The Literature Book

298

YOU ARE ABOUT TO

BEGIN READING ITALO

CALVINO’S NEW NOVEL

IF ON A WINTER’S NIGHT A TRAVELER (1979),

ITALO CALVINO

T

he term metafiction

was coined by American

writer William H. Gass in

1970 and refers to a fictional form of

writing in which a series of literary

tools are employed by writers to

draw attention to how fiction and

reality interrelate, emphasizing the

nature of the text as a constructed

work, an artifact of the author.

While largely associated with the

fiction of postmodern writers, many

examples exist from earlier eras,

including the 17th-century epic

of Cervantes’, Don Quixote, and

the 18th-century hilarity of

Laurence Sterne’s The Life and

Opinions of Tristram Shandy.

IN CONTEXT

FOCUS

Metafiction

BEFORE

1615 In the second part of the

novel Don Quixote, by Spanish

writer Miguel de Cervantes,

the eponymous fictional hero

is aware that the first part

had been written about him.

1759 – 67 Anglo-Irish novelist

Laurence Sterne’s fictional

autobiography Tristram

Shandy contains so many

digressions that the author

is not born until Volume III.

1944 Argentine writer Jorge

Luis Borges’ Ficciones plays

with the nature of fiction in

a series of enigmatic and

mesmerizing short stories.

AFTER

1987 American author Paul

Auster’s The New York Trilogy

twists the form of the

detective novel and makes

the reader question the tropes

of the genre.

If on a winter’s

night a

traveler

Outside the tOwn

Of MalbOrk

Leaning from

the steep

slope

WITHOUT FEAR

OF WIND OR

VERTIGO

Looks down in

the gathering

shadow

IN A NETWORK

OF LINES THAT

ENLACE

A novel about novels

and points of view, Ca lvino’s

book interweaves excerpts of

imagined books from different

contemporary fiction genres;

the titles of these 10 books

form a complete sentence.

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