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See, I thought long and hard about whether or not to write myself in. To bring this discussion up to speed, the novel is about the creation of a television show written by someone other than me. Through the course of the novel, I help write and finally control the television show. There's a lot more to it, (a lot), but essentially, I am only a secondary character, who appears in roughly 1 third of the entire project. The version contained in the novel is not confessional, nor is it superheroic. Rather, it's a portrait of one facet of my personality. I spent more time trying to make my protagonist multi-dimensional than myself.
The thesis of the novel is that actions have consequences, the principle of causality. The Butterfly Effect without Aston Kutcher. So, this novel could exist without the author's presence.
The novel, called Waves by the way, is about the writing of a show called Waves, based on the protagonist's life. The progression of the novel is the protagonist writing a show that steals quite liberally from his own life. I only tell you this in light of my statement that the novel could exist without the author's presence.
Once I finished this thing, I realized I'm almost saying something Barthes=like. There is nothing original. The protagonist's only means of success was to adapt his life into fiction. So that's where I, the character, come in. I take back control of the television show, literally and figuratively, and it becomes something original to me.
This is why I'm asking people if they think metafiction is self-indulgent. Sure, this novel could exist without my presence, but then my idea of unoriginality seems harsh. I need to show my face to give literature a hopeful future. (that's ambitious and arrogant, huh?) |
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