Ryan 2. Level Of Reality

I write that Nick Earls tells that Marto records Krissy Kneen saying: Franz Kafka, preferably dead.

Ever since reading Hamlet I have loved the literary device of metafiction. It is the ability for a story to comment upon itself, for a piece of art within the fiction to move the acts of the story like it does in real life, which has so fascinated me. The use of this considerably postmodern technique in Willow Pattern by Nick Earls, in his chapter Aftermath, really resonated with me. In the chapter the reader is given a tour of the flooded library through the first person narration of Marto, a babysitter of sorts for two eccentric radio hosts. Introduced on this tour are a group of nine writers under the banner of THE FUTURE OF THE BOOK. Sound familiar?

Patricia Waugh defines metafiction as “a term given to fictional writing which self-consciously and systematically draws attention to its status as an artefact in order to pose questions about the relationship between fiction and reality”.

A master of metafiction, Italo Calvino’s novel If on a Winter’s Night a Traveller tells the story of a reader trying to read a book entitled If on a Winter’s Night a Traveller. At a conference in Florence, Calvino stated that “the spectator must not abandon himself passively and emotionally to the illusion…but must be urged to think and to participate”.

It is from this paper that I have constructed the statement identifying the levels of reality within Aftermath:

I write that Nick Earls tells that Marto records Krissy Kneen saying: Franz Kafka, preferably dead.

Each level of reality here is determined by the one preceding – think Inception. The Kafka is a version fancied by Krissy; Krissy, an observation of Marto, as interpreted by Nick; and Nick a reading of “I”, a representation of self. This “I” may signify myself but it is not me, it is a projection that is always called into play while writing. It may be a projection of a real part of myself or a fictitious mask, and is subject to change according to what is being written.

The effects of this compounding reality is noticeable in my own reading of Willow Pattern, in which Nick Earls doesn’t specifically name the writers, I am merely ascribing his characters names from the characters within Nick’s level of reality – my past; your more distant past. For you, the reader, represent yet another level of reality, determining each level below you, interpreting each in your own way, just as Krissy interprets a recently deceased Kafka as a possible sexual partner when you perhaps, may not.

To complicate matters in this exercise we could have substituted Krissy for the Nick within the story, still a separate reality from the Nick who wrote the chapter. Nick Earls introduces Marto as the first person narrator between himself and, well, himself. The reader supposes Marto is a fictional character, or rather an invented figure, occupying a fictional world in which mysterious creatures fall from tears in the sky and steal families and roaming sand storms transmigrate whole towns. If some of the characters of the written world resemble closely real people in this world of experience we begin to wonder just how much basis in truth the story, and the book, and really any story or book, actually have. Does Angela Slatter really know a supernatural detective? And if so can she help fix my wi-fi?

What makes metafiction all the more complicated and compelling is the idea that each level of reality is not only affected by the one preceding it but also by the one succeeding it. “Each element projected reacts in its turn on the element that projects it; it transforms and conditions it”.

Like my writing affects me, it changes me from who I was before the time of writing. Nick Earls’ depiction of himself has had an effect on him. We can also assume that Krissy Kneen has read Willow Pattern and that reading a representation of herself has changed her. Whether she identifies with the projection, remembers the conversation, or believes it to be entirely fictional, it affects her. All stories affect us all. As Calvino says, metafiction simply brings this to the foreground for a closer analysis of the important relationship between art and life.

Calvino, Italo. 1986. The Uses of Literature. FL, U.S.A.: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. 
Waugh, Patricia. 1984. Metafiction: the theory and practice of self-conscious fiction. KY, U.S.A.: Routledge.