On Metafiction

or realising I was a nerd or a text or some such thing. Because that’s how it is. Especially if it is late at night. Which it is.

I did this really nerdy thing on the tube last night. I sent a text to my boyfriend to tell him the book I was reading was very 1960s, and a little metafictive. I flipped to the front of the book to check the publishing date (1969), and inwardly I did a little dance of joy. And then I realised not only am I a total nerd but, also like all those high school things I couldn’t remember last week, I don’t actually remember how to define metafiction. In terms of style. What made me think oh yes, here we have a piece of 1960s style, with just a dash of metafiction. I know that broadly it’s a piece of writing which is aware of its fictive status, but how to describe the style, how to explain it, gone. All I could think of was that short story I read that was about Ambrose at a playhouse. That was 1960s, post modern metafictive stuff. So come on brain, I know this blog is called reflections and fragments, but please, please, do some solid remembering.

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The remembering probably wasn’t going to happen of its own accord. I say wasn’t, rather than isn’t because I wrote that first paragraph this afternoon and I’m writing this one now. And its now 23:32, which as it happens is a pretty awesome time. But back to the remembering, which wasn’t happening, I did a second nerdy thing. I opened up a file on my computer containing my notes from ENGL three-oh-whatever. To read my notes on metafiction and Ambrose, who as it turns out, was at a funhouse, not a playhouse. There on the screen was a list of facts about metafiction, which I knew. Metafiction pre-empts criticism, breaks the illusion that art is reality, highlights the writing process, makes direct intertexual references, directly addresses the reader, parodies established modes, acknowledges that all stories have already been told, and so on and on and on. Oh yes, I knew all these things too. And it still makes sense. Which is a relief.

I don’t even know what I’m writing about anymore. Or why I’m writing about it. I think tiredness is slowly seeping into my brain…

…I think I am a metafictive text. That would certainly confuse the illusion that art is reality. That is what I have learnt today. Because I pre-empt criticism, can be self-deprecating, enjoy parody, address the reader (Hiya, you right? – see that, I even went for local vernacular like a real Londoner), I acknowledge the writing procedure, and that everything has been said before, as all stories have already been told, and so on and on and on. Except I am not a fiction, because I actually exist, well, unless of course this is merely the voice of an implied narrator who actually doesn’t exist, because I actually did write this as myself. I am so confused right now.

So as you read this, if it makes any sense, or even if it doesn't please feel free to drop me a line. I'd appreciate it. We could enter into a dialogue. We could write a new text, and blur our roles of writer and reader, sender and receiver, art and reality. We could have a conversation about metafiction. We could be metafictive. Except that we are real. The conversation, however, would be both real and virtual because this is a blog not an actual verbal exchange taking place in actual time and space.

I'm confused again.

I should not write when I am tired. I do not know if I am writing a thought about metafiction, or about being a nerd, or if I am a text waiting to be read.

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For example:

“… People aren’t supposed to look back. I’m certainly not going to do it anymore.

I’ve finished my war book now. The next one I write is going to be fun.

This one is a failure, and had to be, since it was written by a pillar of salt. It begins like this:

Listen:

Billy Pilgrim has come unstuck in time.

It ends like this:

Poo-tee-weet? ...”

Vonnegut, K. (1969). Slaughterhouse 5, London: Vintage