1_Introduction

Adopting a cognitive and econarratological perspective, this article explores the use of framing strategies for slowness as a way in which multiperspective narratives may foreground the complex entanglement of human and more-than-human temporalities. By introducing the concept of ‘framed slowness,’ I aim to describe a slow way of experiencing narrative elicited by the use of segmentivity and other framing devices. This concept is particularly well-suited to examining the ecological value of multiperspective narratives. While by no means restricted to multiperspective narratives, framed slowness exemplifies their ecological potential as they inherently rely on framing techniques to structure and organize several viewpoints, and display a wide set of formal devices conducive to slow modes of reading. However, narrative theory has often overlooked these features of multiperspective narratives, prioritizing ontological framing and speed over ‘horizontal frames’ and slowness. To address this gap, this article dedicates separate sections to examining frames and slowness in multiperspective narratives, focusing, in the final section, on their interplay in the textual analysis of my case study.

Before delving into frames and slowness, I would like to narrow the scope of the concept of multiperspectivity discussed in this article. So far, the main unanswered question in the narratological study of multiperspectivity has been how to connect the how of the narrative mediation of perspectives with the what of the narrated content. [1] For this reason, Vera and Ansgar Nünning have suggested to restrict the notion “to cases where points of view interact in salient and significant ways, and thus create multiperspectivity by, for instance, repeatedly portraying the same event from various different angles.” [2] Conversely, Christoph Bode remarks that it is “an unnecessarily narrow interpretation,” that would “exclude precisely those cases that are the most exciting ones in literary and aesthetic terms: those in which the reader quite properly wonders in what sense the ‘same’ event is actually being described.” [3] A full discussion of this complex theoretical issue falls beyond the scope of this article. Despite Bode’s insightful critique, I focus here on what I will call ‘repetitive’ multiperspectivity, that is, a typology that adheres to Meir Sternberg’s “structure of repetition,” [4] in which the same event in the fabula is recounted multiple times in the syuzhet from different character perspectives. In this way, it will be possible to explore repetition and segmentivity as defining features of the ‘repetitive’ typology of multiperspective narratives.

In the next section, I will focus on the undertheorized role of horizontal frames in multiperspective narratives, regarding segmentivity as one of their key formal features. For the purpose of this article, it will be crucial to emphasize the pivotal role of framing devices in multiperspective narratives, thus introducing their inherent potential for slowness. In Section 3, I will discuss the ways in which these narratives can foster a slow mode of reading through formal and reading strategies. These include segmentivity and paratextual framing on the formal side, and coordination of perspectives and rereading as reading strategies. While repetitive multiperspective narratives have usually been regarded as a fast mode of narration—typical of detective fiction and tense, eventful novels—the abundance of segmentivity and other framing strategies can disrupt linear progression and decelerate readers’ engagement with the text, thus foregrounding slowness as an affective experience. In the final section, following Marco Caracciolo’s understanding of slow narrative as fostering the “imagination of human-nonhuman enmeshment,” [5] I turn to Mark Z. Danielewski’s Only Revolutions (2006)—an experimental novel where frames are ubiquitous—to show how framed slowness can reveal the hidden entanglement of individual characters’ journeys and the nonhuman world.

2_Segmentivity in Multiperspective Narratives

Frames are one of the most slippery concepts in narrative theory. In one of the seminal collected works on frames and framings in literature and other media, Werner Wolf refers to the “deplorably inconsistent use of ‘frame’ in present-day literary theory.” [6] He then suggests understanding the different phenomena labeled as frames under the idea of a “metaconcept” whose main function is to guide readers in their interpretive efforts. Conversely, Eric Berlatsky has influentially proposed a distinction between two metaconcepts: the “cognitive frame,” and the frame as “physical border,” that is, “anything that lies on the margins of a text.” [7] While discussing the latter, Berlatsky considers narrative frames in embedded narratives, by referring to Marie-Laure Ryan’s graphic illustration of their structure. In Ryan’s frame structure of The Arabian Nights, solid lines indicate “ontological” boundaries that delimit domains within the semantic universe of the story, that is, ontological frames between different diegetic levels; dotted lines, on the other hand, indicate “illocutionary” divisions between stories, that is, delimitations between different speech acts and narrative voices as part of the same storyworld. [8] In this section, I focus on this second type of frames by considering them as a defining feature of repetitive multiperspective narratives. Conceptualized in this way, multiperspectivity can be regarded as a highly segmented mode of storytelling, whose abundance of framing devices is likely to elicit slowness.

Frames have always played a central role in the narratological debate on multiperspectivity. In his analysis of framing borders, Wolf refers to a specific function of the “framings of frame stories” in multiperspective narratives, namely “to introduce (or at least to contribute to) the pluri- or multiperspectivity of a narrative.” [9] For Wolf, in presence of “at least two different views on the same phenomenon,” [10] multiperspectivity can be elicited both through the juxtaposition of perspectives in the framing alone or in the framing and the framed text. Wolf’s discussion strikingly aligns with Ryan’s distinction between ontological (combination of perspectives in the framing and framed text) and illocutionary frames (same framing text). While frames of “ontological” or “vertical” multiperspectivity have been extensively explored [11]—and represent an effective framing strategy to elicit slowness—a systematic account of “horizontal” frames of multiperspectivity is still missing in narrative theory. Although a comprehensive analysis is beyond the scope of this article, my conceptualization of segmentivity as a key feature of multiperspective narratives aims to highlight their inherent potential for slowness through framing devices. [12] In the specific case of multiperspective narratives, I prefer the term ‘horizontal’ multiperspectivity, and thus horizontal frames to Ryan’s illocutionary frames to discuss the different types of perspectives on the same diegetic level. In Vera and Ansgar Nünning’s seminal theorization, multiperspectivity can be distinguished in multiperspective narration, focalization, or structure. [13] While some texts can present multiple narrating instances of the same phenomenon, other narratives still qualify as multiperspective by including several character consciousnesses through multiple internal focalization. Thus, as Ryan’s illocutionary frame exclusively pertains to speech acts and narrative voices, it fails to encompass instances of multiperspective focalization, which are nevertheless still framed through segmentivity in multiperspective narratives.

Take for example the complex multiperspective structure of Ian McEwan’s Atonement (2001). [14] After adopting a third-person omniscient narrator for the whole novel, the last section, “London 1999,” employs delayed disclosure to reveal that this apparent anonymous omniscient narrator is in fact a character, Briony, the author of the novel “Atonement” that we have just read. The last section thus crosses an ontological boundary, with Briony’s character narration framing her fictional “Atonement” by Briony Tallis. Apart from the mind-tricking twist, this is a classic example of frame narrative—Ryan’s ontological frame—that triggers what I will call ‘vertical multiperspectivity.’ According to Bode, one of the most sophisticated functions of multiperspectivity is the “hierarchization of narratives and perspectives,” [15] that is, putting multiple perspectives on a vertical axis. As suggested above, Wolf has shown how framing devices can be considered as phenomena of multiperspectivity when a higher level of the text encapsulates and frames the subordinate perspectives. This typically occurs through frame stories and any other kind of embedded narrations: in Atonement, it is a novel written by a character who is part of the storyworld, which creates vertical multiperspectivity between Briony’s point of view of the last section and the different focalizing characters who are juxtaposed throughout her own novel, including Briony as character of “Atonement.” Multiperspective focalization dominates, in fact, Briony’s “Atonement,” and it is extensively thematized throughout the novel. [16] In Part One, more specifically, a sequence around a fountain is reported through multiple perspectives: the section is segmented through chapter division, with each chapter framing a different focalizing character. In this case, rather than illocutionary frames, I adopt the term ‘horizontal frames’ of multiperspectivity to describe the juxtaposition of different character perspectives on the same diegetic level. [17] It is precisely this segmentivity, that is, the articulation of horizontal frames, that constitutes a critical formal feature of multiperspective narratives, proving crucial for both multiperspective narration and focalization. [18]

Therefore, I understand the juxtaposition of horizontal frames in multiperspective narratives through the concept of segmentivity proposed by Rachel Blau DuPlessis and Brian McHale for a definition of poetry, and then borrowed by Sean O’Sullivan for his theorization of serial storytelling. According to McHale, segmentivity—defined as “the ability to articulate and make meaning by selecting, deploying, and combining segments” [19]—is the ‘dominant’ of poetry, as ‘narrativity’ is of narrative. For O’Sullivan, segmentivity is critical to all serial forms: “the juxtaposition of distinct installments is constitutive to serial meaning-making, just as the juxtaposition of segments of language is constitutive to the designs of poetry.” [20] I see this concept as crucial to understanding the workings of multiperspective narratives. While Marcus Hartner argues that “there is no definable set of multiperspective text structures and that the phenomenon should be perceived as a readerly effect that can be triggered by a variety of narrative strategies,” [21] I propose, borrowing O’Sullivan’s definition, that segmentivity is a defining formal feature of multiperspective narratives. [22] Thus, as the juxtaposition of distinct installments is constitutive to meaning-making in serial storytelling, the juxtaposition of distinct perspectives—whether complementary, contradictory, or in-between—is constitutive to multiperspective meaning-making. Moreover, as noted by O’Sullivan, “segments by necessity imply gaps.” [23] In multiperspective narratives, recipients often engage in an extended gap-filling process, which becomes particularly pronounced in cases of contradictory and open-ended multiperspectivity, where a definitive single truth remains elusive. While Wolfgang Iser already pointed out the active role of reader in coordinating different perspectives and filling their textual gaps in multiperspective narratives, [24]—a crucial reading strategy in multiperspectivity’s potential for slowness, as will be shown—Vera Nünning underlines how “the understanding of multiperspectival texts […] requires not only simulation, but creativity from readers.” [25] The gaps created by the juxtaposition of different perspectives generally produce a “broad scope for interpretation in the reception process,” thus “stimulating readers to make considerable efforts in order to reach synthesis.” [26] For DuPlessis and McHale, a gap is always a provocation to meaning-making, and poetry “involves ‘the creation of meaningful sequence by the negotiation of gap.’” [27] Therefore, my core claim here is that the juxtaposition of different perspectives and the subsequent negotiation of the gaps they imply constitute the defining element of meaning-making in multiperspective narratives.

For McHale, narration is “segmented into multiple, shifting voices,” while point of view is “segmented by constant micro-shifts of focalization.” [28] This discussion resonates with a long-standing debate in narratological research on multiperspectivity: is it just a general, inherent aspect of all narratives, or is it possible to single it out as a discrete narrative form with distinct features? My discussion of segmentivity in multiperspective narratives aligns with the latter. While narrative per se is not dominated by segmentivity, as McHale reminds us, multiperspective narratives foreground segmentivity as a key formal feature. Conversely, simple shifts of deictic center are not sufficient for a narrative to be considered multiperspective. Thus, while multiperspectivity as a readerly effect—as in Hartner’s understanding—can be triggered by a shift of deictic center or a sudden perspective reversal, full-fledged multiperspective narratives generally require the juxtaposition of distinct perspectives through segmentivity. As will be seen, the highly segmented multiperspective structure of Only Revolutions produces the material appearance of both characters’ narrations on the same page: here, horizontal frames are literally framing Sam and Hailey’s voices through a quadrant page layout.

By establishing segmentivity as a core component of multiperspective narratives, this section has paved the way for exploring how these narratives can induce a slower experience of reading through framing devices. While previous research has often overlooked the potential for slowness in this form of storytelling, focusing instead on their foregrounding of speed, the following section will explore how the inherent segmentation of multiperspective narratives can disrupt teleological progression and create opportunities for contemplative engagement.

3_ Multiperspectivity’s Potential for Slowness

In this section, I explore the potential for slowness in multiperspective narratives, by focusing on the role played by formal framing strategies and reading practices triggered by framing devices. I analyze two formal strategies and two reading features typical of multiperspective narratives that can elicit an experience of slowness. Since my discussion here cannot encompass all the textual devices potentially adopted by multiperspective narratives to decelerate readers’ engagement with the text, I will focus on formal strategies that produce ‘framed slowness,’ that is, a slow way of experiencing narrative elicited by segmentivity and other framing devices.

Repetitive multiperspectivity has often been regarded as a fast mode of narration, associated with highly tellable events. [29] If a certain event or phenomenon is worth narrating more than once, it is probably a layered, meaningful one, whose complexity and tellability can work as the engine of narrative progression. This is the case, for example, of detective fiction, where multiperspectivity is frequently adopted to produce narrative tension: “la narration réitérée d’un même événement (qui peut inclure des versions contradictoires ou complémentaires) est un procédé courant dans les récits à énigme, et l’on peut dès lors rattacher ce procédé à la dynamique de la curiosité.” [30] Such narratives—as in the canonical example of Rashomon—adopt multiperspectivity to foreground an epistemological gap, thus fostering a linear teleology around a single mystery to be solved. [31] Similarly, analyzing the correlation between present-tense narration and multiperspectivity, Carolin Gebauer argues that “fast-paced multiperspective present-tense novels […] seek to adjust to the shortened attention span of contemporary readers.” [32] While multiperspective narratives can certainly foster a fast and teleological mode of reading, the affordances of multiperspectivity can also be directed toward experiences of deceleration.

According to Caracciolo, “slowness emerges when narrative becomes uncoupled from linear teleology and still retains the audience’s attention.” [33] While plot-driven multiperspectivity is frequently dominated by linear teleology, with the different character perspectives revolving around a central mystery to be clarified, what I call ‘character-driven’ multiperspectivity usually departs from conventional narrative progression and focuses on a more complex, multilayered entanglement of individual perspectives. In these narratives, the focus is more on the perceiver than on the perceived, on the hidden entanglements between the juxtaposed perspectives, as well as on circular modes of reading. When there is no central tellable event to explore and resolve, readers’ attention departs from the what of multiperspectivity and focuses on the how, the formal strategies and stylistic qualities of the construction of different character perspectives. When narrative progression is decelerated and the degree of eventfulness reduced, readers can focus on the small details of similarity and difference between perspectives, on the meanings of their juxtaposition, and on the stylistic qualities that shape each character’s voice or world construction, thus increasing the complexity of the ongoing negotiation of gaps.

The experience of slowness can emerge through a set of narrative strategies typical of multiperspective narratives. Here, I will focus on two formal features, segmentivity and paratextual framing; and two reading strategies, coordination of perspectives and rereading. As noted by Raphaël Baroni, the “pace of the narrative artifact is also fundamentally regulated by the material organization of the medium,” that is, by its “stylistic components,” which include what we discussed as segmentivity in the previous section. [34] For Karin Kukkonen, segmentation in installments, episodes, or chapters can affect the pace of the reading experience, thus conferring a slower or faster rhythm to the narrative. [35] While a high degree of segmentivity cannot be considered as a decelerating formal feature per se, segmented time tends to be experienced in a slower mode. Drawing on insights from psychology, Lars Bernaerts argues that “time seems to move more slowly when the narrative is complex and segmented,” [36] and regards segmentivity as one of the principles that foregrounds the potential for slowness in novelistic cycles. In multiperspective narratives, segmentivity frequently works in accordance with strategies of temporal manipulation, such as repetition and variation, devices typical of slow novels in Roy Sommer’s account. [37] The principle of repetition-cum-variation is the basic narrative structure of the repetitive multiperspectivity I am exploring here, and patterns of repetition—the same setting, characters, events, motifs—dominate and decelerate the reading experience. Thus, I consider segmentivity as a decelerating narrative device when foregrounding multiperspectivity’s manipulation of temporal progression, that is, when the gap between segments introduces a new character perspective on the same setting, characters, events, motifs, etc.

The second formal strategy for slowness typical of multiperspective narratives is what Sommer calls “slow entry,” [38] that is, paratextual framings and beginnings. Given their high degree of segmentivity, as we have seen, multiperspective narratives are frequently composed by complex paratextual framings, which are likely to decelerate the reading experience. Some experimental multiperspective novels can further problematize the access to a character’s viewpoint through redundant paratextual framings, setting specific elements as pertaining to one of the perspectives. In novels such as Only Revolutions, the book cover is the first entry point for the two perspectives. Since choosing one side of the novel considerably shapes the reading experience, readers are likely to take more time before making their choice and to consider the materiality of the book as object. Here, it is not just a matter of longer reading times, since the experimentation with the materiality of the book can foreground what Caracciolo calls “textural patterns,” [39] offering an effective experience of slowness. As will be explored in greater detail below, material and internal frames can play a pivotal role in shaping the textural qualities of a text through different levels of segmentivity. Moreover, multiperspective narratives present more than one (framed) beginning. When shifting to a new character, narrative progression is frequently decelerated, and the plot starts over by recounting the same events and phenomena from a new vantage point. This multiplication of beginnings is an important feature of slowness in multiperspective narratives and could also lead to boredom when the patterns of repetition become omnipresent and narrative progression is consistently disrupted. In multiperspective narratives, linear progression is frequently sidestepped in favor of circular repetition, thus prompting readers to adopt a slow-paced approach to the text.

Multiperspective narratives generally encourage two fundamental reading strategies, which can decelerate our engagement with the text: the coordination of character perspectives and an extensive act of rereading. In The Implied Reader, Iser argued for the active role of readers in multiperspective narratives: “the task of coordination is handed over to the reader, for he alone has all the information at his disposal.” [40] Similarly, for Vera Nünning complex multiperspective novels prompt the reader “to combine and coordinate different beliefs, desires and wishes of a wide array of actors and perspectives.” [41] Readers thus must confront and even adopt several perspectives to make sense of the text and the storyworld. The process of coordination can happen on different levels: while plot-driven multiperspectivity prompts readers to find clues and details in search for fulfillment and narrative closure, character-driven texts generally retain recipients’ attention through a multilayered entanglement of perspectives. Here, coordinating several perspectives involves a “thickening of attention” through which predisposed readers explore the different layers of character perspectives and their ways of intertwining and taking distance from each other. ^[42] Readers, in fact, can simulate different aspects of a character’s perspective, not only the epistemic one: when the teleology of the plot is disrupted and the goal-oriented narrative undermined, recipients are more likely to embrace or distance themselves from emotional, somatic, or axiological aspects of characters’ perspectives. [43] In complex multiperspective novels involving several viewpoints, we could find ourselves juggling from one perspective to another running the risk of being overwhelmed by the amount of emotional and axiological perspectives. Conversely, coordinating them in a slow mode can prove beneficial for grasping the multilayered entanglement of character perspectives.

Rereading is by no means an essential feature of all multiperspective narratives. Many of them adopt a conventional, goal-oriented narrative progression, with perspectives juxtaposed in a linear way and no layers of entanglement to be exposed. However, more sophisticated examples of multiperspectivity require readers to revise their earlier assumptions in light of the new viewpoint, thus inviting rereading and creating slowness. For Gary Weissman, “works that are designed to be reread from the start generate narrative slowness.” [44] His example is Ted Chiang’s novella “Story of Your Life,” where three different strands of story are consistently fragmented and interweaved, thus confronting readers with a nonlinear progression that can only be navigated through double reading. Similarly, multiperspective texts are frequently highly segmented and force readers to juggle from one perspective to the next, disrupting linear progression and fostering a systematic rereading from the start. When presented with a new version of an event, for example, recipients are invited to reread the previous account to look for incongruities and omissions, or to immerse themselves again into a certain character’s emotional reaction or axiological position. As will be shown in the following section, Only Revolutions pushes this reading strategy to its limits: considering phenomena from different perspectives can be highly beneficial but could also produce an endless rereading, a reading loop where we end up switching back and forth between different irreconcilable perspectives. With its highly experimental structure, Only Revolutions stands as a liminal case of multiperspective narrative, where all the four framing strategies that I have analyzed in this section are enhanced and foregrounded to generate a dissonant experience of slowness.

4_ Framed Slowness in Only Revolutions

In this section, I discuss the use of framing strategies for slowness adopted by Only Revolutions to emphasize the entanglement of a love relationship on a human scale and planetary processes beyond the human. Mark Z. Danielewski’s works have already been analyzed by Caracciolo as slow narrative contributing to the human-nonhuman enmeshment through listing and unconventional typography (House of Leaves), or textural patterns and multimodality (The Fifty Year Sword), formal devices extensively adopted by Only Revolutions. While the presence of frames is highly relevant in most of Danielewski’s novels, Only Revolutions is perhaps the one where segmentivity and other framing strategies play the most significant role. Discussing its liminal position between narrative and poetry—a “narrative poem”—McHale himself has described the novel as “conspicuously a segmented text, one in which language has been subjected to spacing, placed in space.” [45] Thus, while the abundance of frames in Only Revolutions has been object of analysis, I focus here on how its framed slowness can foster readers’ attention to different layers and scalar levels, thus maximizing their attunement to the nonhuman world. Specifically, I concentrate on two main aspects of the novel’s framed slowness: (1) textural patterns through material and internal framing, and (2) circularity and temporal organization. These two features emerge through the interplay of segmentivity and slowness in a multiperspective narrative, thus contributing to readers’ awareness of complex patterns and hidden entanglements between an individual human relationship and multiscalar planetary phenomena.

Only Revolutions is a highly peculiar example of multiperspective narrative, where frames, both physical and internal, are ubiquitous and crucial to meaning-making. The novel tackles the material form of the book, presenting itself as double-sided, with two mirror-like front covers and two sides of paratextual framing—two colophons, titles, dedications, etc.—that serve as entry points to Sam and Hailey’s parallel but irreconcilable narrations of their road-trip across the United States. The novel provides little room for a conventional novelistic plot, and can be better understood as a series of narrative sequences that form a cohesive, symbolic journey. At its core, the story follows Sam and Hailey on a wild road-trip constantly disrupted by unexpected obstacles, such as a party in New Orleans, hospital stays, or the encounter with an antagonist called The Creep. The content of the novel, as it soon becomes clear, is significantly shaped by the physical and formal elements of the book. As a physical and material frame, the double book cover serves as an early indicator of the interpretive significance of frames in Only Revolutions. From the outset, the novel emphasizes its material form, with the book’s physical presentation disorienting readers about how to approach it. Much has already been written on the various reading practices of Only Revolutions: for N. Katherine Hayles, the novel adds a third dimension of depth through its two-dimensional planes, thus creating “an explosive increase in the kinds of reading practices afforded by the text.” [46] In particular, a publisher’s hint recommends to perform a switching operation in units of eight pages of one narrative, that is, rotating the book 360 degrees after every eight pages, thus further segmenting the text in sections with a revolutionary operation. As noted by McHale, none of the several formal complications of the novel is so radical in their effect “as the obligation (not option) to physically manipulate the book, to rotate and reorient it in real-world space (not virtually) in order to read it at all.” [47]

While discussing the texture of literary narrative as a feature of slowness, Caracciolo underlines how “texture denotes the physical properties of an object as perceived primarily through touch” and other sensory modalities as well: however, touch remains “a key sense in the perception of texture.” [48] The physical manipulation of the book—a tactile act specifically devised by the author—thus works as the primary aspect of textural pattern in Only Revolutions. In Caracciolo’s understanding, the texture of literary narrative is twofold, with multiplicity and linkage as the main semantic elements: “on the one hand, we have the multithreaded, multilayered nature of both material textures and textural modes of reading; on the other hand, we have the strong link that is created when threads are woven together or the reader’s attention becomes caught up in a verbal pattern.” [49] Through the segmented entanglement of different perspectives, multiperspective narratives generally foreground both multiplicity and linkage. As a highly experimental text, Only Revolutions strongly relies on the multithreadedness of material textures as a key feature of its multiperspectivity. As has been seen, its dual narrative is shaped through two book covers, two framed beginnings, and a reading practice of regularly flipping the book. This abundance of paratextual framing, as discussed in the previous section, is likely to decelerate readers’ engagement with the text: rotating the book does not only require longer reading times, but also disrupts the linear narrative progression, with a constant repetition-cum-variation structure that prompts readers to direct their attention to the multiple threads of Sam and Hailey’s perspectives.

This kind of page octet—that is, rotating the book after every eight pages—is regarded by many as a “rewarding” reading strategy as it allows readers to closely coordinate Sam and Hailey’s perspectives by constantly confronting specular segments of text recounting the same event with slight or significant variations or complementary details. [50] For Joe Bray, the “subtle interplays of sound and sense”—what we have called the multilayered entanglement of perspectives—“depend on the reader either switching back and forth immediately (rotating the book 180 degrees each time), or at least having the two passages in his or her head (and ear) simultaneously.” [51] While multiperspective narratives can usually be distinguished as either complementary or contradictory, the concatenation of octets, as noted by Hayles, juxtaposes both different perspectives on events and complementary halves that together generate a whole. Therefore, choosing the octet as reading practice not only foregrounds the materiality of the book—its primary textural pattern—but also emphasizes the coordination and confrontation of perspectives as a reading strategy for slowness typical of multiperspectivity.

Other internal framing strategies contribute to the textural quality of the novel. Sam and Hailey’s narratives start out on opposite sides and run through the whole text, convening on pages 180 and 181, at the midpoint of the book, and dividing the page in two parts, one with the text written upside-down. Apart from this multiperspective frame, each page has nonnarrative timelines—referred to as “chronomosaics” in the paratext—running in its margins, providing datelines in a linear fashion. Thus, the page layout presents itself as framed in four parts, Sam and Hailey’s narratives and their respective chronomosaics (see figure). The following sections will detail how the dialectic between narratives and chronomosaics proves central to the ecological significance of the text. For now, I would like to stress how their interplay visually shapes a framed page layout that calls for a textural mode of reading. Therefore, material or physical framing—in the double book cover and the tactile manipulation of the book—provides the primary textural pattern through haptic experiences. On the other hand, internal framing strategies, such as the framed page layout, foreground the visual texture of the novel, by prompting readers to pay attention to the complex symmetries and formal constraints of Danielewski’s writing. As noted by Mark B. N. Hansen, Only Revolutions is a “revolution in literary form, composition, and typography.” [52]

As in House of Leaves, its visual texture is in fact shaped by unconventional typography, such as several fonts for different purposes (Life, Dante MT, Lucida, Perpetua, Tempo, Myriad Pro, Spectrum MT, and Univers 57), four different letter sizes, letters in four colors, bold fonts for plants and animals in Hailey’s and Sam’s perspectives, respectively. The use of typographical devices further directs readers’ attention toward the ubiquitous framing and segmentivity of the novel, by emphasizing spacing, gaps, punctuation, and foregrounding texture visually in its quadrant page layout. According to Brigitte Félix, “the book’s dazzling typography and pages create an object that needs to be looked at, before you try reading a few pages.” [53] Unconventional typography and what Félix refers to as “chromography” thus serve as another formal device to decelerate readers’ engagement with the novel, by encouraging readers to appreciate the stylistic qualities and aesthetic appearance of the text. [54]

The second feature of the novel’s framed slowness foregrounds the friction between what Baroni calls “thematic” and “stylistic components,” that is, the content of the storyworld and the formal qualities of the narrative. [55] This dissonance is replicated on a formal level through the dialectic of linearity and circularity, especially through the juxtaposition of narratives and nonnarrative sections (chronomosaics). Only Revolutions draws, in fact, on the classic American genre of the road novel, that is, a genre that foregrounds speed, movement, trips, cars and motorcycles, roads and highways, thematic elements that stand in clear contrast with the slowness I have been describing so far. From a stylistic point of view, some typographical choices emphasize speed and freedom, for example, through the multiplication of letters in a word—especially vowels—and onomatopoeic effects: “Almighty sixteen and freeeeee,” [56] “Booooooooomblastandruin / Looooooming at last.” [57] Sam and Hailey’s narratives start as freewheeling road trips across the United States, with big font sizes that are likely to favor a faster pace of reading. Yet their trip is gradually decelerated, not only by means of formal devices. Although “freeeeee” at the beginning, Sam and Hailey’s journeys and existences become more and more interrelated, as exemplified by the constant thematic dialectic between speed and slowness. After falling in love with Hailey, Sam starts feeling tied to her: “No lingering for me […] / Ashamed she’s not fast. / Ashamed she’s so slow. / Everyone’s afraid because / no one goes the way I go.” [58] However, switching the book to Hailey’s side reveals an interpretive friction that foregrounds speed and slowness as (subjective) experiences: “Everyone burns and / no one keeps up. / I’m that fast, man.” [59] On the next page, again, Sam complains: “I pick up nothing. / Not even speed,” [60] while Hailey experiences it differently: “So I gather it all. / Especially speed.” [61]

As exemplified by these frictions, contradictory multiperspectivity generates a tension between speed and slowness that dominates the narrative, and is thematically and formally connected to the formal constraints adopted by Danielewski. Commenting on the character-driven nature of his novel, Danielewski explicitly declared that “the quality of the book is so much about Sam and Hailey freeing themselves entirely from the constraints of the world. In a weird way, they demand being freed of the constraints of the book.” [62] The constant dialectic of speed and slowness, like the two ends of a rope pulled by both characters, is finally resolved, on a diegetic level, when Sam and Hailey learn how to embrace slowness. The character-driven multiperspective structure of the novel allows readers to shift their focus from narrative progression to engage with Sam and Hailey’s experiences of slowness. While at the beginning of the novel Hailey follows “slower if now Samtied,” [63] and Sam roams free “effortless if Haileyless,” [64] their constrained entanglement is gradually loosened as they give up their teleological “narcissistic self-enclosure,” in favor of “other-directed thought, recognition, […] and love.” [65] What they lose, however, is their connection to nature, exemplified by the association of Sam and Hailey to animals and plants, respectively, visually accentuated by bold font and gradually disappearing after the midpoint of the novel. [66] I suggest that circularity and rereading—as devices of multiperspectivity’s framed slowness—allow embracing the multiscalar complexity of both individual relationship and planetary scales. In other terms, it is through circularity and rereading that Sam and Hailey’s individual love and connection to nature are intertwined and preserved. While a linear narrative progression and reading practice would gradually foreground their human love story at the expense of their connection to plants and animals, a slow, circular reading practice—triggered through framing devices—allows readers to hold the human and the nonhuman together.

As stated above, chronomosaics are another formal device that decelerates the progression of the narrative. They not only require readers to interrupt Sam’s or Hailey’s story and look for meaningful connections with the plot, but they are presented as events listed in a linear order. List is another stylistic form potentially producing slowness analyzed by Caracciolo: in Only Revolutions, the chronomosaics summarize the dissonant dialectic of linearity and circularity, speed and slowness, that dominate the novel. For Caracciolo, nonnarrative forms such as the list and the catalog can produce slowness by foregrounding descriptive mapping as opposed to teleological organization: in some texts, “the formlessness of the list interrupts and challenges the teleology of narrative.” [67] However, the list of Only Revolutions appears as the most linear element of the book, since chronomosaics work as “temporal organizing frame[s],” [68] presenting events in chronological order spanning two centuries, from 1863 to 2063. Following the temporal organization of chronomosaics, Sam’s and Hailey’s chronologies would not temporally overlap other than in the reading process: it is through the textural patterns and the physical manipulation of the book that the two protagonists’ journeys are materially entangled. [69] Thus, Only Revolutions represents an almost paradoxical case where nonnarrative elements foreground linearity while the multiperspective narrations of Sam and Hailey foster circularity and rereading.

Nevertheless, the chronomosaics’ linearity is merely chronological and geometrical: there is no emplotment, no narrative progression, and no teleological or anthropocentric setup. On the other hand, the two hundred years framed by the chronomosaics show a principle of temporal organization that evokes the more-than-human temporality of planetary processes, thus situating Sam and Hailey’s narratives in a broader multiscalar context. When reaching 2006, the year of the novel’s publication, chronomosaics keep running in the margins with blank spaces and only dates until “Jan 19 2063.” This framed void—a quarter of the page layout—unsettles anthropocentric ontologies and collocates Sam and Hailey’s story in the multiscalar cycle of planetary temporalities. According to Amy J. Elias, “the notion of natural cycle is aligned with these characters’ names and colors,” with Sam and Hailey “resituated in nature, but […] as living beings aligned with nature in an open, undifferentiated, but planetary existence.” [70] The multilayered entanglement of the protagonists’ journeys and multiscalar phenomena is thus foregrounded both on a thematic level, through Sam and Hailey’s embracing of slowness and their intertwinement with natural cycles, and on a formal level, through the features of framed slowness explored in this section. For Bray, Only Revolutions calls for a “process of endless rereading,” [71] a typical device for slowness in multiperspective narratives. The continual, systematic rereading encouraged by the book’s multiperspectivity and framing devices replicates, in the readers’ experience, Sam and Hailey’s endless journey, thus reemphasizing the disruption of teleological ends at the heart of slow narrative. The endless circularity of the novel is thus apparently challenged but ultimately reinforced by the linearity of the chronomosaics, which, rather than producing a teleological progression, link Sam and Hailey’s human, terrestrial relationship with the slow temporality of planetary processes.

5_Conclusions

Drawing on insights from the econarratological research program, this article has examined multiperspectivity’s ecological value through the analysis of its framing strategies for generating slowness. By introducing the concept of framed slowness, I have explored how repetitive multiperspective narratives, often perceived as fast-paced and plot-driven, can actually elicit a slow reading experience through their framing devices.

While ontological or vertical frames have received significant scholarly attention in multiperspective narratives, I have argued for the crucial role of horizontal frames, which arise from the juxtaposition of different perspectives within the same diegetic level. By considering segmentivity as a defining formal feature of multiperspective narratives, I have shown how these texts encourage a more active and layered reading practice. Consequently, multiperspective narratives employ a wide set of framing strategies with the potential to elicit a slow experience of reading, which in turn, as Caracciolo has insightfully demonstrated, can foster awareness of the intricate entanglement of human communities and the nonhuman world. By employing formal strategies such as segmentivity and paratextual framing, and reading practices like coordination of perspectives and rereading, multiperspective narratives can build on their segmented quality to induce an experience of framed slowness. Similar framing strategies can disrupt teleology and narrative progression, directing readers’ attention to the multilayered entanglement of character perspectives. Therefore, I have argued that character-driven examples of multiperspectivity are more conducive to slowness, since the juxtaposition of perspectives is not motivated solely by the dynamics of the plot.

The final section has turned to Danielewski’s Only Revolutions to show a paradigmatic example of multiperspective narrative eliciting framed slowness to offer insights into the entanglement of a human love story and planetary scales. Through its character-driven multiperspective structure, Only Revolutions adopts all the four strategies analyzed in the previous section, from segmentivity and extensive paratextual framing, to coordination of perspectives and systematic rereading. The novel displays a complex interplay of material and internal framing strategies that create rich textural patterns fostering a slow and contemplative reading practice. The segmented quality of multiperspectivity is materialized here in the tactile manipulation of the book object (material framing) and in the framed page layout (internal framing). Moreover, the dialectic of linearity and circularity replicates on the formal level the thematic friction between slowness and speed, showing the tensions that characterize the human-nonhuman entanglement. However, the apparent linearity of chronomosaics ultimately reinforces the novel’s disruption of teleological progression, opening up a blank space—a framed void—running into our future, where Sam and Hailey’s terrestrial relationship converges with more-than-human temporalities. Exploring segmentivity in multiperspective narratives thus reveals their inherent potential for slowness through framing devices, positioning multiperspectivity as a valuable narrative form vis-à-vis the ecological crisis.

_How to Cite

Gabriele D’Amato. “Framed Slowness and the Ecological Value of Multiperspectivity.” On_Culture: The Open Journal for the Study of Culture 18 (2025). <https://doi.org/10.22029/oc.2025.1478>.