Fact and friction

[Terrance]

Forget fact and fiction. If all text is the same kind of fiction what is
the sense of saying that the Foreword is fiction?  What does such a
statement mean? The  Manhattan Phone book is a fiction. The Power Bar
wrapper is a fiction,  Guliver's Travels is a fiction. Paradise Lost,
Hamlet, the OED, a ticket to the opera, all are fiction. But surely
Paradise Lost is not the same kind of fiction as Hamlet. Right? Is
Hamlet the same kind of fiction as the Pynchon Foreword to Orwell's
_1984_? If all text is fiction why do we need to start off saying so?
There must be something about fiction, other than its being
distinguished from fact that we can can about it. Like, there are
different kinds of fiction. Clearly the Pynchon Foreword is not the same
kind of fiction that GR is. Right? If GR is a postmodernist novel. What
kind of fiction is the Foreword?