tragically hip

Now for something completely different I offer you a blast from Storyglossia's past; curt duffy's "tragic metafiction volume one" from Issue 1. Discussing this piece kind of defeats the purpose, so I'll just say that back in the MFA days when Curt first floated this one around it wasn't too popular because the seriously literary ones thought it wasn't serious which only shows that they weren't really all that serious ("What is he talking about? Choosing which narrator to use?"). They also gave him a wide berth when passing him in the hallway. One of the keys to writing good metafiction—aside from being self-reflexive—is that much like satire you have to go over the top. Think SNL, Second City, and Mad TV skits (or Seattle fav Almost Live). Think DFW, T.C. Boyle, or any of the PoMo gods of the 60's and 70's: Barth, Gass, Barthelme, Coover, Borges. Although metafiction was ripped a new a.h. by John Gardner (see On Moral Fiction), and Raymond Carver, partially, if not wholly under Gardner's influence, crafted his stories as an antidote to the likes of Barth (who returned the favor many times over with his "minimalism" label that stuck), and was never popular outside of the circles where you had to study it, I do think (as David Foster Wallace's popularity and influence bears witness) it will find its true audience with the current and rising generations who have been heavily mediated and for whom deconstructing (at least in its kitsch and pastiche forms) and performing are second-nature. In some sense, how can traditional literary fiction be taken seriously by someone who is frenetically creating a new persona—narrator—for every performance? What form (even, will there be any?) will literary fiction take after we've all been reality (excuse me, "unscripted actors") TV stars? Does Modernism cycle back? Minimalism? Or do we quit writing and just crank out mixed-media DVDs and podcasts?

Metafiction appeals to my intellectual side—blame it on that philosophy degree—but you'll notice that I spend most of my time in this blog discussing the affective qualities of literary stories. That's their sweet spot at this point in time, it's what the best practicers of the form have learned how to do best. Will there be an audience—other than those who write it, which may in fact already be the only current audience—for such stories in the future? I doubt fiction writers will ever completely abandon that terrain to the poets, but their audience may be just as marginal. What's sexier now? To have written and published a short story? Or to have directed and produced a short film? With today's technology both take about the same amount of effort. What's a young auteur to do?