Concepts & Literary Models of the Self

[terrance terrance]

A simple definition: Ontology is the study of conceptions of reality.

P's new novel is not driven by concepts, it is ontologically unstable.

Most novel driven by concepts (ontological themes) do not have traditional 
realistic modern characters.

There are reasons for this and some of them may be considered author, genre, 
weaknesses (i.e., readers may argue that the author's characters are flat or 
that the author does not give us characters we can care about or that SF or 
Cyperpunk are weaker forms of prose fiction).

The ontological instability undermines the unity of the Lierary model of the 
self (characters split, shatter, fade, melt away, are thin, sahllow, 
impoverished, subordinated to the ontological themes and the study of 
concepts.

see Chapter 11, "Towards a Poetic of Cyberpunk"
McHale, Brian, Constructing Postmodernism, Routledge, 1992

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