I think that we’re on the verge of a new sense of, a new understanding of, narrative. I’ve been really looking hard, really studying what’s happening, and it seems to me that the space in which, the intellectual space in which, we locate narrative is currently in the process of shifting position out of the text. By that I mean that I believe that we can no longer count on finding, on isolating, the narrative in the text per se, in and of itself. I feel that the most efficacious manner in which to approach narrative at our particular juncture is to see it as having moved out of the text and into the space between the text and the reader.Really, this is just the latest step upon a long evolutionary road that goes all the way back to, “In the beginning was the word.” To my mind it goes sort of like this. First, at the start, narrative was located in God. Then it came into the ethereal space between God and the writer. Next, it moved into the soul of the writer. After that, it shifted to the conceptual space between the writer and the text. At last, it reached its current state, where the narrative is simply located in the text. But right now, as I’ve just said, narrative is once again on the move. I believe that its new address, as it were, will be the transactional space between the writer and the reader. As to how long it will stay there, your guess is as good as mine, only time will tell. However, as far as I can tell, there is only one more step left, after this one, in the long journey of the narrative and that is when it at long last comes to rest firmly and securely in the bosom of the reader. At which point the text as we know it will disappear and the reader will be the writer of her own story.
So, what are you doing later tonight?