First of all, I really . ironically, I think it succeededs emulating interactivity itself in a way – atleast to the highest extent a static piece of text is capable of. There’s a clear pattern in the way he writes: he establishes a prospect, makes an attempt at predicting the reader’s reflections or reactions, and then responds accordingly.
He makes the argument that written words cannot be interactive, however, if we were to take his own definition of interactivity (having two parties who, in turn, listen, think, and respond to one another), and if we were to assume he is atleast somewhat correct in his estimations of the reader’s thoughts, there’s clearly an interaction going on between the author and reader. The author is performing an interaction – perhaps not one with any reader in particular, but is clearly making an attempt to reflect back on and respond to a hypothetical audience. At one point he says that “movies dont listen to their audience, nor do they think about what the audience may be saying,” and yet he manages to do exactly that through words alone.
I’m unsure of how intentional this was on the author’s part – i was inclined to give him all the credit, yet he makes abundantly clear his opinion on this matter. i do agree that it isn’t ‘real’ interaction in a traditional sense, but a deeply psychological form of interaction that i think should be appreciated more. I think we could all benifit from achieving this to some level in our own writings.
