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Underground > Creation >

Breaking the Fourth Wall

  
 
Krug
19:18 / 03.11.03
To me breaking the fourth wall is one of the best ideas in fiction. I haven't seen it done in poor novels but the creator meeting the creation excites me not only because it makes for an interesting religious experience but also because it appears to take away all the filters of fiction in a story of fiction (which it probably doesn't).

I first saw where probably everyone saw it, the Daffy Duck Looney Tunes cartoon, then in Bend Sinister (which is still one of my favourite novels), then in Morrison's Animal Man (see the comicbooks board for my love for it) then in Breakfast of Champions (possibly my favourite novel).
As a writer starting out I'd like to ask you all what you think about deus ex machinas, the fourth wall and if you that it's far too self indulgent to practice this in fiction or whatever you have to say on the subject.
If there's any reading to be recommended on the subject, please do.
 
 
sleazenation
21:25 / 03.11.03
It all depends how its done, more often than not its poorly thought out deus ex machina that is only third in terms of artistic cop-outs to 'killing off you narrator at then end of a story' and the 'it was all just a dream' ending
 
 
grant
22:00 / 03.11.03
Tzvetan Todorov: The Fantastic Mode might be a good leaping off point. There was another book based on that un called The Fantastic: something something by, umm... shit, I wrote a thesis on this and it has totally escaped me. Had a picture of Bosch on the cover. Dammit. This? Don't know.

There's also a book called Mindscreen which might be interesting -- about first-person cinema. Can't remember that one's author either.

Anyway, yeah, it happens in proper novels alla time. It can be argued that Hunter Thompson breaks the fourth wall by putting himself in the story -- 1st person journalism (which didn't start with him) is one example. Vonnegut's Breakfast of Champions has Kilgore Trout talking with Vonnegut. Any book where the writer talks about writing it would count.

There's a great Cthulhu-mythos story by Robert Bloch called "Notebook Found in an Abandoned House" which is a first person account by a kid being stalked by he-knows-not-what... that ends abruptly with one of those "I hear something coming..." lines. Scare the willies out of you, because it feels journalistic. But it can't be... can it?
 
  
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