Joined: 11/17/2011
Posts: 1016
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Is it that (unfashionable) Author Intrusion? Or something else?
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Joined: 11/17/2011
Posts: 1016
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Nobody up for this one? I'll do some research on my own.
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Joined: 6/7/2011
Posts: 467
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Hey Mimi; The term has been around since the seventies, but it's not a completely new idea. It's most often used to describe works where the author makes it very clear to the reader that he is writing fiction, either by addressing the reader directly and referring to the process of writing or other, more subtle means. The writer's process becomes part of the narrative, or at least that's the impression given. It's usually very self-referential and often involves twists and tricks, such as a character revealing himself to be the author, or that sort of device. John Barth was a big proponent of it. Jorge Borges is often cited as a model, as is Nabokov. Your device of using footnotes to annotate a work of fiction is a pretty metafiction-y kind of thing to do. I often thought (and even suggested) that you could use an actual narrator in Sly, who would eventually reveal himself as a character in the narrative—complete with his own agenda and own purpose for writing—casting doubt upon his veracity, which would be a very metafiction-y kind of thing to do.
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Joined: 11/13/2014
Posts: 37
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Hi Mimi - nothing much to add to Atthys's answer, which sums it up nicely, I think. A major example way before postmodernism was Tristram Shandy - has all the exuberance, haphazardness and slyness of Sly!
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Joined: 11/17/2011
Posts: 1016
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Thank you both. Whatever meta fiction is, whatever my fiction is, I'm sticking to it. I haven't looked at the novella for two or three months now. I'm going to jump back on it and try to wrestle it to the ground. And I'm going to get back on Tristram Shandy also. I started it, loved it, really loved it, but my eye landed on something else enticing, I put Shandy aside, saying, I'll get back on that, and, per usual, never did. I surf books the way I surf the web.
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I did really love it. My kind of thing. Guess that's why I write the way I do. I'm not one who needs an actual plot to be happy. I read recently on Salon (I think) that it was a blockbuster hit when it came out. Well, what was that, the eighteenth century? Who cares? That's my story-impulse and I'm sticking to it.
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Despite all the criticism I've received, except for a few (not inconsiderable) tweaks that I am thinking about all the time, I can't write any other way. I literally cannot do it. (Okay, can't make myself do it.) And, in the end, isn't that what we all hope for? Something that so expresses our vision that, with small hope of finding a market, we push on with our madness? I like to think that the 'greats' I so admire thought the same way.
--edited by Mimi Speike on 1/20/2016, 1:19 PM--
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Joined: 11/17/2011
Posts: 1016
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Well, here's something really interesting. I'm at work. A job I'm on, I have a bunch of set pages, looks like it's meant to be back matter (I work for a compositor) - I have material with the title: The Alternative (name of the book) - Deleted and Alternate Scenes.
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Is this wild? What a great idea! Have your cake and eat it too. I'll have to see how they handle it when we get the full job set. This opens new vistas in my mind. Got to this about this, for sure.
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