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Chuck Palahniuk's novel Survivor inverts the role of the page number, turning it into a countdown toward the climax. From Wikipedia: > The chapters and pages a
by cglong 5y ago
Chuck Palahniuk's novel Survivor inverts the role of the page number, turning it into a countdown toward the climax. From Wikipedia:
> The chapters and pages are numbered backwards in the book, beginning with Chapter 47 on page 289 and ending with page 1 of Chapter 1.
This omnipresent clock ended up being a clever, subtle way to continually build tension for the reader.
- daniel-cussen 5y agoThat's so cool. Well clocks counting down are sometimes more useful than clocks counting up. In fact where did I read that NASA's countdowns were til ten but then to build up suspense for television, they counted ten down to zero. And in fact that was better, with computers that's often better. So literature and cinema, the concept of suspense, actually improved science AND made good television at the same time. For boxing they should count down from ten to zero, in fact.
- Gunax 5y agoThe author of the non-fiction 'Humble Pi' wanted to incorporate some clever page numbering (such as backwards, binary, overflow errors), but was advised against it by the publisher who thought it might cause readers to think there is a publishing error. Eventually they compromised by having a warning page (which IMO kills the joke). https://twitter.com/standupmaths/status/1218311775868899329?lang=en https://twitter.com/standupmaths/status/1218311775868899329?...
- voussoir 5y agoThe Logan's Run novel is similar, with the chapters counting down from ten to zero.