Mitchell

I don't see anything wrong with an interactive novel.
Personally, I loved Cathy's Book. I thought the pieces of evidence that came with the book only helped to enrich the experience of reading it- instead of imagining the pictures, the notes, the websites, and the voicemails, we were given them to look at for ourselves. We could draw our own conclusions, and then test them out by reading the book.
Even though there was some disappointment- I didn't imagine Victor looked the way he did in the photo we had to piece together- overall, the evidence helped make the story more real for me, and I found myself treating it as more of an experience, more interactive, than other fictional novels I've read, where everything is left to the imagination.  read more »

In Beyond Comparison Mitchell talks about the relation between the visual and verbal aspect of the reading experience and proposes the term "imagetext" as an explanation for the unity of these two factors. There is one genre in particular, where I believe that this theory hold true and that is in children's literature.

I'm also taking this Victorian Literature class along with Jennilee and this week we've just finished our focus on Victorian children's literature, which is why we spent time on Alice's Adventures In Wonderland. Our professor did indeed emphasize the importance of acquiring a copy of Alice's Adventure In Wonderland that included the original drawings by John Tenniel. So closely did Lewis Carrol and John Tenniel work on this novel that at one point of the process a particular chapter/ episode of Alice in Wonderland was cut out because Tenniel could not figure out the correct way of illustrating the experience. I just thought that was really interesting.  read more »

As a photowriter, I find myself highly intrigued by Mitchell's article--I've been attempting to research the image/text relationship for the past year or so because I myself create works that juxtapose text and image. I dislike the stratification of the two disciplines--the "sense that verbal and visual media are to be seen as distinct, separate, and parallel shperes that converge only at some higher level of abstraction" (Mitchell 85 [coursepack 24]). While the use of text is permissable and even vaguely encouraged in the art world, it is seen as an outsider by most members of the community. They view written word as an add-on; yet once it is involved in a work, it becomes critical in some (usually) abstract fashion. It is a "novel...detail" that gets everyone excited and concerned--artificially so (Mitchell 86). Image/text is a cause for chatter, for discussion that circles only the supporting role of the text.  read more »

I find it rather odd that there are no pictures to accompany W.J.T. Mitchell's "Beyond Comparison: Picture, Text, and Method." For an essay on the interconnectivity of images and text, it seems to be quite limited in its presentation. In the description of Sunset Boulevard, Mitchell demonstrates how a primarily visual work can be supplemented by and (to an extent) converted into an almost entirely textual form, but there is no complementary visual illustration of a text-based work, such as Chatman's diagrams of narrative theory. Mitchell does not even provide stills from the film, so those of us who have not seen it depend on his words to form our mental image of the scenes.

Mitchell's words seem to be arguing that images and text can and should be studied in relation to one another, but the essay doesn't look like it is terribly concerned with visual media. The cost of printing a image is significantly greater than that of printing text, and a low-quality image would likely do more harm than good to the argument, but by restricting the essay to text, Mitchell seems to have devalued pictures, thereby undermining half of his thesis.

"The claim that all media are mixed media, all arts composite arts, may actually sound like common sense to a generation raised on MTV" (Mitchell 107 [Coursepack 35]).

Yes, it does sound like common sense to me. But, no, it's not because of MTV. I know that Mitchell probably meant no offense by that comment -- it was probably just an attempt to connect with humor or popular culture, but I really think that more credit should be given to my generation and our culture that goes beyond MTV. I like Mitchell and definitely agree with his comments in "Beyond Comparison." I guess, first of all, I just wanted to expand on his comment.  read more »