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EIGHT RAYMOND FEDERMAN, THE ULTIMATE METAFICTIONEER Eckhard Gerdes Discussions of metafiction tend to be painfully reductive, with critics falling all over each other to find the simplest definition for such a complex issue. The reader will do well to remember that definition is dismissal, and that once anything is defined, it can be placed in a manila folder, put into a metal filing cabinet, and the locked cabinet can then be dropped into the ocean because no one will ever need to consider the subject again: it’s already been defined. The most interesting topics for examination, of course, resist definition, just as human beings themselves do. Just as no simple definition of who Raymond Federman is would be accurate, no simple definition of metafiction exists. Patricia Waugh, in her definitive examination of metafiction, dismisses it as merely “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” (1984, 2). As brave as such an attempt at definition may be, it fails to succeed for several reasons, particularly in her discussion of Federman’s work. Note her statement that “Raymond Federman in Double or Nothing continually rehearses possible narrative strategies,” somehow implying that the novel’s significance exists on this level and that it is contained inside mere narratology (95). And then her discussion bogs down in a superfluous discussion of whether novelists are liars or not. Any rudimentary examination of the history of the novel would obviate this discussion. Lennard Davis, for example, in Factual Fictions, traces the lineage of the novel back to the sixteenth-century printed 127 128 FEDERMAN’S FICTIONS ballad, in which truth was irrelevant so long as a modicum of truthiness1 was adhered to. Fortunately, Lisbeth Rieshøj Pedersen’s recent study of Federman’s work as metafiction, which starts with Waugh’s definition as well, and in which Pedersen states that in her examination of the metafictional novel she “want[s] to establish some of the narrative techniques employed in such writing,” goes beyond a rapid dismissal of metafiction as some odd progeny of narratology and discusses the essential frame-breaking methodology of metafiction (2005, 38, 46). And although she does not draw this discussion out to its logical conclusion, it seems clear that metafiction must therefore break through the frame of narrative as well. However, when Pedersen states that “Frame-breaking thus presupposes that a sense of frame—a structure supporting or containing something—has already been established,” she fails to note that such a presupposition does not automatically affirm the truth of such a frame (2005, 46). Indeed, it at best affirms only its truthiness. The frame could easily be a mere straw man, whose knocking over really proves no great accomplishment. If we were to examine the issue of self-referentiality2 alone as a constant characteristic of metafiction, even there we would find multiple possibilities of what that can mean, and the issue of fictionality versus reality is at best secondary, at worst impossible. This sort of examination of the mimetic nature of fiction can never be resolved. Is fiction mimetic? Or is it the vanguard? Does art mirror life, or does art lead us into battle (the purpose of an avant-garde)? Aristotle or Théophile Gautier? Is art a reporter jotting down notes? Or does it suggest new directions, the way Kepler and Cyrano de Bergerac visited the moon long before NASA did? The whole problem with the mimetic question is that it is predicated on the notion that somehow the term reality is itself an easily defined constant. As Federman himself wrote regarding the work of his mentor Samuel Beckett, “since reality (according to Beckett) is incomprehensible and doubtful, the validity of fiction becomes doubly suspect” (1965, 7). How quickly we can dismiss the term reality! The aboriginal people of Australia who believe in alcheringa, the dreamtime that they believe is reality while our waking states are illusory, would never be able to agree on a definition of reality with Western people who believe in paper money backed only by the faith of the public. To focus on this issue of reality versus fiction is at the very least a false dichotomy or a red herring. Federman further addresses this problem in his book Critifiction, in which he states emphatically, “In the beginning was not MIMESIS (the art of imitation), but the necessity to achieve MIMESIS...

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