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"Don Quixote" by Honore Daumier
Last week’s post talks about metafiction and what exactly it is. I argued that structures and constructions that use the story-within-the-story format are inherently metafictional because their simple existence provides commentary on the storytelling process.
Now it’s time to back up my claims! I’ll use Don Quixote as an example, because it features two of the more common story-in-story tropes.
In the second volume of Don Quixote (published about ten years after the first), the story within the story comments on Spanish society at the time, as well as defends the book against a “false” second volume released by one of Cervantes’ critics. It also draws attention to the fictional devices of the novel because the story within the story is, in fact, Don Quixote!
It’s pretty easy to see why that first trope is metafictional, so what about the second?
There’s another story within the story in the first book of the novel. “Cervantes” appears as a narrator, and delivers this tale as if it were a legend. He tells it to us in a rather conversational manner.
That first story within a story is interesting to look at, because although Cervantes appears as a character, he does not appear as a writer—in the novel he is collecting this legend and recounting it, but he is not writing it, although it is written down by an Arab historian, and he has it translated.
The fact that he has to have the legend translated by a friend does imply some form of writing, but that is overpowered by the way Cervantes recounts the story much the way one would share a story around a campfire. He draws attention to different “versions” of the story, and freely admits some things have been forgotten.
In this first book, Character-Cervantes becomes a storyteller, not a writer. And despite that, despite the fact that Cervantes does not go out of his way to shout “look at me, I’m writing a book about writing a book aren’t I so clever???” the first installment of Don Quixote does draw an incredible amount of attention to its own conventions without being obvious.
The story of Don Quixote, not the novel Don Quixote, makes fun of the Spanish obsession with novellas de caballaria, or novels about heroic knights. Author-Cervantes takes into account the way these stories are told and puts a twist on that when he tells his story, so the format/story frame does also comment on the novellas de caballaria.
Although there are two different levels of commentary in the first book, Cervantes could have achieved the same storytelling commentary had he made up another character (instead of using himself) to tell the story. Of course, Cervantes wanted to do much more than comment on storytelling.
The narrator, who speaks in first person, tells us the story of Don Quixote as if it were a legend, and brings in a proxy narrator in Cide Hamete Benengeli, the Arab historian who’s recorded the entire “legend.”
So, if you take Cervantes out of that picture, I believe the way he tells the story, and brings in Benengeli (making it a book-within-a-book, or more appropriately, a-bunch-of-scrolls-within-a-book), does in fact still comment on the storytelling and writing process.
So what does it say?
It says that people change stories, either for their own purposes or because they forget. It says that society is fascinated with larger-than-life people, whether because they are great or because (as in this case) they are “crazy,” and by extension it shows us glimpses of our voyeuristic nature.
I see all story-within-story constructions as metafictional in this way, but I will concede that not everyone will. But, I, having an unhealthy obsession with metafiction and structure, am wont to go looking for metafiction in unusual places. I love stretching the boundaries of genre, metafiction being no exception.
What do you think? Are all stories-within-stories metafictional, does it depend on the story, or am I full of doggie doo? Leave a comment and let me know!
Journalists think highly of what they do. The average American does not.
In fact, only 29 percent of people believe that journalists report news stories accurately, according to the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press’s annual Press Accuracy Rating. Worse, only 18 percent of the American population believes that the news media treats all sides fairly.
It’s no wonder no one cares about the demise of print media—no one thinks it’s any good (plus why pay when it’s all free online?). Newspaper circulation continues to fall, and in October the New York Times reported that it fell 10 percent nationally from 2008.
And, as Chris Anderson points out in his book Free: The Future of a Radical Price, ad space in a printed paper is more valuable than it is online simply because there’s only so much physical space, whereas online space is limitless. So online advertising isn’t really working out for newspapers, either. And we already know that print advertising will die with print newspapers.
With all these problems, what is the future of the Fourth Estate? Will poor-quality amateur blogger-journalists take over as the public’s primary source of news, potentially causing panic and the fall of democracy with faulty, poorly-reported stories (as many journalists fear)?
Will a few media moguls rise to the top and slowly squeeze the life out of the majority of unbiased, struggling newspapers? Or will newspapers find a business model that actually works?
As a journalist, I sincerely hope that the industry finds a viable, profitable way to survive that allows us to maintain the integrity we think so highly of. That is why I think journalists need to start a dialogue with their readers.
Enter metajournalism.
Journalism about journalism is nothing new, but it’s time to explore its potential as a conversational tool and an avenue for revitalization of a dying industry.
Without readers, journalism is pretty much pointless. And with readers quickly losing interest in the media, journalists need to come off their high horse and talk to the people for whom they write.
This should be fairly easy to do—readers can comment on stories at most online newspapers. But journalists, and by extension, editors and publishers, need to take the first step.
Articles like this one from Forbes address the media’s future. So does this one from the New York Times. These are good starts, especially the Forbes article.
While a good start, the news industry will have to take it a step further to find a new business model that works. So, journalists, talk to your readers. Write about what you do, and let the people that are writing your paychecks give you some ideas. I bet they’ve got some good ones.
