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.