On Immersive Fiction
The first CD I ever owned was the soundtrack to Aliens, probably my favorite film. It was a Christmas morning sometime in the mid-1990s, and I received the soundtrack because my dad finally bought my mom a modest boombox with a CD player. Besides reveling in the novelty of pushing a button to advance a track, it was a joy to pay attention to the sounds that define a classic film.
In fact, I collected a lot of soundtracks growing up. I was more interested in the licensed music than original scores. Listening to those songs, my mind created scenes I felt were far grander than the movie itself. That’s the sort of thing my young imagination did for fun.
By the time I was a teenager, I had gotten it into my head that novels should have soundtracks. At the end of the book would be a CD with instructions on when to play each piece of licensed or original music. Wouldn’t that make the experience so much better? I thought. Well, licensing music is expensive, and I know a lot of people like to read in silence. However, maybe a suggested tracklist at the begging of a book or story would be nice.
I think Haruki Murakami is the closest an author has come to granting my wish. Whenever he mentions a song, I can’t help but pull it up on YouTube and let it play softly in the background as I continue to read. Doing so brings me a little closer to the characters, a little closer to the author.
The relationship between literature and music isn’t the only thing I think about when I think about immersive fiction. A greater connection is possible with people’s favorite films. Although it’s impossible to visit any real-world settings from Aliens, I am guilty of traveling to the German/Polish border to see where The Grand Budapest Hotel (One of my top five films) was shot. No, I didn’t get to go inside the department store that became the hotel, but peering through the window, walking around the town, eating a spicy wurst, reading by the riverbank, standing on the train platform…they all brought me closer to understanding what I consider one of the best films ever made.
My desire to immerse myself in The Grand Budapest Hotel didn’t stop there. The Blu-ray came with a special feature on making the film’s signature dessert – Courtesan au Chocolat. It was sweet, decadent, and fragile, much like the movie’s setting. Eating that little dessert, I was able to understand, even only a little bit more clearly, what director Wes Anderson was going for. And, if only for 3-4 bites, I got to be part of that world.
That’s how I approach fiction I love. I want to know it better and deeper than what it presents to the world. I think that’s what real love is, no matter what or who you’re talking about.
I’m not sure what other possibilities exist for immersive fiction. Oh, there were/are plenty of attempts to put the viewer/reader/etc. inside the story. I think a few of them are quite interesting, to be honest, and worth checking out. However, putting someone within a story changes the relationship between fiction and person beyond what I consider immersive fiction. Immersion requires just as much from the person experiencing that fiction as the fiction itself. There needs to be a dedication that something like an amusement park ride based on a film doesn’t require. Not to say that those things aren’t fun…
I guess I’m thinking about all of this because I’ve spent the last few months drowning myself in Japanese literature. The nation is still closed up like it’s still the sakoku period of isolation. I want to go back, and I figured that reading would be a good substitute until the day I get on a plane. Yet, I’ve noticed that reading these novels, short stories, and occasional nonfiction has given me a joy I didn’t expect.
Reading stories set in Japan has brought back a lot of memories of my time there. Long-dormant synapses are firing again. Thoughts of food, urban sprawl, and nature speeding by at 270 km/h nudge their way between authors’ words. I’ve found myself having to go back and read entire pages due to getting lost in my thoughts. Blending memories and fiction … it lets me be there when a book is open, and here when one is closed. My compass back to that place is a Post-It note stuck between two pages.
No jet lag required.