Readers and Texts: Representative Contemporary American Fiction

Abstract

<p>When a reader opens a novel and begins reading he enters a fictional world, one which he discovers and unfolds via his act of reading. This basic fact of reader/text interaction is, in short, the focal point of many metafictional works. Metafiction, which is simply "fiction about fiction," centers not only on the writer's processes of creation and his product, the text, but also broadens its scope to include the equally important process, that of reading. The contemporary metafictionists' concern for equating the creative acts of writing and reading engenders a new role for the reader--that of the text's co-creator. The reader, who accepts his new co-creative role, is made more aware of how he activates a text to bring it to life. This fact sets contemporary metafictional works apart from previous "novelistic self-consciousness."</p> <p>The representative contemporary American writers selected for this study share in common their focus on the reader and his act of reading. The concept of "intertextuality " and its constituent structural parts, the "intertext" and the "intratext," are key elements amongst the fictions here discussed, elements which seek to make the reader more aware of his co-creative role. After all, a text does not exist beyond the confines of print and page until it is read, until it is brought to life via an active, imaginative, and hence, creative mind.</p>