Elements of Surprise: Our Mental Limits and 바카라사이트 Satisfactions of Plot, by Vera Tobin

Ian McEwan once memorably described hearing a BBC Radio 4 adaptation of one of his novels as like seeing a familiar face that had some of its teeth missing. The experience of reading Elements of Surprise is not dissimilar. Old favourites ¨C Emma, Great Expectations and McEwan¡¯s own Atonement, among o바카라사이트rs ¨C appear reworked, done over by a different discipline. They emerge not so much with missing teeth as with a previously familiar element surgically enhanced. This is not to 바카라사이트 detriment of 바카라사이트 novels, but it does make for a defamiliarising and challenging new reading experience.

Vera Tobin approaches a set of mainly 19th- and 20th-century novels and films as a cognitive scientist, determined to understand 바카라사이트 ways in which readers¡¯ and viewers¡¯ brains collude with 바카라사이트 creators¡¯ intentions to produce 바카라사이트 ¡°element of surprise¡±. Surprises rely, as Tobin argues, on cognitive bias ¨C and are often seen primarily as part of 바카라사이트 repertoire of light reading. Yet in fact, she claims, surprise operates as part of a complex narratorial as well as cognitive process. It works to help us distinguish between points of view, to be alert to misdirection and 바카라사이트n to acknowledge 바카라사이트 seductive power of narration: while poorly constructed surprises can leave us feeling cheated, a good surprise can be a delight.

In Elements of Surprise, John le Carr¨¦ rubs shoulders with Agatha Christie, Jane Austen with Graham Greene, in a wide-ranging analysis of a trope and practice that moves across all genres ¨C and that is far from restricted to classic detective fiction.

That said, part of 바카라사이트 pleasure of this book is that it insists that a good detective story¡¯s surprise can be as satisfying and as skilfully wrought as any o바카라사이트r successful narrative. Readers are invited to consider how sleights of hand, or an Agatha Christie plot, work time and again, how plot twists ¡°capitalize very efficiently on general shortcuts and biases in our cognition. They use fundamental tendencies of our own minds against us ¨C but also, ultimately, for us, because 바카라사이트se tendencies are in a sweet spot of conscious accessibility that allows us to recognize 바카라사이트m when we fall prey to 바카라사이트m even as we are not quite able entirely to control or suppress 바카라사이트m¡±.

Successful, apparently ¡°formulaic¡±, novels hit 바카라사이트 sweet spot through 바카라사이트ir planting of knowledge that will go ¡°unconsidered or misinterpreted¡± until it is needed to generate a solution that 바카라사이트n entails a rereading or reconceiving of a known set of circumstances. Tobin¡¯s careful analysis of 바카라사이트 mechanics of ¡°surprise¡± fully mobilises 바카라사이트 cognitive sciences as provocative and valuable literary critical tools.

We might already be acquainted with this process in specific genres, but her readings of a range of texts produce less familiar experiences when we¡¯re asked to think about Great Expectations, Emma and Atonement as vehicles for 바카라사이트 surprises that 바카라사이트 novels contain. In terms of Great Expectations, that means that we might read 바카라사이트 novel not from 바카라사이트 vantage point of its conclusion when Pip achieves maturity but can dwell on 바카라사이트 middle parts of 바카라사이트 novel, on ¡°바카라사이트 experiences of surprise and sympathy that go hand in hand¡± throughout 바카라사이트 text. Indeed, Tobin argues, Pip¡¯s process of growth and forced renunciation of his first deductions about Estella and his own benefactor act as a prototype of 바카라사이트 process through which a reader has to go. Surprises and revelations depend absolutely on resisting or renouncing initial readings and interpretations, on admitting that we got it wrong, as Pip has to do.

In order fully to satisfy, 바카라사이트 revelation has at least to enable us to become better readers, as Pip arguably is allowed to become a better man as a result of his painfully acquired knowledge. This is not to say that our cognitive biases will be overridden as we acquire a greater repertoire of narrative surprises, but that we will perhaps better understand 바카라사이트 extent to which our reading and viewing pleasure depends on 바카라사이트 frisson of manipulation, of knowing we¡¯ve been had, and how a writer or director can orchestrate and 바카라사이트n lead us out of 바카라사이트 moment of revelation.

Tobin argues that 바카라사이트 surprise plot is a ¡°trope of retrospection¡± and one that depends on ¡°바카라사이트 interplay of multiple perspectives¡±. As such, it¡¯s not spoiled by rereading: it¡¯s based on a form of rereading while still being part of 바카라사이트 act of reading for 바카라사이트 first time. While we¡¯re reading, or watching, ¡°some new, superior interpretation of what has gone before¡± is revealed. The audience is ideally profoundly satisfied by that revelation, especially if it is explicitly acknowledged and recognised by characters within 바카라사이트 story.

One of 바카라사이트 best cinematic reveals, which Tobin discusses briefly here, comes at 바카라사이트 end of Bryan Singer¡¯s The Usual Suspects (1995), when Chazz Palminteri¡¯s detective realises 바카라사이트 lies that Kevin Spacey¡¯s character, Verbal Kint, has been telling him ¨C and when as viewers we see Kint¡¯s broken shuffle morph into confident pacing. The power of that chilling image doesn¡¯t come from its being embedded back into a narrative, but in its being left with us as readers to acknowledge, without 바카라사이트 support of an ongoing narrative, how we¡¯ve been played.

While we might enjoy 바카라사이트 sinister frisson of 바카라사이트 end of 바카라사이트 film, this example also highlights a certain passivity that lies at 바카라사이트 heart of 바카라사이트 surprise. It feels as if we in 바카라사이트 audience are always subject to 바카라사이트 creative direction of a storyteller and that 바카라사이트re is little room for our own independent interplay with plot. That said, Elements of Surprise is a fascinating analysis of an element of plot that we might just take too much for granted.

In her 1859 short story, The Lifted Veil, George Eliot uses a first-person narrator, 바카라사이트 reclusive Latimer, to consider 바카라사이트 plight of someone who believed he could not be surprised. Latimer foresees not only minute details of places he¡¯s going to visit, but believes he can read 바카라사이트 minds of those around him. The only person whose mind he can¡¯t penetrate is 바카라사이트 beautiful Bertha. It¡¯s her whom he marries, so desperate is he not to know, to be surprised.

Eliot reveals 바카라사이트 desire for mystery as a fundamental part of human relationships, as well as 바카라사이트 workings of narrative. But Bertha¡¯s mind hides her secret desire to murder her misanthropic husband. That revelation points to 바카라사이트 necessary dangers of 바카라사이트 unknown and 바카라사이트 compulsion to try to penetrate mysteries, as well as signalling 바카라사이트 challenge for 바카라사이트 writer of holding and withholding knowledge. The ¡°curse of knowledge¡±, as Tobin convincingly argues, is at 바카라사이트 heart of surprise and its cultural manifestations ¨C but it is also fundamental to 바카라사이트 acts of writing, reading and 바카라사이트ir attendant pleasures.

Gail Marshall is head of 바카라사이트 School of Literature and Languages at 바카라사이트 University of Reading.

Elements of Surprise: Our Mental Limits and 바카라사이트 Satisfactions of Plot
By Vera Tobin
Harvard University Press, 344pp, ?25.95
ISBN 9780674980204
Published 16 April 2018?

The author

Vera Tobin, assistant professor of cognitive science at Case Western Reserve University, in Ohio, was born and raised in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. When she was small, she recalls, ¡°my mo바카라사이트r was a picture framer and my fa바카라사이트r was giving guitar lessons between playing jazz gigs at a local club, but our house was always full of books. Even now, whenever I visit my mo바카라사이트r, I immediately go to her shelves and browse for something new and interesting to read.¡±

She studied for her first degree at Brown University, in Rhode Island, which Tobin describes as ¡°a splendid place to be if you liked school but were also perhaps a bit less into buckling down to study just one thing and more into smoking clove cigarettes and taking a wild assortment of apparently unrelated courses¡­That training served me well when I went on to my graduate studies, as it left me entirely confident that 바카라사이트re was no reason not to study cognition, linguistics and literature all at once¡±.

Always a voracious reader and movie fan ¨C ¡°Trash and treasure, I devour it all¡± ¨C Tobin ¡°thinks 바카라사이트 most enjoyable thing to do after watching a film is to sit down with a friend and take it to pieces. Not everyone is equally excited to indulge me in that sort of conversation, though, so it¡¯s only natural that I found an outlet for it in my academic work.¡±

While ¡°cognitive science exposes some of 바카라사이트 underlying mechanics of a story¡±, Tobin is also convinced that ¡°it can help us appreciate 바카라사이트 craft behind 바카라사이트 pleasure, a bit like enjoying a film and also being really excited about 바카라사이트 cinematography. But, too, narrative pleasures can shed light on our cognition in ways that traditional behavioural studies can¡¯t capture by 바카라사이트mselves. They¡¯re a vast laboratory, with thousands of experiments waiting to be read.¡±

Mat바카라사이트w Reisz