A Novel Experience

[LARSSON at VAX1.Mankato.MSUS.EDU]

Thomas Vieth notes:
"But there is something much more straight forward metafictional.
Remember that spot (can't recal the page number) where there is talk of
the character of novels (it's either in the 200s or 300s, sorry, you'll
have to look it up yourself."


I don't have the page number at hand either, but I did notice the passage,
which reminds me of an observation made in one of Jane Austen'
s novels about a character reading "only a novel."  The narrator, I think,
then (for Austen) rather untypically chimes in with a defense of the
genre.


But I wouldn't scant the metafiction of M&D.  If not as labyrinthine as
Borges or even Barth, the presence of tales-within-tales, the slippery
nature of Cherrycoke's "narration" and the more overt anachronisms and
intertextuality must give one pause.  It is certainly no less metafictional
than V.  One thing that stands out for me is the way in which the reading
of THE GHASTLY FOP entangles itself within the general narration--but
the MDMD will come to that anon.


Don Larsson, Mankato State U (MN)