Reader/Player Agency

This past Wednesday, I attended the panels "It's a Man World" (sic) and "Reality Bites." Both panels really impressed me (along with the grandeur that is University Club and its amazing food), and it's going to be very difficult for me to focus in on one specific paper. I was, however, very drawn to one in particular: Julian's paper about Don DeLillo's Players in the Reality Bites panel was the most thought provoking for me.

Having no prior knowledge of either Players or the literary theory he chose, which was Johan Huizinga's "magic circle," I was captivated by his presentation because I was taken completely off-guard. He essentially used the concept of games to explain the anti-social nature of Players. As he put it, DeLillo's work was "masturbatory." DeLillo sought to write a piece that would challenge the concept of the reader-author relationship, giving the reader more space to interpret the story, but because of how disconnected it was with the reader, it was essentially like playing a game without rules. Usually when an author writes a novel, there's an unspoken rule that the author is supposed to guide the reader, and the reader can gain something from reading the novel. But DeLillo gives no consideration to the reader's understanding of the text, instead writing a completely self-indulgent book.

The paper had some complex ideas, and I wasn't familiar with the works, so I can't say I took full advantage of the presentation, but there was one major takeaway for me: reader agency, like player agency in video games, can be vastly manipulated by the author. With video games, sometimes, there are multiple ways to finish the game (it is open-ended); other times, there's only one. And it's engaging for the player to be able to choose his/her destiny. With DeLillo's book, there was too much agency for the reader, leaving the reader lost in a game that hasn't even started.

-Carrie