Yes -- I've been looking for a term, or for some narratological account, of the very simple distinction between first person fictional worlds where what you read can be found (e.g. epistolary novels, journal novels, etc.) and where it can't. Sometimes you don't know you're in the former until late: e.g. Double Indemnity, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night.
And there's also less precise distinction between epistolary/diary/etc. fictions where what you read can theoretically be found but in practice won't be because the letters (or whatever) are just a formal literary device, and those where the writings and/or their composition are a significant part of the plot. Again, this can shift from the first to the second quite late on. (Diana Wynne Jones's Black Maria is one example.) I'm trying to remember how far into Pamela Mr B. discovers P's letters - or did I misremember his doing so entirely?
I think that Amis novel was Money, wasn't it? And the speaker is John Self (lest we miss the point).
I think that E. Nesbit has a fairly transparent self-portrait in The Treasure Seekers, but I don't recall that she's actually named. However, in a slightly different part of the forest, the children in her House of Arden get interested in time travel because they've been reading her Story of the Amulet, published the previous year.
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Date: 2014-05-31 07:09 pm (UTC)And there's also less precise distinction between epistolary/diary/etc. fictions where what you read can theoretically be found but in practice won't be because the letters (or whatever) are just a formal literary device, and those where the writings and/or their composition are a significant part of the plot. Again, this can shift from the first to the second quite late on. (Diana Wynne Jones's Black Maria is one example.) I'm trying to remember how far into Pamela Mr B. discovers P's letters - or did I misremember his doing so entirely?
I think that Amis novel was Money, wasn't it? And the speaker is John Self (lest we miss the point).
I think that E. Nesbit has a fairly transparent self-portrait in The Treasure Seekers, but I don't recall that she's actually named. However, in a slightly different part of the forest, the children in her House of Arden get interested in time travel because they've been reading her Story of the Amulet, published the previous year.