The Time Helix: Nonlinear Narrative Structures and the Paradox of Delayed Simultaneity
Abstract
My study of contemporary (post-2000) Anglophone novels combines themes of time and temporality with narratological analysis. I argue that nonlinear narrative structures (which originate in science fiction novels) challenge the supposed impossibility of simultaneity in the novel, undermine the literary construct of realism, and model new, more optimistic ways of imagining the future(s) beyond our present. I build upon Mathias Nilges’ argument that in the wake of the crisis of the “long now”—a societal belief that the future has been exhausted and we are trapped in an unchanging present—the contemporary time novel critiques historical forms of time and models new ones. In my analysis, I bring together theories of simultaneity and delay from phenomenology, theories of dialectical montage from film studies, and theories of implicit and explicit causality from narratology to demonstrate how nonlinear narrative structures create a paradox of delayed simultaneity despite the linearity of the written form. I also use an intersectional, feminist lens in my critique to show how nonlinear narrative structures can grant greater agency to narrators and force readers into the role of detective. My study primarily focuses on the following novels: Jeanette Winterson’s The Gap of Time (2015), Jennifer Egan’s A Visit from the Goon Squad (2011), Ariel Lawhon’s I Was Anastasia (2018), Kate Morton’s The Clockmaker’s Daughter (2018), Ali Smith’s How to Be Both (2015), and Bernardine Evaristo’s Girl, Woman, Other (2019). I argue that contemporary novels, especially time novels, are not an opposition to the postmodern project but an expansion of it with a questioning of forms of time and temporality that parallels the questioning of myths, universal truths, and historiography by British postmodern writers as well as the postmodern belief that a multiplicity of ways exist by which to structure a narrative or tell a story.