what is met a fiction

8/11/2019 What is Met a Fiction

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i o M e t a f i c t i o n

Fiction is woven into all . . . I find this new reality (or

un reality) more valid.

( John Fowles ,

4

The French Lieutenant'sWoman,

pp. 86-7)

If ask ed to point out the sim ilarities am ong st this d isconcerting

selection of quotations, most readers would immediately list

tw o or three of the following : a ce lebra tion of the_power of jh e .

cre ativ e im agination together with an uncejjLainty^ a b o u ^ jh e

validity of its representations; an extreme self-consciousness

about language, literary form and the act of writing fictions; a

pervâsiyeinsecu rity ab ou t the relationsh ip of fiction to re ali ty a

pa rod ic, p lay ful, excessive or deceptively naive style of writing.

In compiling such aHlist, the reader would, in effect, be

of fer in g a brief description ofthe basic concerns and character-

istic s of the fiction which will be explore d in this book. 4

ieLaJktion

is a tefrm given to fictional writing which sdf^consciousLyând

sy s tem a t i ca l l y ~d i l^ i n

o rd er to p o s e j ^ ^ m ^ a ^ u ^ t h e relatim iship betw een fiction

an d reglity^ In prov iding a critiqu e of their own m ethods of

construction, such writings not only eâmin^the fundamental

structures of narrative fiction, they also explore the possible

^c tion ality of th ew or l'do u tside the literary fictional text.

Most of the quotations are fairly contemporary. This is

deliberate. Over the last twenty years, novelists have tended to

become much more aware of the theoretical issues involved in

constructing fictions. In consequence, their novels have tended

to embody dimensions of self-reflexiyity and formal uncer-

tainty. What connects not only these quotations but also ail of

tKe very different writers whom one could refer to as broadly

'metafictional', is that they all explore atheoryof fiction through

the

practiceof w riting fiction.

r

~

The term 'metafiction' itself seems to have originated in an

ess ay by the A m eric an critic and self-conscious novelist W illiam

H. Gass (in Gass 1970). However, terms like 'metapolitics' ,

'metarhetoric' and 'metatheatre' are a reminder of what has

been, since the ig6os

L

a more general cultural mterest in the

problem of how human beings reflect, construct and mediate

t^heirexpîej^ce of the world. Metafiction pursues such ques-

tions through its formal self-exploration, drawing on the tradi-


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W h a t is m eta f i c t i o n? 3

tional metaphor of the world as book^-but often recasting it in

the terms of contemporary philosophical, linguistic or literary

the ory . If , as indivichmls^jwe now occu py 'ro le s', rather than

'selves '^ then the study of^aracter^jn novels may provide a

useful model fox^MnderstandinugjJie^constriirtion of siLhjprtivitu

in the world outside, novels. If our knowledge_Dilthis~war4d-is

now seen to be jne dia ted lhr ou gh langu age, then literary fiction

(worlds constructejd^entirely of language) becomes a useful

modeLfor learnmgabout- thexonstmct ion

The present increased awareness of 'meta' levels of discourse

and experience is partly a consequence of an increased social

and cultural self-consciousness. Beyond this, however, it also

reflects a greater awareness within contemporary culture of the

func tion of langu age in constructing and m aintainin g our sense

o f e ver y d a y l r ea l i ty ' .T h e s im pl^no t i o n j h ^ passively

reflects a coherent^ m ean ingful and 'ob ject ive ' wo rld is no

longeiMtenable. Language-is an independent, self-contained

system which generates its own 'meanings*. Its relationship to

the phenomenal world is highly complex, problematic and

regulated by convention. 'Meta' terms, therefore, are required

in order to explore the relationship between this arbitrary

linguistic system and the worldTolvKichlT^ppaTetitly refers. In

fiction they are required TrTorder to explore the relationship

between the world

of the

fiction and the wo rldoutsidethe fiction.

In a sense, m elafiction rests on a version of the Q eiseab^Xgian

un certain ty principle: an aw areness th a t' for jthe^smal le st b u ild ^

i ng blocks of m atter, every p r oces s o f qbsery atio n eaus es a m a j o r

disturb a ncel_(Heisenberg 1972 , p. 126 ), and th atjt i sim pp ssjb le

to describe^ an ob jective world because the observ er alw ay s

changes

The

oEseryed_

v

H ow ever, Ih e concerns of metafiction are

even more complex than this. For while Heisenberg believed

one could at least desc ribe, if not a ^ / M ^ of n at u re , then a

picture of one's

relationto

nature, metafictionjshows the uncer-_

tainty even of this process. How is it possible to 'describe'

anything? The rretafictionist is highly conscious of a basic

dilemma: if he or she sets out to 'represent' the world, he

or she realizes fairly soon that the world, as such, cannot be

'represented'. In literary fiction it is, in fact, g^d.ble_QBiyJto

'represent' the discourses of that world. Yet, if one attempts to


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, a n a ly s e aa et of Unguis tic relationships using those sam e relation-^

sh ips as the instrum ents of analy sis^ lan gu ag e soon becomes a

'prisonhouseMrom which the possibility of escape is remote.

M et afic atio n sets out to explore this dile m m a.

The l inguist L. Hjelmslev developed the ternîêulanguage

(H jelm sle v 19 6 1) . H e defined it as a lang uag e w hichy-iusteadof-

refexxipjg^to non-luûisticêvenJ;&>^&ituatiQns Qr,_ab)eets in the

world, refers to

another^

la n gu ag e ;it is a lang uag e w hich takes

another language as its object. Saussure's distinction between

the s i g n i f i e s relevant here. T he signifier is the

sou nd rim age o ft h e w or do r its shape on the page; the signified is

thej^poiceplevoked by the word. A^netalanguageis a language

tha t func tions as.a. signifier

to

jmother4anguage

y

jain this other

lan gu ag e thus becomes its signified .

1

In novelistic practice, this results~in ^nting which consist-

ent ly j l i s p la y s j^ jc o n y ^ , which explici ty and overtly

la ys ba re its conditioiTofartifice, and wh ich thereby explores the

p ro b lem at ic relationship between life and fiction - both the fact

th at "all the w orld is not of course a stag e' an d

4

the crucial w ays

in which it isn't ' (Goffman 1974, p. 53). The 'other' language

may be ei ther the^^gbtersêveryday discourse or , more usu-

a ll y , the 'lapguage^cEthe^îiteraiy sysf en iitself,includ ing the con-

ven tions of the novel as a whole or pa rticu larformsof that genre.

M eta fict ion m ay concern itself, then, withjDarticular conven-

îons jo f the novel , tQLxUsplay jhe jDn^

""(for exa m ple, J o h n Fow les's use of the 'omniscient author'

convention inThe French Lieutenant's Woman( 196 9). It ma y, often

in the form of parody,, comm ent on a sp ed fie -w o rL o r fictional

inode ( for example, John Gardner 's

Grendel

( 1 9 71 ) , which

retells, and thus comments on, the

Beowulf

story from the point

of vie w ofthemonster; or Jo h n H aw kes 's

The Lime Tw ig (1961),

w h ich constitutes both an exam ple an d a critiqu e of the pop ular

f i l l e r . . Less centrally metaf ictional, but sti ll displaying 'meta '

features, are f ictions like Richard Brautigan's

Trout Fishing in

America

(1967). Such novels attempt to create alternative ling-

uis tic structures or fictions wh ich m erely

imply

the old form s by

encouraging the reader to draw on his or her knowledge of

traditional literary conventions when struggling to construct a

m ea nin g for the new text.


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W h a t is m eta f i c t i on? 5

Metafiction and the novel tradition

I would argue that metafictional practice has become particu-

larly pro m ine nt in the fiction of

the

last twenty years. However,

to draw exclusively on contemporary fiction would be mislead-

ing, for, altho ug h theterm'm etafiction ' m ight be new , the

practice

is as old (if not older) than the novel itself. What I hope to

estab lish du rin g the course of this book is that ^ ta fi c ji o n is a

tendency or fun ction inherent in

all

nov els. Th is form of fiction is

w orth stu dy ing not only because of its con tem porary em ergence

but also b ec au se of the insights itoffersinto both therep resenta-

tiona l-nature of all fiction and the litera ry history of th en ov el as

genre. By studying metafiction, one is, in effect, studying that

which gives the novel its identity.

Certainly more scholarly ink has been spilt over attempts to

define the h ay et tJia n perhaps for any other literary genre. T h e

novel no t o r io u s l y ^ Je s definit ion. Its instabi li ty in this respect

is part of its 'definition': the language of fiction appears to spill

ov er into , an d m erge with , the instab ilities o f the real w orld , in a

way that a five-act tragedy or a fourteen-line sonnet clearly does

not. Metafiction flaunts and exaggerates and thus exposes the

foundations of this instability: the fact that novels are con-

structed through a continuous assimilation of everyday histori-

cal for m s of com m unication . T he re is no one privileged 'Ian- ,

gu ag e of fiction'. T he re are the lang uag es of m em oirs, jo u rn als , }

dia ries , histories, conversational registers, legal records, jo u r- \

nal i sm, documentary . These l^guagesjcompete for pr iv i lege.

They question and relativize each otKer to such an extent that

the 'language of fiction' is always, if often covertly, sxlfr-

conscious.

Mikhail Bakhtin has referred to this process of relativization

as the 'dialogic' potential of the novel. Metafiction simply

makes this potential explicit and in so doing foregrounds the

essential mode of all fictional language. Bakhtin defines as

overtly 'dialogic' those novels that introduce a ^seraaiitic djreci.

tio.n into tHe wo rd which is dia m etric ally opp osed to its origin al

direction. . . . the word becomes the arena of conflict between

two voices' (Bakhtin 1973, p. 106). In fact, given its close

relation to ev ery da y form s of discou rse, the lang uag e of fiction is


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always

to some exte nt jdia log icJT he novel assimilates a variety of

di&courses (representations of spee ch, form s of na rrativ e) -

discourses that

always

to some extent question and relativize

each other's authority. Realism, often regarded as the classic

fictional mode, paradoxically functions by suppressing this

dialogue. The conflict of languages and voices is apparently

resolved in realistic f iction T h ro u g h T h e ir su b < ^ ina tion to the

donunant 'voice' of the omniscient, godlike author. Novels

which Bakhtin refers to as 'dialogic' resist such resolution.

Metaf ict ion

displays

and rejoices

in

the impossibility of such a

resolution an d thu s clearly r ev ea ls the ba sic identity of the nov el

as genre.

Metafictional novels tend to be constructed on the principle

of a fy n d a m e m al -a i i d ^ u s^ the construction of a

fictionalJllusign (as in traditional realism ) and the la ^ n g Jb ar e

of i lSnJ iusion. In other words, the lowest common denomina-

tor of metaf iction is s imultaneously to^reatej j f ict ion and to

make a statement about jthe creation of that fiction. The two

processes are held together in a formal tension which

dovm tl^distincJtions between 'creation' and 'criticism' and

merges them into the concepts of ' interpretation' and 'decon-

structioritr

Although this oppositional process is to some extent present

in all fiction, and particularly likely to emerge during 'crisis'

periods in the literary history of the genre (see Chapter 3), its

prom inence in the con tem porary novel is unique. T h e historical

period w e, are living:...through ha s been sin gularly un certa in,

insecure, seIf jyitioning.

f all.navels: their 'ou tstan din g

freed om to ch oose' (Fo w les 1*971, p. 4 6). It is this i as lab ility ,

openness anlllflexibility which has allowed the novel remark-

ab ly to su rviv e and a da pt to social chan ge fo r the last 300 years.

In the fac e of the po litical, cultural an d techno logical up heav als

in society since the Second World War, however, its lack of a

fix^ydem iiy.,has now left the novel vu ln er ab le .

Hence critics have discussed the 'crisis of the novel' and the

'death of the nove l'. Inste ad of recog nizing

the

positive-aspects of

fictional selfnconsciousness, they have tended to see such liter-

ary^ be ha viou r as a form of the self-indu lgen ce and decaden ce

characteristic of the exhaustion of any artistic form or genre.


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C o u ld it not be argued instead that m etafictional w riters, highly

cons cio us of the problem s of artistic leg itim acy , sim ply sensed a

need for the novel to theorize about itself? Only in this way

might the genre establish an identity and validity within a

culture apparently hosti le to i tVp^rn^^7^

n

e a r T i a r i ^ i W * * ^ d

conventional assumptions about 'plot ' , 'character ' , 'authority '

and 'representation'. The traditional fictional quest has thus

been transformed into a quest for fictionality.

M etafiction and the contem porary avant garde

T h is search has been further m otivated by novelists ' responses

to anothe r featu re of con tem porary cultural life: the abse nc e of a

clearly def ined ava nt- gar d^ Jm i^e m eiit l . T h e existence"oT an

unprecedented cultvmid pluralism has meant that post-

m ode rnist w riters are noTconfronteH with the sam e clear-cut

opp ositions as m od ern ist writers were. A n innovation in a

~ r

literary form cannot establish itself as a n^\^dii^.ctiQBainless a

sense pf shared a ims a n d o b j ectives develops amon g ex-

perim en tal w riters. T h is has been slow m recent

years. An argument originally advanced by Lionel Trill ing in

Beyond

Culture(Trill ing 1966) and reiterated by Ge ra ld G ra ff has

suggested one reason for this: that the unmasking of the 'hypo-

critical bourgeois belief in the material and moral progress of

civilization ' ( G ra ff 197 5, p. 308) has been so thoroughly a c c o m

:

plh he cL bj^ m odernism that the creative ten sionjprod uced by

opposing this 'bourgeois belief ljTno longer clearly ava ilable

the novelist.

In eighteenth- and nineteenth-century f iction, tl^indiyiduai.

is a lw ay s finally in tegr ate d into the,sociaL sjtructure (usu ally

through family relationships, marriage, birth or the ultimate

dissolution of death). In modernist fiction the struggle for

personal autonomy can be continued only throughopposition to

existing social institutions and conventions. This struggle

necessarily involves individual alienation and often ends with

mental dissolution. The power structures ofcontemporarysociety

are, however, more diverse and more effectively concealed or

mystif ied, creating greater^groblems for the post-modernist


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W h a t is m e t a f i c t io n ? 1 1

novelist in identifying and then representing the object of

' o p p o s i t i o n ' ^

M et afi ction al w riters hav e found a solution to this by turning

inw ard s to their own.m edi^mijailexpi^ssion, in order to exa m ine

the relationship be tw ee niic tioa al form and social reality . Th ey

have come to focus on the notion that 'every


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i o M e t a f i c t io n

them selves produce wo rks of art which are ep hem eral and even

trivialLJn the present situation 'even a single work willbe

sufficient grounds for declaring a style finished^ exhausted'

(Ro chb erg 1 9 7 1, p. 73). T h e practitioners of so-calle3âleatory

ar t ' (which attempts to be jota Jly a n d o m in or d erjo suggest the

chaotijc, frenetic âd coUiding surfaces of contemporary tech-

nologica)society) are opeiTtoThese charges. Literarytexts-tend

to function by p reserving a balan ce betw een the un fam iliar (the

innovatory) and the familiar (the conventional or traditional).

Both are necessary because some degree ^ j ^ u j i d a r i c y i s

essential for anvJDiessage to he co m m jltd ^ om em or y^ Redun-,

cfancy isp ro vi d ed for in H ter ar y texts ..through thep reSe nc e of

fanil lmr conventiomTExperimental f iction ofthe a L e a l o ^ v a ^ "

C t y je s ^ u nd ancy by s imply ignor ing the c o n tr i -

tions of literary trad ition. Su ch texts set out to resist the n orm al

processesjDflxe^ding, m em ory îid ^n d.er stan d^ without

re d ^ d an cy -. texts.are read and forgotten. Th ey cannot unite to

form a literary 'movement' because they exist only at the

rnqmenLofjieading. ~

The metafictional response to the problem of how to repre-

s e n ^ m ^ c h ao j^ in the, p erm a n en t a nd

orde red terms"of literature,TiasTiaH " a 'much m ore significan t

influen ce on the de velo pm en t "of the novel as ge nre. A lea tor y

w riting might im itate the experience ofTivnT giHltrerbntemp or-

ary world, but it fails to offer any of the comfort traditionally

supplied by literary fiction through a 'sense of an ending'

(Ke rm od e 1966). M etafictio n, however, offers both innovation

and fam iliarity through the indiv idua l reworking and und er-

mining of familiar conventions.

Aleatory writing simply responds with a reply in kind to the

jaljuralistic, hyperactive multiplicity of styles that constitute the

surfac es of present-day cu lture. W hat is m ain fy asserted in su ch

novels i s an^^nai^hit l^vtdual ism, a randomness des igned to

represent an avoidance of social cohtfohby~stressing theam - -

poss i b i l i ty o f easi lyc ate go riz in g.i t o r a s s i m i la tin g the reader to

' fam iliar structures of com m unication. A n argum ent somelimes

prbpSfl-


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W h a t is m e t a f i c t i o n ? 1 3

realism, for example, certifies concepts like 'eternal hujrian

n^luxe ^ar the assumption that authority as manifestecTThrougfi^

the omniscient author is somehow free of both gender distinc-

tions and of historically constructed and provisional moral

values). Such novels supposedly expose the way in which these

social practices are constructed through the languagcjof op-

pressive ideologies, by refusing to allow the reader the^role.of

passive consumer or any means of arriving at a 'tojtalljrUergre-

tafio n of tKeftextT

" A1 though IFTsTtrue that m uch of this sho uld und oub tedly

be the task of experimental fiction, it does seem questionable

whether, for many readers, so-called 'aleatory writing' is going

to accom plish all of this. Novels like J o h n Fo w les's TheFrench

Lieutenant's

Woman

or Robert Coover 's Pricksongs and

Descants

(1969), though apparently less 'radical ' , are in the long run

likely to be more successful. Both are metafictional novels in

that they .employ p arody self- m os do us lvr Bo th take as their

'object' language^tHe simctures of nineteenth-century realism

and of histon calrom an ce or of fa iry -ta les .T H Fp aro dy of these

'lang ua ge s' functions to efam ilmjize.su ch structures by setting

up vario us co unt e r-1 e c h n i q ues tojin de rniin e tKe aiitho rityo the

orhnisclerTt author, of the closure of the~TTfral' ending, of the

definitive interpretation. Although the reader is thereby dis-

tanced from the language, the literary conventions and, ulti-

m ately, from conventional ideologies, the de fam iliarization pro-

ceeds from an extremely familiar base. Such novels can thus

initial ly be comprehended thr o u g h jj i j Q ^ nd can

therefore beei^Syed and remain in the consciousness of a wide

read ership wh ich is given a fa r m ore active role in the construc-

tion of the 'm eaning ' j j f l h e text t h a n i s provided either in

con tem po rary realist n ovels or I n novels" w hich convert their

readers into frenetic human word-processors, and which ' last '

only as long as it takes to read them.

The mirror up to art: metafiction and its varieties

It remains, within this introductory chapter, briefly to examine

some alternative definitions of self-conscious writing. These

sim ilar m odes ha ve been vario usly term ed 'the jnjtroverted.


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jioveF; 'the anti-novel' , ' irreaHsjn', 'surfiction', ' the self-

begett ing novel7TaBulaFion

5

.

3

All, l ike 'metafiction', imply a

fiction that self-consciously reflects uponqts own structure as.,

lan gu ag e; all offer differen t perspectives on the sam e process.

8 u t the terms shif t the je m j^ h as is j^ T h e 'self -

begeiJUng^jjyel ' , for example, is described as an 'account

us ua lly first pe rson, of tliejdevel(^m ent o fA c h a ra ct er to a poTnt,

at^dych^ie ihrgBIe jo take up_and compose the novel we have_

|u st finishedreading.' (K ellm an 19 76, p. 124 5). TK e em p h a si s

l s

on the develop m ent of the na rrat or, on the m odernist concern of

consciousness rather than the post-modernist oneoffictionality (a

in, for exam ple, An dre G ide 's The

Counterfeiters

( 1925)) .

T h e entry of the na rra to r into the text is also a definin g feat ur e

of w ha t has been called 'surf iction' . Ra ym on d Fe de rm an 's book

of that name discusses the mode in terms of overt narratorial

intrusion so that, as in the 'self-begetting novel', the focus

ap p ea rs to be on the ironist him /herself rather than on the ove rt

and covert levels oftTTe tfJnic^ext. Telling as indivi


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make an artefact outôf the mater.ials~.and so to treat the

medium as an end.^ (Ga ss 1970)

The expression ofthis tension is present in much contemporary

writing but it is the

dominant

function in the texts defined here as

metafictional.

T h e metafict ions o f j o rg e Luis Borges and V ladim ir Nabokov

illustrate this point. In some of their work - Borges'Labyrinths

(1964 ) and N ab o ko v's EaleÊire^ (19 62 ), for ex am ple - fiction

explicitly

masquerades as formalized critical interpretation. In

all their"w ork, ho w eve r, as uT alToThef m etafiction^ fKere is a

more complex im/?/fc/t^Xex:dêndencej30evels than this. The

reader is.always presented with embedded strata which contra-

dict the pje ^ju pp ositio n^ tFataJm .m diate 1 y abo ve or

êlow. The fictional

contmLs>(

the story is continually reflected

by itsform al existence as text, and the existence of that text

withinlTvVorkl viewed in terms oPt^tuzditY^. Brian McHale

has suggested that such contradictions are essentiallyontologicaI

(p os in ^^ es tio n ^ ab gu t the nature and existence of reality) an d

are therefore cha racteristically p ost-m od ernist H e sees as mod-

ernist those epistemological contradictions which question how

we can know^^real ityl^bse existence is f inal ly not in doubt

(McHale, forthcoming).

Borges ' imaginary kingdom Tlon, discovered by the ' fortun-

ate conjunction of a mirror and an encyclopaedia' , is a post-

m odern ist w or ld . It is twice a fiction because it is suggested tha t,

before its invention by B or ge s, it has alread y been inven ted by a

secret society of idealists including Bishop Berkeley, and both,

of course, are finally dependent upon the conventions of the

short story (Labyrinths, p. 27). The fact that this ' imaginary'

world can take over the 'real ' one emphasize^moxeahan. the

oTtHem (which would be the

a r ^ o f T H F ^ s H f ^ ^ ') . ' T l o n l J q b a r O r b is T e r t ius ',

the stor y, ijâfaouLa s to ry th a t invents an imagirvary^woild, and

it prim arily and self-consciously isa story w hich , like all stories,

iftyents. a n im agin a r y w o r Id. It imp lies that hu m an beings can

only ever achieve a m etap ho r for reality, a nother -layerôf

' interpjr^tation'. (Borges story 'FuneTTKcTMemorias' (1964)

shows that this need not be cause for despair, for if indeed we


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could not create these metaphorical images then we would all

surely become insane.)

l ^ t a f i c t i ^ ^ 'sur fict ion ' or 'the self-begett ing

nov el ') thus reject~the~tmd m ^ of the a u th o ^ s a

transcendental imagination fabricating, through an ultimately"

moifiologic^scourse, structures oford'er~which will replace the

forgotten m ate rial text of the w orld . Th ey show not only that the

'author' is a concept produced through previous and existing^

literary and social texts but that what is generally taken to be

' re^it^isa lso constructed and mediated in a s imi lar fashion.

S t H l I t } ^ a nd can be und ersto od

through an appropriate 'reading' process.

Also rejected is the displacement of 'historical man' by

'structural man' advocated by Robert Scholes as the basis of

wh at he nc^ ^T abu lationn^ Schro les 1975) . D avid Lo dge has

pointed out that ^history may be in a philosophical sense,_a_

fiction, but it does not feel like that when we miss a train or

somebody starts a war' .* As novel readers, we look to fiction to

o f fer u s^ ^n i t iv e j^ ct io n sr ta lo c^ at eu s with in everyday as we ll

as within philosophical paradigms, to explain the historical

w-orld a s w _ e i L a s ^ comfort and^certa inty :

Scholes argues that the empirical has lost all validity and that a

collusion between the ph iloso ph ic and the m ythic in the form of

'ethically controlled fantasy' is the only authentic mode for

fiction (Scholes 19 6 7, "p. 1 1 J. H ow ev er, m etafiction offers the

recognition, no yh at_the e ve ryd ay has ceased to m atter, but that

its formulation through social and cultural codes bririgs ircloser

to the ph ilosoph ical and m yth ic than w as once assumed*-

A brief comparison oftw o self-conscious novels, one obvious-

ly 'm etafiction al ' , the other m ore obviously ' fab ula tor y' , shows

how metafiction explores the concept of fictionality through an

opposition between the construction and the breaking of illu-

sion, while fabulation reveals instead what Christine Brooke-

Rose (1980) has referred to as a reduced tension between

technique and counter-technique: a 'stylizationVwhich enables

either voices to be

assirmlaierf,

rathe r than presen ting a con flict of

v o i c e s . "

Murie l Spark ' s met fiction l novels lay bare the process of

imposing form upon contingent matter through the discursive


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organization ofJplotL She can, however, as David Lodge has

said o f J o y c e , afford her metap horic flights becau se of the

stability of her m etonymic base (Lo dge 19 77 a , p. 1 1 1 ) . Sh e uses

her 'fligh ts ', in

fact,

to com m ent on the very pa rad igm s that they

are in the process of constructing (this embedding of strata, of

course , being f u n d a m e n t ^ In Not to Disturb

(1971), for example, this highly obtrusive simile describes a

storm:

Meanwhile the lightning which strikes the clump of elms so

that the two

friends

hud dled there are killed instan tly without

pain, zigzags across the lawns, illuminating the lily-pond and

the sunken rose garden like a self-stricken flash photo-

gra ph er, a nd like a zip-fastener ripped fro m its garm ent by a

sexual maniac.

(p. 86)

This appears to be a piece of highly stylized descriptive prose

marked particularly by the appearance of extremely bizarre

metaphors. To this extent it is very similar to Richard Brauti-

gan's

fadulatory

novel,

Trout

Fishing in

America

(19 67 ), which is

full of similar metaphorical constructions where the extreme

polarity of vehicle and tenor im plicitly rem inds the reader of the

way in which metaphor constructs an image of reality by

connecting apparently quite disparate objects. In this novel, for

example, trout are described waiting in streams 'l ike airplane

tickets' (p. 78), and the reader's imagination is stretched

throughout by the incongruity ofthe comparisons. The novel is

a celebration o f the creative im agina tion: it is a 'fab ula tion '.

IntITe""Spark example, however, there is a furtKe

more

subtle function that is part of a sustained metafictional display;

for the vehicle of the metaphor is explicitly related to what is

happening at the contiguously unfolding level of the story. A

group of entrepreneurial and enterprising servants have

arran ged the film ing of the last m om ents of an eternal triang le of

superannuated aristocrats. The servants know their masters are

going to die and also know how to capitalize on their deaths.

Aristocratic scandals provide excellent material for media sen-

sationalism. The photographer and the zip fastener (which the

mentally deficient aristocratic son is continually attempting to


18/19


rip off in the excitement of his intermittent sexual energy) are

im por tant elem ents in the plot being constructed by the novelist

(who also, as in the example, arranges appropriate climatic

conditions) and, of course, by the characters. The reader is

alerted to the w ay in w hich the ex plic uly jtrt if icial construction

of these conn ections fits in with the larger designs of d ieja oî isJ:

p la yin g Go d., T h e elemen ts at the metaph orical level of the

con struction break dow n not into na tural ' or random lyjchosgn ,

components, hut to another level of artifice: the level of the

'plo t ' . T h e reader is thus reminded that .pu i^jcp ntir^ e^ yîn _

novels i s a lwayâr^kôny-aj j j inugh the lgvyest^ jeyel of the

artif ice (what the Russian formalist Boris Tomashevsky has

refer red to as realistic m otivation; see Lem on an d Re is 196 5, pp.

6 1 - 9 9 ) is assu m ed to be rgality.-Th us not only do the cha racters

in this no vel p lay roles, fictionalize'in terms of the

content

of the

plot; they too are 'fictionalized', created, through the formal

CQiutxuction

oCthe plot.

M etaf ict ion expl icit ly lays bare the jxm yen tion s^ it

does not ignore or abandon them. Very often realistic conven-

tions su pply the 'con trol' in m etafictiona l texts, .the norm or

background against-which the experimental strategies can fore-

ground themselves. More obviously, of course, this allows for a

stable level of readerly familiarity, without which the ensuing

dislo ca tio ns m igh t be eith er totally m eaning less or so_x>u ts.ide

the normal modes of literary or non-literary communication

that they cannot be committed to memory (the problem,

already discussed, of much contemporary 'aleatory' writing).

M e ta fict io n, t h e n ^ j i o ^ n Q ^ the

n arc is^ fefi^ ple asu res of the im agination^ W hat it does is to

r e - e x a m i n e t h e - e o n v e n f i o n s o f r e a l i g m J n u a r d e r ^ ^ i s c o w r ^

throug h its ow n self-reflecliorT ^ a fijmonaJJ&H T^^

ally relevant and comgrehensilj le to contemporary readers: In

showing us how l i terary f i c t ion crea^ i ts jmaginary wor lds ,

metafiction helps us to understandliow the reality welive day "

by j j& yjs s imilarly con stru H eaj l im ilariy 'written".

'Metaficdonl. is thus an elastic term which covers a wide

range of fictions. There are those novels at one end of the

spectrum which take fictionality as a theme to be explored (and

in this sense would include the 'self-begetting novel'), as in the


19/19


work of Iris M urd och or Je r z y K osin sk i, whose form al self-

consc iousness is jim ite d . A t the centre of this spectrum are those

texts that manifest the symptoms of formal and ontological

insecurity but allow their deco nstructions to be finally recontex-

tualized or 'na turalize d' and given a total interpretation (which

constitute, the refore, a 'new rea lism '), as in the work of J o h n

Fow les or E . L . Doctorow. 'F in a lly , at the furthest extrem e

(which would include Tabulation') can be placed those fictions

that, in rejecting realism more thoroughly, posit the world

as a fabrication of competing semiotic systems which never

correspond to material conditions, as in the work of Gilbert

Sorrentino, Raymond Federman or Christine Brooke-Rose.

Much British fiction fits into the first half of the spectrum,

though problematically, and much American fiction into the

other half, though w ith the sam e proviso. T h e n ovelist at either

end, how eve r - in confronting the problem that, 'wh ether or not

he mak es ^pjeacewith r ea lis m ,.b e m ust so m eho w .xop e with

realit^'jpickinson 19 75 , p. 37 2) - has ackno wled ged the fact

that this 'rea lity' is jn fi jc u a g ^ by nineteenth-

cei^jcyjiov^li&ts-and experienced by nineteenth-century read-

ers. Indeed, it could be argued that, far from 'dying', the novel

has reached a mature recognition of its existence as writing,

wh ich can only ensure its continued viab ility in and relevan ce to

a contemporary world which is similarly beginning to gain

awareness ^_pjrecisely how its values and practices are con-

s t r u ^ e J a n d legitimized.

what is met a fiction

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