition that's a little tricky to pin down) is that ergodic literature is any text that requires 'nontrivial effort' to read it. That is to say, beyond reading the words and turning the page, the text will require something extra from the reader if they are to grasp the beginnings of meaning intended by the author (and that intention may even be that meaning is created almost solely by the reader). 

Here is a PPT that contains a more in-depth explanation.

And here are some examples from ergodic texts that students can look at. 

Engaging Students

Okay, so my main reason for doing this with my class is that it'll let me share two of my all-time favourite texts: Building Stories and Riddley Walker. 

Building Stories - the box

Building Stories by Chris Ware is a unique graphic novel that comes in an A3-sized box. Within this box are 14 different texts in a range of mediums - newspaper, comics, pamphlet, cloth book, flip book - with no specified order for them to be read in. Most intriguingly, there is a map of a house that seems to indicate where each of the texts should or can be read. For example, one comic is to be read in the kitchen, so I read that one while having breakfast. Another text is linked to the bedroom, one to an armchair, etc, etc.

Note the schematic - this seems to indicate which part of a house links to each of the specific texts within the box

All 14 texts - I had to step back a fair way to fit them all in one photo!

Russell Hoban's Riddley Walker appears to be more like a regular novel on the surface. It's a comparatively slim post-apocalyptic text set out in the traditional fashion, however, where the reader has to do some work is in translating the first person narrative's invented dialect into something more identifiable. In setting his story set far into a post-nuclear future devoid of technology, Hoban has constructed a version of the English language that has distorted and disintegrated over time. Some words remain the same, some words are recognisable with a little work from the reader, and some words are maddeningly obscure and enigmatic in meaning. What's great about Riddley Walker is that the more you read of it the more meaning you begin to glean from the text - essentially because the reader, with concentration, becomes increasingly fluent in this new dialect.

After introducing these two texts to the class the next step is to let the students engage with them. I've selected two relatively-easy extracts from Riddley Walker, the opening page and a section in which the oft-mentioned mythical figure 'Eusa' seems to join the text as a speaking character, with the intention for students to read and then discuss what some of the words might mean.

Extracts here.

Independent Response
After students have been taken on this little tour of the ergodic genre the next step is to consolidate their thinking. Coming about six lessons or so into a look at the Literary Worlds module, the intention is that students should be familiar with a few different literary theories about reading by this point. I'll blog more about this at a later point, but the key ideas I want them to think about are:

• The text is the message (this is the traditional, formalist approach to reading).
• The reader creates the message in conversation with the author.
• The author's intentions are irrelevant as they cannot control what or how the reader reads.
• There is no single message in a text - the shifting nature of context changes what is read.
• Reading is a 'community' act - our literary competence comes with our experience of how literature is interpreted by others. 

So, with all this in mind, students should have a bit of time discussing and reflecting on ergodic texts before responding to the following question with a paragraph-length response:

Why would an author choose to write ergodic literature?

Which should give scope for a range of responses and, at the very least, let students start to iterate what they're thinking.