Puzzling Stories

Steven Willemsen is Assistant Professor in Arts, Culture and Media at the University of Groningen and Senior Researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics in Frankfurt. He is co-author of Impossible Puzzle Films: A Cognitive Approach to Contemporary Complex Cinema (with Miklós Kiss, Edinburgh University Press, 2017).

• IntroductionSteven Willemsen and Miklós KissPart I: THE ATTRACTIONS OF COGNITIVE CHALLENGE IN (POST-)CLASSICAL NARRATIVES & GENRE FICTIONChapter 1. Aesthetics and ‘Active Discovery’: The Pleasure of Moderate Cognitive Challenge in Mass ArtTodd BerlinerChapter 2. Narration, Implicature, and the Deceptive Puzzle FilmWarren BucklandChapter 3. Cognitive Challenge in Complex Science Fiction: Knowledge, Reason and Threat in Narratives of Time Travel and Extraterrestrial ContactHilary DuffieldChapter 4. Strange Loops and Nonhuman Realities: Complex Narrative Faces the Climate CrisisMarco CaraccioloPart II: MESMERIZED MINDS & BODIES: ART-CINEMA & MODERNIST AESTHETICSChapter 5. The Puzzling Film Environments of Fellini’s 8½Steffen HvenChapter 6. 2 or 3 Things? Polyphony, Cognitive Challenge and Aesthetic Pleasure in Godard’s (Counter) CinemaMaria PoulakiChapter 7. Embodying Fragmentation in Film: The Spatio-temporal Logic of Cinematic ModernismMaarten CoëgnartsChapter 8. The Most Difficult RiddleAndrás Bálint KovácsPart III: NOVEL PLEASURES IN CONTEMPORARY SERIAL TELEVISION: FROM COMPLEXITY TO CONFUSIONChapter 9. Multiform TelevisionMatthew CamporaChapter 10. ‘I Can’t Keep Track of Any of It Anymore’: Cognitive Challenge and Other Aesthetic Appeals in CommunityJason GendlerChapter 11. How Not to Comprehend Television: Notes on Complexity and ConfusionJason MittellPart IV: READING, VIEWING, ENGAGING: CONCEPTUALIZING THE PLEASURES OF BEING CHALLENGEDChapter 12. Challenges of Enjoying Morally Ambiguous Character Drama: The Dexter CaseEd S. Tan, Monique Timmers, Claire M. Segijn, Suzanna J. Opree, Guus BartholoméChapter 13. The Fascination of Failure: On Predictability, Unpredictability and Postdictability in ArtMarina GrishakovaChapter 14. Expressive Challenge and the Metaphoricity of Literary ReadingDon KuikenChapter 15. Who Likes Complex Films? Personality and Preferences for Narrative ComplexitySteven Willemsen, Katalin Bálint, Frank Hakemulder, Miklós Kiss, Elly Konijn, Kirill FaynIndex

“Puzzling Stories is a remarkable volume which presents theoretically advanced essays—which sometimes are themselves cognitive challenges for the reader—and consistently good analyses of a great variety of complex fictions… This collection is of exceptional quality. Meticulously edited, it is a welcome addition to the growing literature on narrative complexity.” • Projections“Puzzle films have often been thought to be marginal and eccentric parts of our media landscape. But they stand revealed in this diverse collection as important prototypes for wide-ranging innovation in cinema and television. These ingenious and lively essays harvest the insights of recent work on puzzling narratives to show that contradiction, anomaly, and impossibility have been central to screen storytelling for decades. From The Philadelphia Story through 8 ½ and the work of Godard, up to Twin Peaks’ hallucinatory third season and other instances of complex TV, the authors show that rigorous reflection on puzzle films can illuminate central questions of narrative construction and reception.” • David Bordwell, University of Wisconsin--Madison