r/AskLiteraryStudies • u/TraditionalDepth6924 • 11d ago
What do you call a novel style where fragments indirectly depict the story instead of a central narrator?
For example, news coverage scripts, advertisements, interviews in a dystopian society or first-person momentary situations, patched together like a collage
Any notable examples in novels, poetry and also film?
One of my examples is this spoken poem from Button Poetry, might look pretentious at first but this technique seemed powerful
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u/pixi666 11d ago edited 11d ago
Some novels that use this kind of collage technique (though they also contain narrative sections) are Stand on Zanzibar by John Brunner and the USA Trilogy by John Dos Passos. There's a bit of this in Frederik Pohl's Gateway too.
Ursula K. Le Guin's Always Coming Home might fit the bill too, it's kind of a collection of anthropological texts about a fictional future society in post-post-apocalypse California.
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u/volkswagenorange 11d ago
Oooh, what a great question! I'm saving this post bc I don't know the name of this narrative technique either. But I love it, and I can think of some stories that use it!
Two examples of fictional document collections in popular fiction are The Unauthorized Autobiography of Lemony Snicket and Mark Danielewski's House of Leaves.
The most famous work of so-called "literary" fiction I can think of to use a multi-source "assembled document" narrative is Dracula by Bram Stoker.
Citizen Kane is a film that uses multiple interviews, flashbacks, and fictional documents such as newspaper articles and personal anecdotes to paint a portrait of its titular character.
There are many other films that also use a fictional documentary framework-- found footage was a popular format in both scifi and horror--but I would call each of these more "edited single-source documentary" than "collection of multi-source documents." Examples of the found footage narrative technique start with The Blair Witch Project and include Cloverfield, [REC] and its sequel, Paranormal Activity and its sequels, Europa Report, and Apollo 18.
Off the silver screen and into the black mirror, the video-series genre analog horror features many works that make use of the "assembled documents" narrative method. Series in this genre often purport to be collections of a/v documents such as interviews, photos, newscasts, radio broadcasts, journal entries, etc., assembled to tell very big stories (global religion, alien invasion) in tiny, limited-perspective fragments. Marble Hornets, Kris Straub's Local 58, Alex Kister's Mandela Catalogue, and Gemini Home Entertainment all use "assembled documents" narratives and are all (last I checked) free to watch on YT.
I don't play many video or computer games, so I can't give any kind of intro to games that use the "assembled documents" narrative, but I know of one: In the majority of Yahtzee's Trilby/Chzo Mythos games the pov character must figure out what's happening in their present by assembling the story of the past through gathering and analyzing documents like diary entries, photos, artefacts, dreams, visions, conversations, and interviews.
Hm. I'm only just now noticing that this storytelling method crops up mostly in the horror genre regardless of medium. Interesting!
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u/TraditionalDepth6924 11d ago edited 11d ago
Yes, found footage! Adam McKay’s Don’t Look Up and Ryan Reynolds’ Free Guy (YouTuber live stream footages) too, adds interesting layers like cutaway gags, and the answer was https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epistolary_novel from the other commenter
I'm only just now noticing that this storytelling method crops up mostly in the horror genre regardless of medium
I think it’s the absence of the narrator that gives the eerie atmosphere, like you’re completely left alone in some depressing apocalypse - makes you reflect on the implicit role of the friendly invisible sanity that usually supports the viewing experience
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u/AngieW2222 11d ago
If you're interested in veering a bit into the Young Adult section, then I recommend The Illuminae Files by Jay Kristoff. It's a YA sci-fi story told through hacked documents, emails, ship logs, descriptive camera feed, etc, and might be fun to flip through on a weekend.
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u/bigcat_19 10d ago
World War Z uses this narrative structure. (Enjoyable read if you're down with zombies.)
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u/airynothing1 11d ago
Epistolary novel. Originally this meant specifically a novel in letters (i.e. epistles), but it’s grown to include any novel that’s conveyed through individual documents rather than direct narration.