Of Course We’re Talking About You

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Mediating, University of Groningen.

Of Course We’re Talking About You

Metareference in Money, The New York Trilogy, and A Heartbreaking

Work of Staggering Genius

Emmie Touwen s2178699 Supervisor: Dr Corey Gibson

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Abstract

This dissertation shows that analysis of metanarrative, metafiction, and metalepsis reveals the relationship between reality and fiction and the degree of conceit in three works: Money by Martin Amis, The New York Trilogy by Paul Auster, and A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers. Moreover, these works use the devices to consider the conventional framing of a novel, the way a plot is set up, and the positioning of the characters and narrator. Money establishes a large gap between fiction and reality to enhance the effect its intrusive author, who uses overt conceit to establish his power over the novel after a struggle for primacy with its main character. In The New York Trilogy Auster presents his reader with an inherently metafictional universe and within its confines he experiments with metaphysical questions about the relationship between reality and fiction, knowledge derived from textual sources, and the necessity of a plot, characters, and a stable narrator. In his concern to present a factually accurate narrative, Eggers self-reflexively plays with the framing of his memoir and ultimately inverts the relationship between fiction and reality. He uses covert conceit to confirm the complexity of his narrative and show his power as an author. This dissertation demonstrates that a structural analysis of different forms of metareference enables concrete assertions about the ways in which a work deals with conceit, reality, and literary conventions.

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Introduction

“We’re not talking about me” “Yes we are, of course we are. We always are. In one way or another we always are. Isn’t this obvious?” (Eggers 423)

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between reality and fiction; the degree of conceit; and experiments with the form of the novel in the three works.

By examining these three topics, this dissertation considers the way in which these works approach the fact that in all written narratives information is mediated through text: they self-reflexively play with this awareness in different ways. Using metareference, they all expose the mediation that is inherent to the narrative within the narrative. Therefore, examination of metareference in these works offers a base for reflection on the forms of these texts and acts of writing. Ultimately, in these works we see a movement from the technical, conceited metareference of Amis, to the metaphysical metareference of Auster, to the inverted relationship between fiction and reality in Eggers. Martin Amis constructs a traditional novel before exposing its narrative levels and challenging the convention of one coherent narrative through an intrusive author. His novel establishes a large gap between fiction and reality to enhance the impact of this metaleptic jump. Paul Auster presents the reader with a complicated, inherently metafictional world to ask metaphysical questions about the complex relationship between fiction and reality, which results in a demonstration of the problematic nature of extracting meaning from textual sources. Dave Eggers binds fiction and reality together by using metareference to strengthen the truth value of his memoir, but his use of the devices complicates this by simultaneously showing that any medium distorts its message and unveiling the high level of conceit in the work.

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metareferential methods of writing. To further untangle the works I divide my analysis of metareference into metanarrative, metafiction, and metalepsis. As these terms are often used interchangeably (Fludernik Narratology 61), I will define them in detail in section 1.2 and 1.3. In short, the term ‘metanarrative’ is used to denote comments made by a narrator on the act of narrating their text, ‘metafiction’ describes any reference in the text to the fictionality of the text (Neumann and Nünning 2), and ‘metalepsis’ is the transgression of boundaries between narrative levels (Genette Narrative Discourse 234–35). These categories of techniques may overlap or be used together to achieve one shared effect. I use the term ‘metareference’ to refer to the three terms together.

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implied author might be deceiving his readers. Here, I use the term ‘conceit’ to refer to the rhetorical device where a work manipulates images and ideas in order to suggest to its reader that a more sophisticated reading of the text is needed to uncover its full meaning and that by doing so they will ultimately be able to reach full understanding of and insight into the work.

After a first chapter in which I explain relevant theories, I dedicate one chapter each to analysing the three works. The first novel, Money (1984), is the suicide note of John Self, a seemingly successful film producer, who is deceived by his backer and ruined by his obsession with money. The author, Martin Amis, features as a character in the novel. He is employed by an unknowing Self to write the script for the latter’s new film, and observes Self’s misfortunes while making ambiguous metafictional remarks on the progression of the novel itself. Such an intrusive author is a rather conventional example of metalepsis, which is why it is a good start to this discussion of metareference. The metareference in the novel is applied in a technical, straightforward way, and only one narrative boundary is actually transgressed. Moreover, as Amis presents us with a relatively traditional novel before making a metaleptic jump, it provides us with a clear insight into the effects this has on a plot: it adds an unsettling thematic parallel to the main story, and raises questions about an author’s responsibility for the actions of his characters. Money is also the only novel of the three to feature a struggle between the author and his protagonist.

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In the second, Ghosts, detective Blue discovers that the person he is spying on is, in fact, his employer, who has also been watching him. In the third, The Locked Room, an unnamed narrator reveals having written the first two novellas, and tells the story of how he inherited the unpublished manuscripts of an author who everyone but him believed to be dead. This author, Fanshawe, later enters the worlds of City of Glass and Ghosts to create havoc there. In The New York Trilogy, the narrative levels are not as stable as they are in Money. Much of the plot only moves forward because of metaleptic jumps and metafictional elements, and some storylines cannot exist without them. The duality between the author and narrator and their struggle for primacy we see in Money explodes in The New York Trilogy to a metafictional universe where power structures are more complicated, there are numerous acts of authoring/writing/reading/observing, and resistance against authors is useless.

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Chapter 1: Theoretical Framework

In this chapter I outline the theoretical concepts and key terms on which I base my comparison of the three works. To enable a detailed discussion of the novels, I use several key terms and distinctions from the field of narratology, mainly Seymour Chatman’s ideas about the participants in the narrative process (151), and Gérard Genette’s ways to separate narrative levels (Narrative Discourse 228). Moreover, throughout my analysis of the works, I distinguish three different forms of metareference: metanarrative, metafiction, and metalepsis. The term ‘metareference’ is used by Werner Wolf to denote any reference made by a medium to its own signifying practice, regardless of what that medium is (303-4). I adopt this concept as an umbrella term for the three devices explained in detail in section 1.2 and 1.3. In short, metanarrative is the commenting on the process of narration of a story, metafiction is any element in a work that implicitly or explicitly draws attention to the work’s fictionality, and metalepsis is the transgression of boundaries between narrative levels. These devices can be used simultaneously and their functions may overlap. Their exact distinctions and definitions differ per critic or theorist, and they are rarely discussed all together or in relation to metareference. Sources on the topic are also usually either highly theoretical or simply mention the concepts in passing while employing them in literary analysis. Therefore, before applying them to the works, a chapter dedicated to the concepts themselves is necessary.

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their meanings. However, I am also aware of the limitations of such an endeavour, such as problems with untangling devices that are deliberately used in a vague way, overcomplicating a text, or underestimating the complexity of a reader’s experience. In respect to this last issue, it could be argued that the use of metareference diminishes a reader’s emotional response to a work, as it so often exposes the work’s affected nature. However, in that case, no reader could engage with a work in a meaningful way, as we are always aware that what we read is fictional. Merja Polvinen applies the theory of “joint attention” (167) to fiction. She explains that the reader internalizes both the narratee, to whom the main text is addressed, and the implied reader, to whom the work of fiction and thus the metareference is addressed (167). “Joint attention” describes a process in which a person integrates both an object, someone else’s perceptions of that object, and their own perception into their own observation (167). Applied to metareference, this means that the reader takes not only the main text and their emotional response to it into account, but also the meta-layers and their response to that. Due to this two-fold, paralleled experience, the reader can have a strong emotional response to a narrative, while at the same time being fully aware of its fictionality (172). Therefore, it is possible to analyse metareference in a work while simultaneously considering the emotional effect it has on a reader and the meaning that can be drawn from it.

1.1 Concepts taken from narratology

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3; Barry 215), but the distinction is essentially the same. Here, the word ‘story’ refers to the signified narrative events, drawn from their position in the text and rearranged in chronological order so they make up the events as they happen in the fictional world of the narrative (Rimmon-Kenan 3). The ‘plot’ refers to the discourse in which the story is narrated, including the order of events as presented in the novel. It is the signifier of the story. As a novel is usually a written or spoken discourse, it suggests that someone writes or speaks the plot. The term ‘narration’ is used to denote this process of the production of narrative action.

There are a number of participants in this last process. In the field of narratology, Seymour Chatman’s diagram of participants in the process of narrative communication is most commonly used. Chatman distinguishes between the real author, the implied author, the narrator, the narratee, the implied reader, and the real reader (151). Following Shlomith Rimmon-Kenan, who argues that the narrator, not the implied author, should be constitutive instead of optional (90), we come to the following distinctions: here, the real author is the actual author of the novel, the implied author is the author that is constructed by the reader based on the narrative and the narrator is the narrative voice in the text. Unlike the narrator, the implied author has no voice, he speaks to the reader “through the design of the whole” (Chatman 148). The implied author’s counterpart is the implied reader, “the audience presupposed by the narrative itself” (150). In the novel, there may or may not be a narratee: a character the story is related to, such as the sultan in The Arabian Nights, to whom Shahrazad relates stories and folktales in exchange for her life (1-1008). The narratee may act as a device that helps the real reader understand how to perform as the implied reader.

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1.2 Metanarrative and metafiction

The terms ‘metanarrative’ and ‘metafiction’ are often used interchangeably in the English speaking world (Fludernik Narratology 61). However, this assumption does not do the techniques justice, as Birgit Neumann and Ansgar Nünning demonstrate. They argue that “metanarration refers to the narrator’s reflections on the act or process of narration” (2) whereas “metafiction concerns comments on the fictionality and/or constructedness of the narrative” (2). Both concepts are concerned with self-reflexivity in language, but metanarration is concerned with the act of narration, not with the fictionality of the text itself. However, these techniques can overlap, as a text may call attention to its fictionality through commenting on the act of narrating or vice versa. Metanarrative can add a second layer to the text that strengthens its authenticity (Neumann and Nünning 6), such as in many of the works of Joseph Conrad. For example, in Heart of Darkness (1899) the frame narrative strengthens the idea that the narrated events in the Belgian Congo really happened. This device may also be used to form a direct connection between the narrator and the reader and thus establish a relationship of trust, closeness, and reliability (Fludernik Narratology 61) or help the reader orientate themselves on the discourse level (Fludernik Narratology 61).

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truth is, my dear Augusto, […] you can’t kill yourself because you are not alive; and you are not alive – or dead either – because you do not exist” (294), this passage refers to the fact that Augustus is a fictional character and thus breaks with the illusion of narrative realism. The functions of metafiction range “from undermining aesthetic illusion to poetological self-reflection, commenting on aesthetic procedures, the celebration of the act of narrating, and playful exploration of the possibilities and limits of fiction” (Neumann and Nünning 12). Moreover, though the concept of metafiction is often related to self-reflexivity and self-consciousness (Fludernik Metanarrative 5; Wolf 304), it does not necessarily have to be the case (Currie 1).

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1.3 Metalepsis

Gérard Genette, who first identified the technique (Pier 2), defines narrative metalepsis as “any intrusion by the extradiegetic narrator or narratee into the diegetic universe (or by diegetic characters into a metadiegetic universe, etc.) or the inverse” (Narrative Discourse 234–35). In short, it is the transgression of boundaries between narrative levels, which may result in “a paradoxical contamination between the world of the telling and the world of the told” (Pier 2). Like metafiction, metalepsis often demonstrates the fictionality of a text, and although these techniques therefore often occur simultaneously, metalepsis is more concerned with the transgression of narrative levels than self-reference. Several critics distinguish between different forms of metalepsis. Monika Fludernik divides Genette’s metalepsis into five different types (Scene Shift 384-388), of which I will discuss only four, as the last is “only very tangentially related to a metaleptic crossing of boundaries” (Scene Shift 388). Alternatively, Marie-Laure Ryan and Alice Bell and Jan Alber distinguish between ontological and rhetorical metalepsis. As this distinction is the clearest, I use this as a basis for my analysis. Ontological metalepsis “opens a passage between levels that result in their interpenetration, or mutual contamination,” (Ryan 207) whereas rhetorical metalepsis only “opens a small window that allows a quick glance across levels, but the window closes after a few sentences, and the operation ends up reasserting the existence of the boundaries” (Ryan 207). This can also be seen as the difference between metalepsis on discourse level (rhetorical metalepsis) and metalepsis on story level (ontological metalepsis) (Cohn 105).

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establishes them as the author of a text. Here, the transgression of narrative levels distances the reader from the “truth-related narrative illusion” (Fludernik Scene Shift 384). Discourse metalepsis concerns “a metalepic move by the narrator during a pause in the discourse” (Fludernik Scene Shift 386). Here, the author plays with “the time of the story and the time of narrating” (Genette Narrative Discourse 65). For example, in Laurence Sterne’s Tristram Shandy (1759) the extradiegetic narrator explains “there is no time to be lost in in exclamations – I have left my father lying across his bed and my uncle Toby in his old fringed chair, sitting beside him, and promised I would go back to them in half an hour” (Sterne 170). Here, the extradiegetic narrator and the diegetic character operate in the same time frame, thus blurring the boundary between these levels. These two forms of metalepsis are concerned with the narration of the story (Fludernik Scene Shift 389). In these types, the story “becomes a function of the narrational discourse, its separate existence (and truth) are denied” (Fludernik Scene Shift 389). As rhetorical metalepsis is concerned with the extradiegetic level of the narration of a story, it may overlap with metanarrative strategies.

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“horizontal metalepsis” (168), called “transfictionality” by John Pier (34), in which a character from one fictional universe appears in another (Bell and Alber 168). For example, Trellis’ characters in At Swim-Two-Birds by Flann O’Brien interact with Finn Mac Cool, a hero of Irish folktales.

Additionally, Bell and Alber draw the concepts of “transworld identity” and “counterparthood” from possible-worlds theory and apply it to ontological metalepsis. Possible-worlds theory can be explained from two different perspectives. From the Abstractionist perspective, the possible worlds “represent the way things might have been rather than how they actually are within an alternative ontological domain” (Bell and Alber 170) whereas from a Concretist perspective “possible worlds comprise tangible domains that materially exist and have the same ontological status as the actual world” (Bell and Alber 170). Theorists of both groups are concerned with the transgression by individuals from one ontological world to another. Once they have identified such an individual, they discern whether he or she moved from one fictional world to another (transworld identity) or whether he or she exists in more than one world at the same time (counterparthood) (Bell and Alber 171). These theories can be used to illuminate both horizontal and vertical metalepsis (173). Bell and Alber make a case for the use of ‘world’ instead of ‘diegetic level’ (169), but in my discussion I use both terms interchangeably.

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their own progress in the novel. Luigi Pirandello’s Six Characters in Search of an Author (1912) is a clear example of this, as the characters act independently in their search for an author to tell their stories.

1.4 Application to the works

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Chapter 2: Money by Martin Amis

Money, a novel written by Martin Amis in 1984, is the suicide note of John Self, who relates the story of his obsession with money and how he is deceived by the financial backer of his film. This work is widely regarded as a postmodern novel, because of Self’s confusion, anxiety, and inability to distinguish image from reality (Finney 118). Popular themes in the critical and academic discussion of this novel include obsession (Edmondson 145), alienation (Maziarczyk 12-15), motivation (Duggan 86), consumerism or capitalism (Finney 46), and identity (Edmondson 145-147; Maziarczyk 7). John Self encounters a character named Martin Amis in the novel, to whom he assigns the writing of the script to his film. This “postmodern set piece” (Duggan 86) of the intrusive author in the novel has often been discussed (Duggan; Finney; Maziarczyk; Todd). In this chapter, I not only focus on the intrusive author in isolation, but consider him as a part in a larger whole of metareference. I demonstrate how descending ontological metalepsis distances Amis the character from John Self, thereby empowering the author, and evoking questions about the morality of authorship and the relationship between fiction and reality in the work. Money’s metareference unsettles the reader and results in a thematic parallel between their experience and that of the protagonist, thereby further empowering the author of the work.

2.1 Authorship and fictionality

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moved forward by the intrusion of the author, such as the conversations with Amis the character, and Self’s relationship with Martina, the metalepsis is not essential for the upholding of the narrative levels in the novel. The fact that Amis the character is an author figure and that Martina is linked to Amis adds a self-reflexive metaleptic and metafictional layer to the novel, but if they were mere characters most of the plot would still exist. Thus, Amis sets up a coherent, ‘traditional’ novel before adding the intrusive author as a self-reflexive dimension, in contrast to the inherently metanarrative structuring of The New York Trilogy and A Heartbreaking Work, as explained in chapter 3 and 4. The intrusion of the author into the novel exposes its different narrative levels and stresses its fictionality.

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take with him. You can do what the hell you like to him, really” (Amis 246-7). Ultimately, Amis concludes that he can do what he wants to Self. This leads to questions about the morality of authorship. Amis the character, echoing the author, asks “Is there a moral philosophy of fiction? When I create a character and put him or her through certain ordeals, what am I up to – morally? Am I accountable” (Amis 260). This issue never receives a clear answer in Money but is extended beyond the ordeals a character has to go through to question the ethics and aesthetics of the novel form (Lodge 133). Can an author write anything he likes or is he obligated to be truthful? Should an author be honest about the limitations of the truths he writes? David Lodge argues that in allowing John Self to meet himself, Amis the character, Amis creates a metafictional “self-reflecting mirror effect” (133). Through the mirror, fiction refers to its own fictional nature and thus its separation from empirical reality, thereby implying that an author is not responsible for the actions of his characters.

2.2 Amis’ control over his readers

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levels. Here, we must first consider the position of the narratee. This position is somewhat problematic because it is unclear whether he or she is intra- or extra-textual. At the beginning of the novel, an author figure by the initials M.A., who will be discussed more extensively in section 2.3, writes: “To whom is the note addressed? To Martina, to Fielding, to Vera, to Alec, to Selina, to Barry – to John Self? No. It is meant for you out there, the dear, the gentle” (Amis I), already setting up the question of the relationship between the reader and the narratee. Throughout the novel, the gender (Amis 286, 322), number (Amis 29, 286), and spatial position of the narratee changes (Maziarczyk 12). The narratee changes from someone on the same narrative level as Self, who may remember events not described in the text: “Do you remember me making this ridiculous arrangement? Remind me” (Amis 29), to someone outside of his diegetic universe “you chicks out there” (Amis 286). By doing this, “Money calls simultaneously for a willing suspension of disbelief (in the motif of the ‘you’-companion) and metafictional self-consciousness (in the motif of the ‘you out there’)” (Maziarczyk 21). This can be read in two ways: either the narratee makes several metaleptic jumps between the extradiegetic level of the narrator/narratee and the extratextual level of the reader, or these two levels are in some way merged together. Either option results in a blurring of the distinction between the extra- and intratextual in the novel, which intensifies the reader’s disorientation (Maziarczyk 7) and enhances the metareferential dimension of the work, thus unveiling the power this dimension provides the author with.

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upon narrative, and a Self stucksomewhere in the web, Martin Amis points out that everyone, even Martin Amis, lives in a metafiction that is greater than the self” (Edmondson 153). The reader is drawn into the novel by thematic parallels that mirror their experience with that of the protagonist. Money not only tells the story of Self’s confusion about and loss of identity, but also forces the reader to walk the same path in three ways. Firstly, the reader is drawn closer to and pushed away from the position of the narratee. “By creating a narrator who attributes to the narratee a number of contradictory properties and positions he puts the reader in the communicative situation in which the latter must continually readjust his/her position in relation to the text” (Maziarczyk 7). This unsettles the reader and forces them to directly experience the same problems as John Self. Secondly, as explained earlier in this chapter, the distinction between fiction and reality is obscured. This is, according to Amy Elias, exactly what John Self struggles with. Because of his hearing problems, he is unable to declutter the array of sounds he is bombarded with, as a metaphor for “the condition of contemporary British culture, which also cannot sort and rank the various versions of the real that bombard it through media representation” (Meta-mimesis 21). Thirdly, as the name ‘John Self’ already indicates, the novel can be read as an allegory for “the disintegration of the (post)modern self” (Maziarczyk 21), thus again forcing the reader to directly experience the issues presented in the novel (Maziarczyk 22) and strongly unsettling them. Together, this shows Amis’ conceited control over the reader’s experience.

2.3 Layers and construction

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359) are metafictional on two levels. This remark is not only spoken by a surprisingly self-aware character (Amis) who speaks over the boundary between characters and the reader, but also a metanarrative comment made by the author of the novel, who indirectly comments on his difficulty in holding the reader’s attention for the last few pages of the book. Other metafictional comments are less self-aware, but equally dual in meaning. When Amis says “Money. I’m in the book” (Amis 234), Self concludes that “Martin Amis was in the book alright” (Amis 235). We know that they both refer to the phone book, but there is also an arguably deliberate second layer to it that the reader sees and John Self does not. These references add to the strangeness of the work and extend the theme of John Self’s deception. For example, John Self states that his writing to Selina might be “a more realistic ending” (Amis 387) or that “Sometimes I think I am controlled by someone. Some space invader is invading my inner space, some fucking joker. But he’s not from out there. He’s from in here” (Amis 330). Thus, the metareferential dimension adds a deeper layer of meaning that intensifies the central themes of the novel.

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Firstly, Amis plays with the idea that one can write a suicide note but not perform the act, thus signifying a breach between lived experience and textuality by questioning the nature of a suicide note. Does it suffice to name it thus, or must the suggestion of suicide be consummated by the performance of the act? Secondly, this suggests that Self has finally managed to liberate himself from Amis’ power. Amis’ frustration about this is, in “another paradoxical display of self-consciousness” (14), expressed by Amis the character, when he exclaims “Hey, what are you doing here? ... You’re meant to be out of the picture by now” (Amis 389). Thirdly, as M.A. apparently has no power over the plot, he can therefore not be the same person as Amis the author who, as a real author, has written both the preface and the ending (Maziarczyk 16-20). He may be an earlier version of Amis, the author who just started writing the novel. The note appears to be unaltered after John Self survived, indicating that the construction of the novel is included in the novel itself, as a self-conscious play with the literary convention of presenting one coherent narrative. This draws attention to the fictionality of the work, but also indirectly comments on it in a self-reflexive way, making this both metafiction and metanarrative.

2.4 Conclusion

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Chapter 3: The New York Trilogy by Paul Auster

The New York Trilogy, first published in 1987, is a collection of novels by Paul Auster. Originally City of Glass, Ghosts, and The Locked Room were published as separate novellas, but they are now widely regarded as one work. There have been many discussions about the extent to which the work is postmodern. The New York Trilogy presents the reader with several typically postmodern traits, such as a fragmented narrative (Barry 81), disintegrated textual boundaries (Espejo 149), and allusion to the possibility of a “fundamental lack of any reality” (Peacock 54). However, Ramón Espejo explains that many critics have challenged The New York Trilogy’s postmodern character on the basis of its links to modernism and realism, and focuses instead on Auster’s exploration of “different literary and aesthetic sensibilities” (150). This is elaborated in section 3.3.

Analysis of the metareference in the trilogy reveals how an inherently metafictional and metaleptic universe is used in a conceited way to raise questions about the use of language and the problematic nature of deriving meaning from textual sources. The distortion of narrative levels is extended to an experiment with the limitations of the novel form, literary theory and the metareferential devices themselves.

3.1 The metareferential universe in The New York Trilogy

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themselves as an extratextual, ‘real’ world in contrast to a fictional work. For example, when Quinn introduces himself as Henry Dark, Stillman Snr replies that Quinn cannot possibly be Henry Dark, as he made Dark up (Auster 79), indicating a gap between the ‘reality’ of Quinn’s word and the fictionality of Dark’s. One character telling another character that he is not a character creates a metafictional effect, as does the pile of stories in which each claims to be real and the other fictional. It plays with the reader’s awareness that every story in the novel is fictional, because they are in a novel. Thus, The New York Trilogy is set in an inherently metafictional universe that is extended to the world outside the novel.

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trilogy. The unnamed narrator, ‘I’, reveals himself in the last two pages of City of Glass. Together with Auster the character he finds the red notebook, which places him at the end of the chain of narrative levels. The narrator, who seems to act on a lower narrative level, tells the story of the higher narrative levels, which is a form of ascending ontological metalepsis (Bell and Alber 167), as this kind of metalepsis includes the occurrence of a character who is revealed to act on an extradiegetic level (Fludernik Scene Shift 384). This allows for the narrator to be a character in one of the novellas while narrating from an extradiegetic level.

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3.2 Deriving meaning and knowledge from textual sources

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The New York Trilogy is an example of “historiographical metafiction”, as it presents a combination of metafictional techniques and questions about the notion of historical knowledge, building on the idea that the present and the past are “always irremediably textualized” (Hutcheon 9). For example, Stillman Snr discusses the life of Henry Dark, “a Boston clergyman who was born in London in 1649” (Auster 45), and describes that Dark worked as a private secretary to John Milton. However, later in the novel, Stillman Snr laughingly explains that Dark was one of his own inventions. “You see, there never was any such person as Henry Dark. I made him up. He’s an invention” (Auster 80). This metafictional comment (as explained in section 3.1) is used to disprove the original consolidation of the worlds of the person John Milton and the character Henry Dark, showing the constructed, subjective, and uncertain nature of history (Taghizadeh 1912). This leads to the conclusion that textual sources cannot convey unspoiled truths: “every time we try to speak of what we see, we speak falsely, distorting the very thing we are trying to represent” (Auster 77). Thus, a survey of the metareference in the trilogy demonstrates that The New York Trilogy examines textual knowledge and the chaotic nature of reality on several levels, namely, though the structure of the narrative levels, the experience of the reader, and the meaningless clues within the story. Through metafictional comments, the trilogy shows that not only knowledge derived from this work is uncertain and subjective, but that this is the case for all knowledge mediated through text.

3.3 Questioning form, theory, and device

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vital component that makes something a novel in the same way that Amis wonders whether a suicide note may not be consummated (section 2.3).

The trilogy examines literary theory by contrasting modernist and postmodernist ideas within the work in a very explicit way. Espejo argues that the protagonists in the first two novellas are modernist characters in a postmodern world (153). They expect orderliness and epiphanies but are instead confronted with a landscape that is “shapeless and aimless, ‘sheltering’ alienated, indifferent, solitary human beings” (Espejo 156). Thus, Quinn and Blue’s misadventures comment on the relationship between modernism and postmodernism. In contrast, the protagonist of The Locked Room, the unnamed narrator of The New York Trilogy, is postmodern whereas his antagonist, Fanshawe, represents modernism. The metafictional elements in the story betray that they are influenced by each other’s literary movements. According to Espejo, if we follow the descriptions in the novel, Fanshawe’s work is truly modernist: it is “obscure, ambiguous, complex, but intensely personal, having gained in introspection after a prolonged stay in France” (168). The narrator struggles to release himself from Fanshawe’s influence and ultimately succeeds. As one of the clearest examples of his postmodern decision making, he ends the story by tearing up the notebook in which Fanshawe explains his decisions, thus destroying the proof, the clues that Quinn and Blue were looking for. This also demonstrates a refusal to accede to the convention of novelistic closure, as the reader is never shown what information the notebook contains. On the other hand, the narrator’s metafictional remarks indicate that he does, to some extent, adhere this literary convention. In his distress he utters “I was coming to the end now, and I still hadn’t found him” (Auster 289), indicating that he would be comforted by novelistic closure.

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and Work, characters of a lower diegetic level, to speak through their author: “In the triad of selves that Quinn had become, Wilson served as a kind of ventriloquist, Quinn himself was the dummy, and Work was the animated voice that gave purpose to the enterprise” (Auster 6), inverting the practice of an author using rhetoric metalepsis to speak through his character. Moreover, instead of intruding further and further into a fictional world (like Amis), Quinn becomes more and more separated from it (Nealon 99). As the Stillman case progresses, the story’s deviance from the conventions of the detective novel increases Quinn’s inability to pass into Work. Where at the beginning of the story Quinn often “tried to imagine what Work would have said” (Auster 9) or “what Max Work might have been thinking” (Auster 14), these mentions of Work are later replaced by questions after whether “Quinn had been misguided in his hopes, momentarily confusing himself with Max Work” (Auster 63). Realizing that the conventions of a detective novel do not apply in ‘the real world’, Quinn starts to question Work’s methods until he ultimately concludes that “Max Work was dead” (Auster 128), thus inverting the workings of metalepsis a second time. Thus, The New York Trilogy comments on and dismantles the conventions of the detective novel, extending its criticism to fiction as a whole, literary theory, and even the devices Auster uses to construct these comments.

3.4 Conclusion

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Chapter 4: A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by

Dave Eggers

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entirely factual account from a textual source, Eggers foregrounds authenticity rather than truth, but undermines this by conceitedly empowering himself, like Amis does, and purporting himself to be more reliable than he is.

4.1 A complex formal landscape

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a statement about memoirs as a whole: there is always a degree of construction involved. Thus, the peritexts also self-reflexively comment on their own constructedness, making them metafictional.

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results, showing that A Heartbreaking Work is conceited where The New York Trilogy is metaphysical.

4.2 The complicated process of mediation

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and reality. According to Mackay, “by contradicting itself […] and insistently returning to its own strategies of mediation, A Heartbreaking Work registers the unanswerability of the gap between reality and fiction without trying to resolve it” (73).

The text’s framing in highly self-reflexive peritexts and the metafictional comments made by characters throughout show how facts and events can be distorted by mediation. For example, when discussing reality television programme The Real World, Eggers describes that “[w]atching the show is like listening to one’s voice on tape: it’s real of course, but however mellifluous and articulate you hear your own words, once they’re sent through this machine and are given back to you, they’re high pitched, nasal, horrifying” (Eggers 167). This marks the way in which a television show distorts the selves of the people it portrays, and instead offers a new, constructed personality instead (Nicol 104). Later on in the chapter, we discover that the interview between Dave and an employee of The Real World is invented in itself (Eggers 196), drawing a parallel between self-expression in reality TV and the confessional memoir, and ultimately remarking on the way the medium disfigures the real. “The metafictional framebreaking implies that the memoir itself, the form of fiction which is conventionally taken to be the literary mirror-image of an individual’s true self, is a construction” (Nicol 105).

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history by admitting that he cannot recount everything that happened in the past as literally and factually as he would like. His memory has limitations, he had to change character names to disguise the people they represent, and altered some of the locations (Eggers ix-xi), uncovering any pretence of a completely factual account of the past as mere ideology, one of the characteristics of historiographic metafiction (Elias Metafiction 24). Instead, following historiographic metafiction, he textualizes the past (Hutcheon 9) by re-constructing or inventing some of the dialogues and uses conversations to make metafictional statements about the memoir itself (Eggers 200) rather than recounting actual events. Moreover, the peritexts set up the way the reader reads and interprets a work, thereby drawing attention to the fact that “any effects in literature are textual rather than ‘real’” (Nicol 108). However, instead of condemning the textualization of historical events, as Auster does, he poses the question whether artifice in memoirs could be a helpful practice. When Toph, through a metaleptic, out-of-character jump, remarks that it appears Eggers has condensed several evenings into one to give the reader a more complete impression of their life together, he concludes “I think it’s good, it’s fine. Not entirely believable, but it works fine, in general. It’s fine” (Eggers 114), as this form might bring their experience across better than a series of ‘real’ evenings. Thus, Eggers “rejoices in the ultimate unrepresentability of experience” (Funk 140) by declaring “The core is the core. There is always the core, that can’t be articulated” (Eggers 270). This is a very postmodern practice (Barry 81) that indicates Eggers’ willingness to withhold information and a degree of conceit in the work.

4.3 Honesty and conceit

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form of the work as both a memoir and a novel (Korthals Altes 123). For example, by stating that “all characters and incidents and dialogue are real, are not products of the author’s imagination” (iv) Eggers inverts the usual prefacing of books that provides legal cover. He uses this self-awareness to attack the genre of the confessional memoir and thereby strengthen his own authenticity and confront his readers with their expectations and wishes of a memoir. According to Joanna Gill, A Heartbreaking Work is a ‘confessional text’ (82). These memoirs or autobiographies seem to be the “outpouring of ‘naked emotion’” (82) but they are not. Instead, they are carefully crafted to gratify their readers. By uncovering the impossibility of giving a completely factual account of the past, Eggers criticises the genre of the confessional memoir and exposes all autobiographers’ crafty control over the ‘naked emotion’ in their works. This damages their trustworthiness and authenticity, as they are perceived as sly, narcisistic money-makers who exploit a heart-wrenching story for their own gain (Smith and Watson 11). Eggers does not deny that he is using self-exposure to make money, but suggests that he, at least, is honest about doing so. “The apparent lack of contrivance in most memoirs, by contrast, is implied to be a deeper kind of contrivance” (Smith and Watson 7). This further establishes Eggers’ honesty and authenticity by comparison.

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presents the reader with a list of symbols and metaphors and the corresponding signified (Eggers xliv) arguing that this is to save the reader the trouble of interpreting them (Eggers xliii), and presenting the work as a simple, single-layered narrative. Eggers hereby exposes their lack of interest and mocks their reluctance to be shocked or puzzled by a literary work.

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Instead of with insight, the reader is presented with a very controlling mode. This corresponds with Gill’s ideas of confessional texts, as he states they “knowingly, and skilfully, anticipate, engage with and finally assuage the anxieties of their readers in order to ensure their own successful reading” (Gill 82). Eggers thus uses complex metareference to exert his power over the narrative and his reader, and establish a false sense of authenticity.

4.4 Conclusion

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Conclusion

Each of the three works primarily uses a different form of metareference. Amis’ work is mainly metaleptic, Auster is very metafictional, and Eggers primarily uses metanarrative. Their favouring of these different devices can be explained by the different themes and subjects of the works. Money focuses on the power and responsibility of the author, and thus an author figure enters the novel via a metaleptic jump. In The New York Trilogy Auster presents us with a chaotic universe, on the brink of collapse and only held together by metafictional elements. The paradoxical, confused nature of the novel adds to the distinctly postmodern confusion it portrays, and is created to ask metaphysical questions about knowledge and fictionality. In his memoir, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, Eggers is mainly concerned with convincing his audience of the transparency and truthfulness of his narrative. He uses metanarrative to give insight into his work and thus portray it as more accurate. He is very concerned with the relationship between his (partly) fictional work and the reality he tries to convey. Each of these works uses metareference to self-reflexively comment on the form of a text, acts of writing, and the process of mediation that is inherent to a narrative. Therefore, structural examination of the metareference in these works reveals what they deem possible or desirable within limitations of a novel. In particular, what relationship to reality it has and to what extent it can convey factual knowledge, whether honesty or authenticity is important, and which formal elements are crucial to the novel.

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invented these stories himself (Auster 294). Together with the metafictional universe, this introduces the question whether fiction only misrepresents reality, or whether it obscures the lack of any underlying reality or meaning. Thus, the three works agree that all narration is a form of fictionalization, but they address this in different ways and their focus lies differently. In short, Eggers uses fiction to support claims about reality, Auster mirrors reality in his fiction, and Amis is mainly concerned with fiction in isolation.

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same way as Amis does and engages with the same metaphysical questions Auster raises by demonstrating that in the space between experience and the text there is always an unknowable process at work. However, in contrast to The New York Trilogy, A Heartbreaking Work celebrates the unrepresentability of experience and uses this to strengthen its authenticity and endear the narrator to the reader.

The framing and intrinsic components of a novel are examined self-reflexively in each of these works. Here, Money and A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius are relatively similar as they both literally play with the framing of a book. Eggers gives unconventional messages on his copyright page, and in his preface and acknowledgements. Similarly, Amis’ novel starts with the remark that it is a suicide note, which is later contradicted when John Self survives. Both works use their peritexts to indicate the various stages in their own construction. They address their readers, both to make them empathise with the narrator and to unsettle them, either by confronting them with their expectations, as Eggers does, or paralleling their experiences with those of the protagonist, like Amis does. Money’s status as an unconsummated suicide note and Eggers’ play with the peritext indicate a search after the intrinsic components of these concepts. In a similar fashion, Auster distorts qualities of the narrative itself, namely the position of the narrator, coherency of the characters, and the novel’s having a plot to probe which fundamental aspects of a work give it the status of a novel. Auster’s metareference is the most self-reflexive as it considers the usefulness of metareferential techniques themselves, thereby strengthening the inquisitive nature of the work.

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movement from the traditional and technical metareference in Money, via very metaphysical metareference in The New York Trilogy, to an ultimate inversion of the relationship between fiction and reality in A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. These different forms of metareference reveal how the works position themselves in relation to the boundary between fiction and reality, what consequences regarding representation they derive from this position, and how they use it to convey their message.

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Of Course We’re Talking About You