Ergodic literature
I stumbled across the concept of "ergodic literature" recently, by reading the journal of one my favourite authors, Caitlín R. Kiernan. When I first started to read her entries, I noticed that whenever she mentioned the word "house", it was written in blue, whereas the rest of the text was black. I asked in a comment about this oddity, and was told it's a reference to House of Leaves, by Mark Z Danielewski - a book I'd heard of, but didn't know much about (and which I subsequently got for my birthday). I looked it up, and this is how I discovered the concept of ergodic writing (or perhaps ergodic reading).
Ergodic theory, as far as I know, has mathematical origins. "Ergodicity" can be said to occur when two different types of statistic analysis give a consistent result. However, I think the concept of ergodic literature uses the term based on its original meaning: "ergodic" is a combination the Greek words ergon and hodos, which mean "work/occupation/act" and "way/road/path". Basically, ergodic literature can be said to be literature that requires a non-trivial effort to read and process. This "non-trivial effort" must consist of more than simply reading by moving one's eyes along lines of text and the periodic turning of pages, and more than a linear interpretation of the information presented.
Espen J. Aarseth (apparently a major figure in the fields of video game studies and electronic literature) coined this term, defining cybertext as an example of ergodic literature. By "cybertext" he means more than "hypertext" of the link-clicking variety - things like ELIZA, the Rogerian therapy chat bot, which produces different answers based on the user's inputs.
Other examples of ergodic literature given by Aarseth are: wall inscriptions in ancient Egyptian temples; the I Ching, a text which contains a key to itself; Apollinaire's calligrammes in which the words of the poem are "spread out in several directions to form a picture on the page, with no clear sequence in which to be read" (which reminds me of magnetic poetry); Marc Saporta's Composition No. 1, Roman, which is a novel with interchangeable pages; and other texts in which the audience can choose between alternate scenarios/endings. All these examples can be said to require non-trivial effort from the reader, who must actively participate in the construction of the text itself.
I think House of Leaves will be a very interesting (and possibly challenging) read. I will scan in some of the pages to illustrate this point. In addition to the, shall we say, unconventional format and page layout, the book has a fictional author, at least one unreliable narrator, and is made up of scraps from different media and genres (and, from what I can tell, is a bit of a mindfuck in general).
As I was reading through information on ergodic literature, I was reminded of Deleuze and Guattari. I can't remember if they've written about it, but certainly some of their writing I would class as ergodic - not because of odd text styles, but because of its non-linearity. In a lot of ways D&G is like a self-referential puzzle that can't ever be perfectly pieced together because it keeps changing. Two other authors who seem (to me) to fit into this category (although they're quite different to each other, and to Deleuze & Guattari) are Paul Auster and Jorge Luis Borges. Perhaps Kafka too, although I haven't read anything by him in many years.
I think ergodic literature furthers the notion of heteroglossia as applied to writing/reading (different voices within the text, or readers deriving different interpretations from the same text, which may well be different from the author's own interpretation or intention), as in many cases it's explicitly expected that the reader/viewer would make their own meaning, derive their own conclusions, and (at least to some extent) create a different novel to the one they're holding in their hands.
I really like the thought of books-as-riddles, labyrinthine writing, the reader as accomplice to the plot, and non-linear traversing of text - at least that's my (quite possibly limited) understanding of ergodic literature. Fascinating stuff!
Ergodic theory, as far as I know, has mathematical origins. "Ergodicity" can be said to occur when two different types of statistic analysis give a consistent result. However, I think the concept of ergodic literature uses the term based on its original meaning: "ergodic" is a combination the Greek words ergon and hodos, which mean "work/occupation/act" and "way/road/path". Basically, ergodic literature can be said to be literature that requires a non-trivial effort to read and process. This "non-trivial effort" must consist of more than simply reading by moving one's eyes along lines of text and the periodic turning of pages, and more than a linear interpretation of the information presented.
Espen J. Aarseth (apparently a major figure in the fields of video game studies and electronic literature) coined this term, defining cybertext as an example of ergodic literature. By "cybertext" he means more than "hypertext" of the link-clicking variety - things like ELIZA, the Rogerian therapy chat bot, which produces different answers based on the user's inputs.
Other examples of ergodic literature given by Aarseth are: wall inscriptions in ancient Egyptian temples; the I Ching, a text which contains a key to itself; Apollinaire's calligrammes in which the words of the poem are "spread out in several directions to form a picture on the page, with no clear sequence in which to be read" (which reminds me of magnetic poetry); Marc Saporta's Composition No. 1, Roman, which is a novel with interchangeable pages; and other texts in which the audience can choose between alternate scenarios/endings. All these examples can be said to require non-trivial effort from the reader, who must actively participate in the construction of the text itself.
I think House of Leaves will be a very interesting (and possibly challenging) read. I will scan in some of the pages to illustrate this point. In addition to the, shall we say, unconventional format and page layout, the book has a fictional author, at least one unreliable narrator, and is made up of scraps from different media and genres (and, from what I can tell, is a bit of a mindfuck in general).
As I was reading through information on ergodic literature, I was reminded of Deleuze and Guattari. I can't remember if they've written about it, but certainly some of their writing I would class as ergodic - not because of odd text styles, but because of its non-linearity. In a lot of ways D&G is like a self-referential puzzle that can't ever be perfectly pieced together because it keeps changing. Two other authors who seem (to me) to fit into this category (although they're quite different to each other, and to Deleuze & Guattari) are Paul Auster and Jorge Luis Borges. Perhaps Kafka too, although I haven't read anything by him in many years.
I think ergodic literature furthers the notion of heteroglossia as applied to writing/reading (different voices within the text, or readers deriving different interpretations from the same text, which may well be different from the author's own interpretation or intention), as in many cases it's explicitly expected that the reader/viewer would make their own meaning, derive their own conclusions, and (at least to some extent) create a different novel to the one they're holding in their hands.
I really like the thought of books-as-riddles, labyrinthine writing, the reader as accomplice to the plot, and non-linear traversing of text - at least that's my (quite possibly limited) understanding of ergodic literature. Fascinating stuff!