SOURCE: Knutson, Susan. “Text: In Which the Reader Sees a Hologram in Her Mind's Eye.” In Narrative in the Feminine: Daphne Marlatt and Nicole Brossard, pp. 155-68. Waterloo, Ont.: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2000.

In the following essay, Knutson studies Brossard's feminist vision of woman as it is symbolized by a three-dimensional, holographic image in her novel Picture Theory.

La langue est ce qui nous permet d'acheminer l'image mentale vers la pensée.

—Nicole Brossard, Accès à l'écriture

The first edition of Picture Theory (1982) has a design on the bottom right-hand corner of page 97, showing the corner of the page lifting to reveal a three-dimensional city, its highrises modelled in shimmering white outline against a dark grid. “Enter this book/city,” suggests the picture, “and enter a virtual and three-dimensional world.” The image corresponds to a densely written passage describing the vacationers' last night on the island, during...