[internisus]

There is a better and more correct term for this. I am sure that I would come upon it by rereading Nick Montfort's Twisty Little Passages. Maybe you can remind me. It might be extra-diagetic, but I'm not sure that covers it. Anyway, I find these sorts of things particularly fascinating. Yes, they are postmodern, obviously, in that they fundamentally embody that characteristic of fourth-wall breaking which we tend to use as the simplest identifier of postmodernism. I think. But by virtue of their focus, these fascinate me far more than a Psycho Mantis gag, for example. Although I suppose I would say that MGS2 is indeed metafictional.

In any case (and I expect some help in classifying and understanding the place of whatever it is I am on about), here are some metafictional works. I want you to point out more, okay? But this doesn't have to be a list thread. Each of these is metafictional in different ways and with different levels of subtlety and therefore is interesting for different reasons. These are just some things I know and that come to mind as examples of what I am calling metafiction. Just to start.

Stranger Than Fiction
Minority Report
If on a Winter's Night a Traveler...
Lucky Wander Boy
Silent Hill
Earthbound

I hope that is helpful enough to illustrate what kinds of things am I not talking about, such as ARGs consisting of fake real websites and blogs. Or fiction that would seem to qualify solely by addressing the reader.

Like HL2, HL2 is not metafictional despite its directly addressing the player both overtly and subtly. But it could become metafictional if certain changes occur as the series moves forth (Cuba)! I think what is especially exciting about that idea is that it would take the reverse approach of most metafiction by moving up and out of the rabbit hole from the postmodern to the modern. It would be so interesting to have a character who starts out coidentifying completely with the player (only possible in a videogame itt) gradually drift and become a third-person individual.

Anyway, maybe there actually is not some formal idea that does tie these things together. I don't know. I am just posting this on impulse mainly and looking to be set straight. Also I have not read Haruki Marukami. I wonder if he would do this for me. I don't actually know much about his work other than my sense of its general reputation.

So I am going to post this and go to sleep and see what happens with it. Don't hate me or call me pretentious alright.

[Dracko]

okay bored now

Read Pale Fire, Borges, House of Leaves, the Cornelius Quartet and other stuff by Michael Moorcock, The Invisibles or Grant Morrison in general...
_________________

[Mikey]

[Sushi K]

The only metafiction (as I classify it) book I have ever read is "Godel, Escher, Bach" though I'm not certain that counts, still read it!

I haven't read House of leaves but I understand it's the best out there.

I think what you are going (from that list, int) for is "post-modern" or just "modern" (they kind of run together in my mind)
_________________

[Daphaknee]

listen to dracko
_________________

the internet's

[shrugtheironteacup]

sb.net fan fiction extravaganza.
_________________

[zombieman000]

Philip K. Dick's The Man in the High Castle?

[Daphaknee]

[yellowoystercult]

[rabite gets whacked!]

Metafiction is loosely just any writing that features the topic of writing; it can be used in a whole host of ways (see wikipedia to effectively end this topic) and generally indicates the intention of an author to utilize symbolism and invoke analysis rather than a straight-ahead read.
_________________

[negativedge]

Adaptation

It's been a while since I've seen it, but I don't think it directly references the viewer or anything. It is, however, a movie about a guy trying to write the movie you are watching, adapted from a novel about flowers, featuring the author of said novel as an important side character. It then becomes, for a brief time, a movie about the things the guy in the movie doesn't like to see in movies, as represented by his brother who is also a screenwriter and played by the same actor (Nick Cage) as the main character, who happens to be the film's writer. So it's got that going for it.

[shrugtheironteacup]

[boojiboy7]

I really wish certain parts of house of leaves were a bit better written, mostly Johnny Truant and his whole embarrassing sex situations, but yeah, it is a damn good book.

Various Borges works do this to some degree or another. Just pick up the Collected Fictions. It's a pretty priceless book to keep around.

Joyce does this in little tiny bits in Ulysses, and the ending of Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow kinda does it very suddenly.

PKD, maybe? It's hard to decide, though I wouldn't really consider Minority Report to be one of the ones where it happens. VALIS is definitely metafictional though.

[klj5j6li]

this is pretty much all robert heinlein ever did

see: The Cat Who Walks Through Walls

[boojiboy7]

That makes Time Enough for Love so creepy though, in a way. I mean, it is creepy enough on its own though.

[klj5j6li]

it's actually really hilarious if you just pretend he was actually a huge troll who just never told anyone

[boojiboy7]

Heinlein did a lot of awesome trolling.

Starship Troopers.

[Sushi K]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Void_(novel)
_________________

[scratchmonkey]

I thought House of Leaves was pretty mediocre. Good concept; lacking execution.

Definitely not better than Borges, Dick or Nabokov.

[boojiboy7]

[scratchmonkey]

I'm biased in the sense that so many people hold it in such high esteem, in the same way that I'm harder on The Matrix that I ought to be just because I had to deal with so many people who felt that it was the pinnacle of sci-fi or movies in general*.

Ooh, "House of Leaves is The Matrix of books" sounds like a good way to piss off people.

* - Or worse, philosophically significant.

[boojiboy7]

True enough. I tend to weed out internet love like House of Leaves gets. I actually didn't read it until a fellow grad student recommended it as a "good book with some bad writing", which sounded mixed enough that I was cool with it.

[Dracko]

Whatever, House of Leaves is awesome. And I say that as someone who finds Borges and Nabokov to be some of the most dazzling and uplifting brain food (and brain play) ever to grace the written word.

Has anyone mentioned Umberto Eco yet?

Shit, DC comics want to try this by making the whole DC multiverse a conscious entity, whatever the Hell that means. In any case, Morrison loves to use this approach to a lot of his takes on superheroes. See Animal Man in particular, but also All-Star Superman. Name dropping The Filth and Flex Mentallo in there too. On that latter note, watch the original The Singing Detective TV series by Dennis Potter, and most definitely The Prisoner, if only for the last couple of episodes. Same applies to Kiss Me Deadly, for its brilliant "fuck you" ending. Paul Auster's New York trilogy is a good read too, and look into Jasper Fforde.

Hell, read the I Ching while you're at it. And Don Quixote is worth noting too.

OBLIGATORY:

Play Marathon. And a fuckton of IF.
_________________

[boojiboy7]

[dessgeega]

dracko, you've read the graphic novelization of city of glass, right?
_________________

[Sushi K]

[Dracko]

[extrabastardformula]

Does pro wrestling during the era when Mick Foley was in charge of the storylines count? There was a lot of breaking kafaybe going on that was kind of intertesting.
_________________

[boojiboy7]

Hmmm. Interesting. Pro wrestling as implicit metafiction? Huh.

[Sushi K]

[scratchmonkey]

I love Eco; still don't think much of House though. It's intriguing and it's a great concept, I find it a bit too twee. I keep trying to make dhex read it so that we can argue about it.

[boojiboy7]

[scratchmonkey]

There's at least two PhDs who write about wrestling if you do a quick search on "pro wrestling phd".

[Dracko]

P.S. Murakami doesn't do this stuff and he fucking sucks anyway. Don't bother with the guy.

P.P.S. Fucking play Marathon already, Jesus!
_________________

[boojiboy7]

well then shit academia has already been won guys. turn off the lights and head home. see ya next year.

[internisus]

[Dracko]

Why aren't you playing Marathon instead of waxing nonsense?

Or reading Joyce, for that matter?
_________________

[negativedge]

You heard it here first, kids: Marathon is the Ulysses of video games.

[Toups]

[boojiboy7]

Yeah, seriously, if you want to see some awesome metafictional shit, the Circe section in the middle of Ulysses is fucking amazing. Seriously, internisus, read that book. Fuck, I would do an sb book club of that shit to get people reading it. Like a section a week or some shit. For reals.

Minority report isn't really metafiction in the way people tend to think of the term, which is fiction that reflects on being fictitious, which nobody in MR really does. Still good shit though.

I'll have to check on Borges stories. I can never remember titles on his stuff, for some reason.

Arrested Development would qualify in its last two or three episodes, when the narrator starts talking to the audience and the characters in the show start seeming almost conscious that it is all ending soon.

[Dracko]