for very active reading because the reader has to either choose between
alternatives or allow for all the different possibilities of meaning. Roland
Barthes (1974) distinguished between readerly texts, where the author has
tight control over the narrative and its interpretation, and writerly texts
where readers are encouraged to exercise their interpretative powers to the
full. Readerly texts are more closed, writerly texts more open. Most exper-
imental narratives tend towards a greater degree of ‘writerliness’.
Open narratives also tend to address history in a more multifaceted way,
because they do not close off alternative possibilities. Closed narratives can
tell powerful stories; but they can also—as postcolonial theorist Homi
Bhabha (1994) has argued—marginalise and exclude. More open narrative
strategies are sometimes required to address the complexities of history
and subjectivity, because no single story can ever speak for all cultures and
identities. In Chapter 7, Postmodern f(r)ictions, narrative openness,
and the way it affects how we view history, identity and reality, will be
explored further. We will also explore postmodern adaptations and
rethinkings of character and plot.
REFERENCES
Achilles, S. 1995, Waste , Local Consumption Press, Sydney.
Amis, M. 2003, Time’s Arrow or The Nature of the Offence , Vintage, London. First
published in 1991 in Britain by Jonathan Cape.
Atwood, M. 1994, The Robber Bride , Virago, London.
Barnes, J. 2001, Love, etc , Picador, London. First published in 2000 by Jonathan Cape.
Barthelme, F. 1989, ‘Shopgirls’, Enchanted Apartments, Sad Motels: Thirty Years of
American Fiction , (ed.) D. Anderson, McPhee Gribble Publishers, Melbourne,
pp. 49–62.
Barthes, R. 1974, S/Z , (trans.) R. Miller, Hill & Wang, New York.
Bhabha, H. 1994, The Location of Culture , Routledge, London.
Borges, J.L. 1970, ‘The Shape of the Sword’, Labyrinths: Selected Stories and Other
Writings , Penguin, Harmondsworth, Middlesex, pp. 96–101.
Chatman, S. 1978, Story and Discourse: Narrative Structure in Fiction and Film ,
Cornell University Press, Ithaca, New York.
Coetzee, J.M. 2003, Elizabeth Costello: Eight Lessons , Knopf, Random House
Australia, Sydney.
Currie, M. 1998, Postmodern Narrative Theory , Macmillan Press, Basingstoke,
Hampshire.
Danaher, G., Schirato, T. and Webb, J. 2000, Understanding Foucault ,Allen &
Unwin, Sydney.
108 The Writing Experiment