There was a time in my life when I viewed everything through the philosophy of Ayn Rand, author of “Atlas Shrugged,” “The Fountainhead,” and several non-fiction books discussing objectivism, her guiding philosophy. While I’ve long since changed my philosophical beliefs, I still carry in my metaphorical back pocket a handy tool borrowed from her discussions. Rand maintained that there are no contradictions. Whenever you are facing a contradiction, she advised, check your premises. One of them is wrong.
The description of narrativity as something confined to a temporal sequence seems, to me, to be based on an assumed premise; one that insists that only one action or thought can present itself at a time when we tell a story. Since narrativity relies on the relationship that unfolds between the narrative and the viewer, it is impossible to ignore that the story being created in the mind of the viewer has the opportunity to spread out and connect with parallel or tangential stories at the same time.
Even when considering the more austere idea of the narrative, the simple describing of a sequence of events, one cannot ignore the supporting stories and ideas that create a backdrop in the storyteller’s mind during creation of the narrative. Never mind that only one sequence of events is ever presented at a time. Like the parallel universes that string theorists say resonate throughout our universe, narratives are shaped by other stories that exist, in tandem, in the narrator’s mind: unseen, but no less important.
A temporal arranging of events is a neat and tidy way in which theorists can describe something as dynamic as narrativity, but it in no way represents the messy, complex and intertwined way in which we live our lives… or tell about the living of those lives. It is that abundant collection of actual or imagined experiences that gives illustrative or pictorial narrativity the power to bring us to our emotional knees. Certainly a single image evokes a different experience for the viewer than, say, a video or a novel, but different does not necessarily mean “less than.” In fact, it rarely does.
