5 Random Metafiction Novels

Title says it all. Let's do this!

1. The Princess Bride, William Goldman

I don't really feel like I have to do much with this one. We've all seen the movie (right?), which is meta all over its face, and the book is, too. Nothing like books making fun of their own genre... After all, when you're writing fantasy, you can't really avoid the fact that you're doing it, and the only way to keep yourself from being in denial of it is to embrace it. Or make fun of it.






2. The Feast of Love, Charles Baxter

Also made into a movie, but less meta. To me, the author speaking with his characters and being a part of the novel he's writing never gets old. Heartaching and careful, with immense respect for the characters that build the story he's writing, Baxter puts us in the thick of a novel that makes itself -- and makes itself so real that it's almost painful.



3. Intrusions, Ursula Hegi

Another one with a writer writing about the writing process, including a glimpse into what it's like to have characters who know what they want, whether it follows the plot the author has in mind or not. It's a quick, casual read with a sort of nonchalant tone, as if the production of the work was motivated by the novel's own desire to get written, and the author only finished to satisfy it.




4. Fight Club, Chuck Palahniuk

Anyone who's ever read a Palahniuk book knows there's an element of meta in everything he writes, but Fight Club has a special place in my heart. Maybe it's the haiku. Anyway, if you want a rougher look at meta, here's a good book that takes a look at perspective, identity, and the self-awareness of imaginary people and the people they imagine and are imagined by. A definite must-read for anyone who hasn't read it yet.



5. Catcher in the Rye, J. D. Salinger

I'll end here on a bit of a sentimental note for those of us observing the passing of J. D. Salinger...

If I were to nominate a single literary character who had the most to say about what it's like to be a character, I could only nominate Holden Caulfield. In under 75k words, an entire person is born, his entire being lived until finally his presence forever dies; anticlimactically, as in real life, passing into the dark. His struggle with his confused, troubled, anxious, well-meaning but restricted life -- his only identity -- reflects to me the anxiety inevitably felt by anyone who was created for a book, as a character, never to pass on into the "real" world. So much could be said for a character, or the book itself -- surfacing as that parting anxiety when a cover is closed, whether you just finished reading or writing.

Magic vs. Science: Metacinema/fiction in Sherlock Holmes

I was in the midst of re-reading all the stories when the 2009 movie came out, and now that I've seen it twice, here I am with a story about meta, and magic, and science, and performance, and detail, and technology... and Sherlock Holmes.

I'll leave the debate about how good/bad/faithful the movie was to the critics and the devoted fans; I'm a casual Holmesian, so I won't go there. This blog is about books, and cinema, and meta, and I'm going to tie all three together and then go back to watching the shiba-inu puppycam.

Also, fair game: Spoilers below.







Well enough! Sherlock Holmes the books (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle) and Sherlock Holmes the movie (Guy Ritchie, 2009) have a great deal to say about metafiction and cinema. The most obvious and blatant observation would be the analysis of the "show" vs. "reality" duality, which is usually my focus in meta (as in my blog entry about Christopher Nolan's The Prestige). It's a Holmesian trope, which was extrapolated and centered on in the recent remake film in the form of the antics of the antagonist Lord Blackwood (Mark Strong), who uses science to paint a portrait of himself as an all-powerful lord of black magic. Similarly, in the classic Hound of the Baskervilles, Holmes reveals that a monster previously thought to be a demon hound is actually a ravenous "normal" dog that has been chemically treated to look possessed.

The movie, as the stories do, follows Holmes (Robert Downey, Jr.) as he follows the trail of the case using practical logic, common sense, and a keen eye for detail. As the stories unravel, more and more the viewer/reader finds that, although initially presented as straight-up supernatural powers, magic, ghost stories, and wizardry, most of the mysteries are debunked by Holmes and Watson as the results of meticulously clever tricks and illusions created by predictable machinery, chemistry, and science.

The same could be said of the books themselves, in a meta-fiction way: The way the stories are told, from the varying degrees of 1st person narrative of Watson, gives the illusion of fiction, and fantasy, and the supernatural. We see what Watson does, and he himself is a storyteller (as Doyle is), leading the reader to make certain assumptions and thus be led through a fantasy mystery until finally allowing us to "see" the truth. Holmes himself warns Watson not to be enticed by coming to an early conclusion and thus seeing all evidence as supporting this theory, yet Doyle allows the reader to do so in order to create something entertaining, rather than predictable. The "magic" of the mystery story is in the telling method, essentially the tricks of literary convention -- methods to make the reader believe what has not actually been asserted as fact through expression of mood, description, and most importantly, Watson's subjective recount of the case as if it were happening in real time.

The perspective of the Holmes novels changes fluidly. Though usually a 1st person narrative acting as a 3rd person biographer, Watson often removes his own "insignificant personality" in order to enhance the intrigue by "objectively" narrating background information (Valley of Fear), a rather elementary idea.¹ Sometimes, Doyle lets Watson tells us his own feelings -- but only when they support the mood or enigma that he wants us to be feeling vicariously. Other times, Doyle lets Watson know nothing, leaving the facts only to Holmes (though technically, as the stories are often told in retrospect, Watson turns out to be a rather skilled storyteller as well). And finally, some of Watson's "scribbles" are letters he wrote to Holmes (or others), giving us a "real-time" interpretation of the events. All of these classic methods ("sciences" of writing, if you will) are perfectly used to make the reader believe what Doyle wants them to believe at the time they believe it.

Similarly, the film takes this to the screen arena: Guy Ritchie pulls some old movie tricks out of the bag, including lighting, sound and stage effects. I'm taking things like the ship/rig chase scene with the French giant out of the equation; I'm talking about the scene near the beginning where Holmes is brought to speak with Blackwood. As Holmes turns his back on Blackwood's cell, Blackwood suddenly and creepily appears from the shadows, as if conjuring himself or teleporting. It's a lighting trick, and they've been doing it for years. It brings to mind a version of Hamlet I saw on stage, where the audience is first blinded by a flash of bright lights while a deceased Banquo is catapulted through a trap door in the dining table. When the audience has blinked away the floaters, there he is in all his ghosty glory.

Ritchie used sound effects to establish Blackwood's alleged sorcery: The meat-packing scene is the first scene where full bass surround-sound is used prominently during the film. Blackwood's voice booms from behind, to the right, and to the left of the audience, making you acutely aware for the first time of the surround-sound technology -- or, if you're in the proper mind-set (watching a movie, as it were), you're just acutely aware of Lord Blackwood's supreme creepiness.

And isn't that the job of the auteur? It's all industrial light and magic smoke and mirrors (or prose and trope), but in the end, you believe it. You'll ignore (unless you are a CG nerd) the special effects and prefer to be in space, or ignore the carefully crafted mystery even though you know you're being led along by the master. And it's cool, because that's what it's about -- you believe. When that's the case, all the success to the maker -- he's done his job. The only person who will detect any presence of convention or science only does so because he, like Detective Holmes, "was looking for it."



1. Ha, I said "elementary" in a post about Sherlock Holmes.

Dignity / Criticism / Integrity: Agents, authors, editors.

I've been "hooked in," so to speak, to the online authors/agents/editors/publishers internetwork/socialsphere/twitterverse for more than one hand's worth of months. And I have an observation, which I have been cultivating for a while, and this blog post is set off by the fact that two things coincided: A particular tweet from an agent, and my lunch break.

Now, I understand that agents have peeves, and that authors have peeves, and, well, I was a barista for six years and I had a lot of peeves, and I'm sure my customers had peeves, and... Well, everyone has peeves. And, since I am an author in the circle of literary internet, I can only come at this from my own perspective. Bear that in mind as you read along, here.

Anyway, the particular tweet that reminded me of my own peeve is irrelevant. I'll state my peeve, and then I'm going to go on to justify it with some points. Be patient. Here's my peeve:

My peeve is that some agents complain about authors a whole lot, all day, every day, all the time, publicly, and in rude ways.

Background: I've been following about thirty agents since beginning my pilgrimage from person-who-writes-novels to author-investigating-representation, and I would say that, percentage-wise, about 90% of the agents I follow(ed -- I stopped following some of them because they were at 100% on the next percentage) spend/t 90% of their time/tweets/blogging complaining about authors. Stupid query letters (not going to mention a certain hashtag here), annoying query letters, dumb query letters, dumb authors, annoying authors -- you get the picture.

Now, I know what you're going to say. "I'm so-and-so agent and I have to say, the majority of the query letters and authors I talk to are stalkers and can't write and definitely can't write a query letter, and they write the dumbest things in their query letters, so I'm justified in saying this."

I understand. As someone who has a job -- and I would imagine anyone who has a job, any job -- can certainly understand, in any job (I repeat -- any job, not just yours), there are dumb customers or patrons or whoever who don't know what they're doing. That's just the way the world is. I have done all sorts of things, from working at a zoo to coffee to translation to freelancing, and I imagine no matter where you go in this big wide world, there are people who make your job difficult.

That being said, I'm going to bring up something I read on Janet Reid's blog. It was in response to authors complaining about being rejected by agents. Every day, dozens and dozens of authors are rejected by agents and take it personally, moan and groan about how agents are the evil in the world, how they're too demanding, too persnickety, too whatever, and how do you ever stop getting rejection letters, and how and how and how. And she articulated very succinctly the no-hassle way to stop getting rejection letters:

Stop writing.

Brilliant! I know it's hard to tell if I'm being sarcastic right now, but I'm not. I mean it. This is the pail of cold water that I think a lot of authors need to hear. I mean, need splashed in their face. Or in the ear. I'm not sure what my metaphor is any more. But I digress. Everyone gets rejected, whether it's by a boy or a girl, a job interview, a school dance, whatever. The only sure-fire way to keep from getting rejected is to stop trying. The irony there is... well... I'm sure you can find it.

So what this blogger-agent is saying is grow up, put on your big-boy/girl pants/shoes/underwear, and be professional. A query rejection isn't a personal attack on you (or at least, it's not officially -- I'm pretty sure some of the queries rejected that have been posted on Twitter under #hashtagweallknowabout were rejected because of the personality of the writer), and often there's sound advice in multiple rejects (ahem-revise-edit-cough-ahem), but a lot of times it's a rejection for whatever other reason. Like, maybe they don't represent your triumverate erotica vampire/werewolf/human trilogy.

Nonetheless, there are all these peeves/"#pubtips" etc I've seen that I feel may have negativity associated: Don't use sentence structure A, B, or C in your query, I'm tired of them. Don't tell me where you got my name, even though it's common courtesy in any other sort of formal cover letter. Tell me if you're doing multiple submissions. Don't tell me if you're doing multiple submissions. Don't use the words X, Y, and Q in your query, you sound like an idiot. Don't query me if you're an idiot. And, of course, don't query me if your novel sucks. And many more. And what I have to say about that, to the complaining agents of the world, is that I have a solution for you. I have a quick fix so that you never again have to read another bungling, confused, 3-page query written on cardstrock in Comic Sans Serif. Here it goes:

Stop agenting.

Everyone has a laundry list of peeves about their jobs. Unfortunately, your job has its foundation on unrepresented, random people. You're the one who took the job, and I have the feeling you probably knew at that time that when you're an agent, anyone can and will query you. It's part of the job description.

Now, I understand that it can get really annoying. But it's annoying for anyone who has a job. Jobs are annoying. Jobs where you have to deal with people are especially annoying. Sometimes you get good ones, sometimes you get dumb ones. It's a job, and probably you didn't get forced into it. I don't know, maybe you did. I don't know your life. Shoot. But, on the other hand, when I hand a particularly annoying latte to a particularly annoying customer, I don't turn to the rest of the cafe and shout out, "Wow, that lady sure was an annoying bitch. Don't order lattes when you're a bitch. #baristatips" That kind of behavior gets people fired. Or, it makes them look like big jerks. Or both. It certainly loses them a customer.

I guess it's a little dangerous to write something critical about agents (and I'm not even writing about all agents, but the type of agent I am writing about is the one who will be upset) on the internet. But really, I'm not trying to step on anyone's toes. Honest. You do your job and I'll do mine -- You represent authors (and do intake of good/bad/ugly queries) and I'll piss translators off in Norway. I mean, I'll write. And I'll stop complaining (about writing), and you stop complaining, and everyone stops complaining, and we will just settle for an ice-cream social in April. OK? I would like that.

To close up on a lighter note, here's some food for thought/activity:

My top five favorite agents on Twitter who seem to actually like¹ their jobs, in alphabetical order by @name:

@bakersmark (Bernadette Baker-Baughman)
@bradfordlit (Laura Bradford)
@jennyrae (Jenny Rae Rappaport)
@Kid_Lit (Mary Kole)
@NathanBransford (Nathan Bransford)


And don't forget @Janet_Reid.

Lastly, here's an email I got from a friend of mine after I told him he was an adjunct to my conscience, to whom I referred when I felt I was being too critical of others:

I bet it's nice there, being in your conscience, watching you becoming evermore becoming. I just shaved in the HardTimes bathroom using a leg razor, pink hand-soap, and a pocket mirror.





Good day.


J


^{1. No, love. Yes, I will drop the L-word... no, not that L-word. The other one.}

Derelict Heaven: Mrell, Noct, Amart, Billy

Ugh. I have been bad. Here is some art.

Amart & Mrell

Billy the Runner and some gypsy guy

Enjoy! They're borderless, so you can enjoy them indefinitely as desktop wallpapers. I may make prints later on. For sale, at Anime Detour 2010, along with a lot of other junk. Accept? Y/N

Leave AVATAR alone!

Okay. I've kept my mouth shut for, what, three weeks now. And, for the record, that's a very long time for me to keep my mouth shut about a movie. As week four comes along, though, I'm boiling over. I'm gonna... I'm gonna... I'm gonna say something!

Leave Avatar alone!

Yeah, so the plot is not original. Neither is the plot to Dances With Wolves, Shrek, or Romeo & Juliet. Or Pyramus and Thisby, for that matter. Cameron has already done the Avatar story, but last time it was a historical romance aboard the Titanic. Yes, perhaps Cameron is too young in his career to be attempting a magnum opus -- perhaps he's not quite auteur stuff yet. Yes, the dialogue is so-so and the foreshadowing is a bit slap-in-the-face. But really, what film these days isn't? The last film that had any surprise value to me was... Man, I think it was Memento back in 2000. And we all still knew something was coming. But let's compare apples to apples and leave Christopher Nolan out of this.

Still, what I'm getting at... what was it again? Oh right, leave Avatar alone. What the hell is so bad about it, anyway? Let's itemize, I guess.

Predictability. I'm reading all up and down Facebook about how predictable it was. When has predictable ever stopped you from going to a movie? Sure as hell didn't stop me from going to Sherlock Holmes. Twice. And I can tell you as a fact, I knew everything that was coming the second time. Predictable didn't stop anyone from sitting all the way through all three of the Pirates of the Carribbean movies, Harry Potter, or Star Trek. Was it that you thought it wasn't going to be predictable? Or have you never seen a James Cameron movie before? I'd spoil the ending of Alien 3 for you, but you could probably guess it.

Script & Acting. Really? You think the script and/or delivery of the script was any worse than any other action film that's come out in the last year? If this film is competing with the big sci-fi blockbusters of the last couple years, it's up against stuff like War of the Worlds, Transformers (which was a franchise), Star Trek (franchise), and... Star Wars (which, by the time it was the 00's, was a franchise). Were any of these impressive in the script department? And that's excusing that the Star Wars franchise set the precedent for fantasy-type scripts in a sci-fi type film (not to mention orchestral score for a major motion picture, and not to mention ANY of the fantasy/sci-fi genre blending we see every day in film...).

In fact, who's been impressed with any non-drama script in the last three years at all? (Twilight fans, I'm doing you a favor by not mentioning Twilight) Maybe it's just me and maybe I'm just jaded. Maybe it's just some sort of sign that Avatar's script is SO bad that everyone thinks it's bad. But this is supposedly an opinion post, and my opinion is that Avatar had about as much to say as everything else in its genre, and for the bad press it's getting about the script, I didn't think it was that awful. It obviously wasn't about the script, anyway.

Well, if it wasn't about the plot or the script, what was it about? I guess I think that's obvious, but I'm not in agreement with the internetworking masses... To me it's rather clear that Avatar isn't about telling a new story, but telling a story in a new way. And that way is bright, fresh, ass-spanking CG in mother-loving 3D. Yes, the story is rather generic (read: GENRE), but the spin is what it looks like. Nowhere else (except X-Men) will you see blue cat-people riding dragons (except the dragon part. Nightcrawler didn't need a dragon.). Or 3D subtitles. Or... well, I already mentioned giant blue cat-people riding dragons. Who look like Sigourney Weaver. The cat-people. Not the dragons.

Right. My point. I'm going to make one.

Avatar's plot was run of the mill Romeo & Juliet, boy meets girl, problems of the ecological/ethical nature (get it? nature?), and also some spiritual undertones. Of course it's predictable. It was predictable in the 1600's. Everything we watch is predictable. The thing that makes movies interesting is how it's done differently. And I guess, for me, the oldie-time story that was being told in Avatar was different because it had blue cat-people in 3D, and Michelle Rodriguez. And it was fun to look at. And what's so effing wrong about that? Leave it alone, people. Just because it's making more money than you doesn't mean you need to pick on it.

OK. Rant completed. I'm gonna go watch SNL now.

Art post: More DH wallpapers

Here they are, in case you didn't see Olivia, Dragon, Avery and Lizzy on dA or Facebook:



Thus finishes the main-main characters. Our favorite cheetah and organic-produce-loving gypsy are up next.

And I promise, I would like to actually write about something. I have a couple topics in mind, actually. But at the moment, they're incomplete. And secrets. And works in progress. I try not to show anything that's not finished, like incomplete sentences that don't

Inspirational locations...

I'm inspired by most things, but there are a few specific places that, if money were no object, I would travel to on a regular basis in order to do my best writing, my best sketching, and my best meditating. Here is a list of the top five most inspiring places I have ever been.

5. The Minnesota State Fair.


I'm not inspired by the State Fair in a really big way, but I do go every year to (among other things, like stuff my face full of Pronto Pups and mini donuts) to gather very specific tactile, audio and olfactory data. Despite the footnote in Derelict Heaven, the fair is a good place to get good inspiration for those things... just not, you know, a war scene. There are all sorts of plants, animals, food and people. The bazaar is full of things to look at and touch. I go there every year to refresh my adjective and verb supply, because there are so many things and so many new ways to explain them. I recommend the fair, 100%.

4. The Ocean.

There is nothing (besides outer space) that makes me feel smaller than the ocean. If you can't guess why the ocean is inspiring, I won't try to explain it. I had a friend once say he didn't need to see the ocean because he had seen Lake Superior. You can't explain the ocean to people who say that. But once you see it, and stand in it, and spend a day watching it, then it begins to make sense. Everything does, I mean.

3. The Mall of America.

I'm not exactly a mall rat, but if I ever don't have something to do on a weekday night, I will always opt to go to the mall. And, living where I do, I have the luxury of the gigantor Mall of America in my backyard. There's something about the amount of people, graphic design, advertising, and consumer/capitalism at this mall that always has something to say to me. I love people watching (good old fashioned inspiration) and the MoA always delivers weird, weird, weird people to watch. There's always events, and bookstores, and fashion, so I can see what's going on outside of my bubble. You know, like what's cool. Love the mall. Love it.

2. The subway. Any subway.

Really. It doesn't matter whether it's the Yamanote through Shibuya at 2pm or the underground Minneapolis-St. Paul Light Rail station in the airport at 2am -- I can't get enough of subway trains. I could ride 'em all day. All night. I have, in fact (cheapest way to entertain Joey, ever). There's something about the automated machinery and automated people doing their daily, mechanical things, pretending they're not sharing close company with people right next to them. Every time I get off a train I have to go home and write something down. There is never an end to the inspiration I get on the train.

1. Tsuribasho-so Onsen Ryokan and the mountains of the Izu Peninsula in Shizuoka, Japan.

I really can't say more for this place. The location itself was so surreal and quiet, but the Ryokan (traditional Japanese style inn) in particular was amazing. They have one green tea hot spring and there are tea plants covering the mountains, so when we went in July of 2007, the entire region smelled of cool, sweet green tea. The sky is bigger there, the trees are greener, and the place makes you feel like you're just another leaf on the wind. It was absolutely amazing. I have been to a lot of mountains, but there is surely something very special about the fantastic mountains of Japan. There is a deep peace and quiet there, and if I could claim one spot as my recurring gettaway, this would, without a doubt, be it.


So there you are, five favorite inspirational locations. What are yours?