Narratives
Narrative Essays
Textually, Ghost Metropolis takes the form of narrative storytelling largely on the model of Plutarch or Livy, but also on the model of Braudel. I have included forty-two (42) short "narrative essays," each averaging 12 typewritten pages. Much shorter than a traditional book "chapter," these are "essays" in the tradition of Montaigne: literally essais, tries or attempts, to recount what took place and to explain, by mapping the networks of actions that constituted each event, the shape of the past.
Narrative Pathways
The Narrative Essays, in turn, are presented sequentially in different "Narrative Pathways." Cross-cutting groupings of narrative essays are re-presented in multiple pathways. In the narrative essay and narrative pathways I narrate and analyze deeds of the great and the powerless alike, to assess their contributions to the inscribed lifeways and regimes of power from their generation to our own, 21st-century generation.
Visual Narratives
Intertwined with the textual narratives are visual narratives. Visuality is not always or intrinsically narratological. Image sdo not operate intrinsically on a sequential reading, with any kind of plot or story, no beginning or end. Rather, images are read by shape, form, juxtaposition, and simultaneity. However, visual images can also be assembled into a sequential series, and this is a method of expression that I have used extensively in Ghost Metropolis. I have created, curated, and arranged many sequences of images, which reference each other in various ways. My captions, and the relationship to my textual narratives helps to explicate the narrative relationship, but the visual progression can also speak for itself in the deep syntax of visual form.
