IVIV Hope Harlingen: ( spoilers)

[Tore Rye Andersen]

alice:

> If IV has moved on from the "metafictional convention" I'd sure be 
> interesting is learning what's he's moved on to. Tell us and explain, 
> please. 
 
All right, but since my wife is away for the day and I'm about to cook
dinner for my daughter, I'll be brief. In fact, I think I'll steal:
Robert McLaughlin has said that a functional definition of metafiction
is fiction that points at itself as fiction, and I agree with him. 
Pynchon and others like him, according to McLaughlin, don't merely
point at themselves: they point at themselves pointing at the world.
They know that representation is inherently problematic, but they still,
despite that knowledge, wish to present the world to us in all its 
complexity. Otherwise, why spend decades researching and writing novels
like GR, M&D and AtD, if metafictional debunking of realism is the basic 
drive? The point metafiction has to make is made just as effectively by
John Barth in the aforementioned story "Title."
 
So Pynchon's fiction points at itself, yes, but it also points at the world.
I guess I'm just more interested in the finger pointing at the world.
 
McLaughlin makes his points in the essay "Post-Postmodern Discontent:
Contemporary Fiction and the Social World," Symploke, 12.1-2 (2004), 53-68.
 
later,
 
Tore
_________________________________________________________________
Show them the way! Add maps and directions to your party invites. 
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowslive/products/events.aspx