Metafiction
Metafiction is a kind of fiction that self-consciously addresses the devices of fiction. It can be compared to presentational theatre in a sense--presentational theatre does not let the audience forget they are viewing a play, and metafiction does not let the readers forget they are reading a work of fiction. Metafiction is primarily associated with postmodern literature.Some common metafictive devices:
- A novel about a person writing a novel
- A novel about a person reading a novel
- A story that addresses the specific conventions of story, such as title, paragraphing, plots
- A non-linear novel, which can be read in some order other than beginning to end
- Narrative footnotes, which continue the story while commenting on it
- A novel in which the author is a character
- A story that anticipates the reader's reaction to the story
- Characters who do things because those actions are what they would expect from characters in a story
- Characters who express awareness that they are in a work of fiction
- Rabih Alameddine, I, the Divine
- Martin Amis, Time's Arrow
- Nicholson Baker, The Mezzanine
- John Barnes, One for the Morning Glory
- Julian Barnes, Flaubert's Parrot
- John Barth, Lost in the Funhouse
- Jorge Luis Borges, The Garden of Forking Paths
- Richard Brautigan, Sombrero Fallout
- Italo Calvino, If on a Winter's Night a Traveler
- Mark Z. Danielewski, House of Leaves
- Dave Eggers, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
- Willam H. Gass, The Tunnel
- William Goldman, The Princess Bride
- Larry Heinemann, Paco's Story
- Charlie Kaufman, screenplay for Adaptation
- Doris Lessing, The Golden Notebook
- Vladimir Nabokov, Pale Fire
- Alain Robbe-Grillet, Le Jalousie
- Laurence Sterne, Tristram Shandy
- Kurt Vonnegut, Breakfast of Champions
- David Foster Wallace, Brief Interviews with Hideous Men
- Jeanette Winterson, Sexing the Cherry