The Changing Form of Fiction: Narrative Technique in Chart Korbjitti’s Time

Abstract

In this paper1 I have used some of the methods and findings in my study of narrative techniques in the novels of American writers conducted earlier.2 I could trace a continuous development in the influence that the writers received from the predominant media of their time. I followed up on my research with a novel by a Thai writer. I will be looking for explanations in the critical works of David Lodge, Frederick R. Karl and Marvin Magalaner, Robert Martin Adams, Jose Ortega y Gasset, but most of all, Marshall McLuhan. My earlier research revealed that writers have always endeavoured to emphasize the pictorial aspects of their fiction; and the age of modernity gave them an impetus to try modes of representation, which imitated not only art but also the newly discovered technologies. It is possible to trace an interrelation between man’s encounter with these discoveries, and his concept of reality and the changed world on the one hand, and the emergence of modes of writing, which reflect these changes in the world at large on the other hand. In fact, a progression in the development of the novel has been discerned by carefully studying how writers have employed new techniques and devices borrowed from non-literary models in the popular culture, such as newspaper layout, advertising, photography, film and television to renew worn fictive forms.