‘Meta’ defined

When I tell people I blog about metafiction, I often hear “What’s metafiction?”  So I thought rather than examine a particular work this week, I’d discuss metafiction and perhaps arrive at a working definition for the purposes of this blog.

According to the dictionary…

Metafiction is “fiction in which the author self-consciously alludes to the artificiality or literariness of a work by parodying or departing from novelistic conventions (esp. naturalism) and traditional narrative techniques.” (That’s from my computer’s built-in dictionary.)

Merriam-Webster’s definition: “fiction which refers to or takes as its subject fictional writing and its conventions.”

Wikipedia’s definition: “a type of fiction that self-consciously addresses the devices of fiction, exposing the fictional illusion. It is the literary term describing fictional writing that self-consciously and systematically draws attention to its status as an artifact in posing questions about the relationship between fiction and reality, usually irony and self-reflection.”

Which definition is better?

They all are.  Personally, I take a very broad view of metafiction.  My “meta generosity,” if you want to call it that, stems from my background as a student of fiction, nonfiction, travel writing and journalism.  I like to think I’m a writer who takes risks in her work, whether structural or by mixing genres you probably shouldn’t mix (such as travel memoir with short story—that’s my big project right now).

By necessity, structure dovetails with metafiction, and is something that I will more than likely discuss here in the context of a work that has an interesting structure but perhaps isn’t quite metafiction.  In the same vein, I think genre-bending or juxtaposing two genres together (not blending them as in a sci-fi western, but using them side-by-side) dovetails with metafiction.

Both structure and genre exist in a fuzzy area between metafiction and “normal” fiction, and depending on the interpretation and the context, I think works that walk that line can go either way, as metafiction relies heavily on structure and often on genre blending/genre juxtaposition to deliver its message.

The writing becomes metafictional (in my mind) when the reader is taken outside of the story and is forced by the author to look in on it from the outside, normally to comment on the craft of writing, society at large, or some other issue, but commentary is not strictly necessary.

What about stories-within-stories?

The story-within-a-story is perhaps the most recognizable form of metafiction.  Don Quixote is an early and excellent example.  This form of story is inherently metafictional, because to tell a story about telling a story must in some way comment on the storytelling process.  How stories-within-stories comment on storytelling is another post, though.

Notice I used the word “tell” rather than “write” up there.  If you’ve read any of my entries on metajournalism or metamusic, you probably realize that I do not restrict metafiction to writing, nor to fiction.  Because of that, the distinction between “write” and “tell” is important.  You can tell a story in an infinite number of ways.  Writing is only one of those ways, albeit an incredibly powerful one.

“Meta” as defined by The Narrative in the Blog

I think it’s necessary to define meta in terms of a broader context than fiction for this blog, since I discuss more than fiction.  That being said…

A work of any genre or style is “meta” if the author of the work purposefully and self-consciously draws attention to the work’s structure, genre or existence as fiction/nonfiction for any purpose, or if the author of the work unintentionally uses a structure or other technique that draws attention to the work’s structure, genre or existence as fiction/nonfiction.

Hopefully this brief discussion helps you put my articles and commentary (and fiction!) in context.  Please feel free to add your own definitions, thoughts, or reactions to this in the comments!  I’m sure this is a topic I’ll return to innumerable times over the life of this blog, because metafiction can be such a shady area.  But that’s why I love it!

But it was true for me…

No one likes being lied to.  Especially by a memoirist.  If even one event in a memoir is made up, it makes the rest of the story suspect. In autobiographical fiction, though, it’s okay if the author “lies” to us, because we go into the reading experience expecting, well, fiction.  Not real events.

Frey falsified parts of his memoir on addiction.

A January 25th article in The New Yorker by Daniel Mendelsohn discusses the topic of falsified memoirs (ala James Frey’s A Million Little Pieces).  Mendelsohn brings up the truth vs. Truth argument that Tim O’Brien addresses in depth in The Things They Carried. (Read my entry on The Things They Carried here.)  He concludes that even though a falsified memoir might convey a Truth, the lie is not justified—the author could have written a novel to convey the same Truth and wouldn’t have had to betray her reader.

I agree with him.  When writing nonfiction, we need to tell the truth, while at the same time expressing some Truth.  In fiction, we are under no such constraints.

Mendelsohn briefly discusses the blurring between reality and fiction toward the end of the article, and brings up Stephen Glass and Jayson Blair as two journalistic examples.  That part of the article ties nicely into my musings on the difference between reality and fiction, and also brings up some interesting problems.

Specifically, how far is too far?  James Frey obviously crosses the line, but what about “reconstructed” dialogue in a memoir? Or what about those scenes that you can’t quite remember exactly, but you think it might have gone something like this?  I think answering those questions could take up another post entirely, so I’ll save my thoughts on that for another time.

While blurring the line between reality and truth doesn’t necessarily make a novel or other work metafictional, I think that most metafiction speaks to a sort of reality-within-a-reality, usually for some specific purpose (like to decry war as Vonnegut does in Slaughterhouse-Five).  In other words, it creates a layered reality to convey some Truth.  In that way at least, the two topics are closely related and create an interesting dialogue.

Falsified memoirs have no place in that dialogue. Although Frey had to add something into his introduction about how parts of the book never happened, it’s still looked at like a memoir, where The Things They Carried never was and is still not, despite its autobiographical content.

In my mind, Frey missed a wonderful opportunity.  Had he written autobiographical fiction instead of a “memoir,” he could have used to opportunity to say what he wanted and needed to say about addiction in a much more powerful—and genuine—manner. Same goes for any falsified memoir.

Now, I’m not saying all memoirists should suddenly switch to writing O’Brien-style autobiographical fiction, but I am saying that anyone who wants to play around with reality vs. Truth should read O’Brien, because as of yet I’ve found no more masterfully executed discussions on the topic.

Although Mendelsohn argues that the word “reality” is being degraded by things like reality TV, I think books like O’Brien’s strengthen it.  By blurring the line between reality and truth, I think it makes us think about reality in terms of what actually happened and what didn’t—we separate events from how we feel about them, and this allows us to better analyze both the events and feelings, and hopefully grow as people.

Of course, that doesn’t mean memoirists should lie about what happened in their lives.

How metajournalism can save news media (maybe)

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.