Most literature is written such that the order of reading is unambiguous. Indeed, most Western prose is intended to be read from left to right and top to bottom. This is not the only system, however; texts written in Arabic or Hebrew are read from right to left, and hieroglyphics, which can seem involved to modern eyes, were understood by ancient readers to be read vertically, down columns arranged from left to right. There exist, on the other hand, works of literature that require effort on the part of the reader to determine an appropriate order for reading the text on the page or even an appropriate order of the pages themselves. These works of ergodic literature (from the Greek ergon, meaning “work,” and hodos, meaning “path”) challenge the reader to be an active participant in experiencing the prose. The I Ching, for example, instructs the reader to pick random numbers and use them to look up passages to read. Mark Z. Danielewski’s House of Leaves is a modern illustration of ergodic literature. One chapter in which a group of characters traverses a maze is presented in a similarly labyrinthine manner: the reader must navigate text that winds back and forth, upside-down and right-side-up, and across and between pages to follow the episode.

Which of the following would the author of the passage most likely consider an example of ergodic literature? ​

a.​ Guillaume Apollinaire’s Calligrammes, a book of poetry in which the text is arranged into complicated shapes and images that carry as much meaning as the text itself ​
b.​ James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake, a novel written in a stream of consciousness style, which lacks a clear plot and includes a large number of made-up words ​
c.​ Marc Saporta’s Composition No. 1, a work of literature presented as a box of 150 loose pages intended to be shuffled and read in a random order



In the context in which it appears, “involved” most nearly means ​

A​ participatory
​B​ troubling ​
C​ intelligible ​
D​ archaic
​E​ complex