Rhett Davis | Deakin University (original) (raw)
I’m a writer, academic and PhD candidate living in Geelong, Australia. I'm currently writing a novel as part of a creative PhD at Deakin University in transmedial narrative, with a focus on print and interactive digital fiction. My research interests are varied but currently sit somewhere between 'experimental' or avant-garde literature, video games and interactive narrative, and absurdist, satirical, speculative and weird fiction. I've published short fiction widely in Australia and North America, in places like The Big Issue, The Sleepers Almanac, and The Dalhousie Review.
less
Uploads
Papers by Rhett Davis
In the twentieth century many writers experimented with the form of the novel, from the Modernist... more In the twentieth century many writers experimented with the form of the novel, from the Modernists James Joyce and Virginia Woolf; to the Oulipo group of Raymond Queneau, Italo Calvino and Georges Perec; to contemporary writers such as Jennifer Egan, Mark Z. Danielewski and Robert Coover. Despite their attempts the overall shape of fiction narrative does not appear to have been significantly altered in the popular consciousness. Meanwhile, an entirely new and extremely popular medium for narrative has emerged in recent decades – that present in interactive digital entertainment, or video games – whose writers and developers are grappling with many of the experimental narrative techniques previously attempted by many of these fiction writers. In this paper I compare the works of B.S. Johnson's The Unfortunates and Raymond Queneau's Exercises in Style to the games Everybody's Gone to the Rapture and The Stanley Parable, and argue that there are significant parallels in their use of randomness and narrative repetition and revision. I conclude that significant narrative experimentation is being played out now in the minds of many game writers and designers around the world, and suggest that a popular revolution in narrative form anticipated by writers such as Queneau and Johnson might not take place in the novel at all, but in games.
In the twentieth century many writers experimented with the form of the novel, from the Modernist... more In the twentieth century many writers experimented with the form of the novel, from the Modernists James Joyce and Virginia Woolf; to the Oulipo group of Raymond Queneau, Italo Calvino and Georges Perec; to contemporary writers such as Jennifer Egan, Mark Z. Danielewski and Robert Coover. Despite their attempts the overall shape of fiction narrative does not appear to have been significantly altered in the popular consciousness. Meanwhile, an entirely new and extremely popular medium for narrative has emerged in recent decades – that present in interactive digital entertainment, or video games – whose writers and developers are grappling with many of the experimental narrative techniques previously attempted by many of these fiction writers. In this paper I compare the works of B.S. Johnson's The Unfortunates and Raymond Queneau's Exercises in Style to the games Everybody's Gone to the Rapture and The Stanley Parable, and argue that there are significant parallels in their use of randomness and narrative repetition and revision. I conclude that significant narrative experimentation is being played out now in the minds of many game writers and designers around the world, and suggest that a popular revolution in narrative form anticipated by writers such as Queneau and Johnson might not take place in the novel at all, but in games.