© 1998 The Adelphiasophists and AskWhy! Publications. Freely distribute as long as it is unaltered and properly attributed
Contents Updated: Saturday, 9 August 2008

The Marienbad Muser Story Teller

As we have already said in connexion with PoltiPlot, if a computer could write you a story, then you as a storyteller are redundant. These pages are to stimulate your thinking, and help you overcome writer’s block. The plot outliner simply juxtaposes, not in any logical way, some Polti categories to give you ideas for plots. By merging with the Marienbad simulation, the musings of the Polti plot muser bring a degree more unity into the schema which emerges, but not much. It simply helps to remind us or convince ourselves that the attempt is to suggest one story, not several. The logic of your own story is your’s, but an exercise in creativity is to take one of these pages, and to force yourself to make a story, using the elements suggested, it being your choice, of course, what you consider the primary plot and what the subplots.

I should know… But it is hard to recall things…Ah, now I am beginning to remember. A luxury hotel for its elegant clientele, maybe that is the scene, its baroque French design seemed geometric, perpetually orthogonal, though punctuated with classical looking pictures and statues, and decorated with elaborate ornamentation. Something different, perhaps more horrible still, will haunt you, but it haunts me. Why? What got me here? Did the villain manipulate me into this tragedy—or out of it, like a spider and a fly, as in Casablanca where Elsa’s wiles lure Rick into helping her, only to destroy the life he has built? The place was just like this one. You just giggled. Sometimes, you seem to be anxious and distracted. But, of course, you do remember. You must remember. One misty morning, I went up to your bedroom. It was a plush bedroom of oriental silks, finely carved wardrobes and four poster beds. It seems as if you were waiting, silently, seductively, lying across the sateen sofain a provocative posture. The details seem indistinct to me, now, but you accepted that you did remember, eventually. Was there another factor involved?—a subtle third element? Was it there explicitly, and only I failed to notice it? Or was it introduced imperceptibly? Was it an instrument, the relationship of some disputed object with its previous owners, and even its own preferences? The architecture of the hotel and its grounds seems unnatural, geometrical, lifeless. The park is a vast Versailles garden reassuringly arranged, with clipped bushes, and regular paths where we may walk with measured steps, side by side, day after day, within arm’s reach but without ever coming any closer to each other. A vast window opening on to the terrace from the gaming room affords us a view of the main avenue with its tiny figures moving from station to station as if choreographed. They seem like simulacra and not real people.

You might like…

• Last Year In Marienbad Never ending story. Keep refreshing or clicking the button to find out what happens year after year at Marienbad!
• Literary Criticism Self generating literary criticism
• Bishop Ecclesiasticus Christian-like babble generator
• FIBA (Frederick Ignatius Baines Archive) More Holy Bibble generated
• Impeach the war criminals, Bush and Blair—draft letter generator—for you to send
• Or go to the directory index for “The Great Critic Speaks”, Chomsky-like text generator, and more.