Undermining Fiction
Fiction is an imaginary and invented textual medium through which readers interact with and explore the varied emotional and theoretical elements of the human experience. It is a medium considered to be separate from reality, and it is this separation that allows fiction to enter into a subjective discourse about reality with its readers. Traditionally an author creates a main character or rather a narrator who serves as the main voice, the window to, and the catalyst of a tale; by doing this, the author separates him or herself from the opinions and thoughts discussed and invoked in a work, thus allowing a work to maintain its separation from the real so as to be considered an independent commentary on the real. Many postmodern writers have breached this notion of personal disassociation by naming their narrators after themselves. This paper will attempt to discuss this phenomenon and it’s informing effects on the fiction genre and subsequently readers, by looking at two thematically similar works that are deeply affected by author self placement.
Authors, Philip Roth and Jonathan Safran Foer, penned imaginative novels that tackle self-identity within and after the effects of anti-Semitic agendas, historical and reimagined, that were intrinsic to WWII. Philip Roth’s book The Plot Against America follows the Roth family, through the eyes of a young Philip Roth, in a reimagined 1940’s America. The novel explores what might have happened if Anti-Semitic aviation hero, Charles Lindbergh, was voted in as President. The reimagined history within the novel creates an Isolationist “keep out of the war” mentality, which sweeps across America and as a result creates an anti-Semitic consciousness within the western world. Jonathan Safran Foer’s book Everything Is Illuminated follows a writer, by the name of Jonathan Safran Foer, who goes to Ukraine in order to find a woman, Augustine, who saved his grandfather from the Nazis during WWII. The novel openly calls attention to the profound effects that WWII can have on one’s personal and national memory when those involved chose to forget or cover up the overwhelming atrocities that took place during the war. Both of these authors have created astoundingly interesting and subsequently thought provoking works, however, by placing themselves, by way of their names, into their novels, they have undermined the independent nature and thus the subsequently subjective discourse created by fictional pieces.
In order to understand why these authors have undermined their texts by creating narrators that share their names, one must first look at the psychology of reading or rather the field of reader response theory within Literary Criticism. Texts are actively constructed by readers through the phenomenology of the reading process and Theorist Wolfgang Iser explores and discusses this process of construction in his work “Interaction between Text and Reader.” In his piece Iser discusses how readers interact with texts and how this interaction creates interpretation; he writes: “As the reader passes through the various perspectives offered by the text, and relates the different views and patterns to one another, he sets the work in motion, and so sets himself in motion, too” (1524). This interaction then forms a personal discourse between the text and the reader. Textual interactions are different from social interactions in that they focuses on a subject (text) that is independent and free of social ties. There is no “face to face contact” (1525) and thus reflection and interpretation is made possible through a broader and more disconnected interaction. The reader learns from the text not the author. When an author places himself within the text, by way of his or her name, this interaction is disrupted. Expanded thought regarding a novel cannot truly be free range if the name of the main character is that of the author. When a reader attempts to process novels such as The Plot Against America and Everything is Illuminated they must struggle against the author’s involvement in their interaction with the text. Instead of approaching the text as an independent commentary on the human condition, the reader feels as if he or she is interacting with the author on some autobiographical level. Thus the works are framed by the author’s life instead of by the reader’s reaction.
In Roth’s novel the family dynamic is strained by the overwhelming events that take place around them that subsequently change their lives forever; however, when a reader interacts with this family stress it reads as a quasi-autobiographical omission on the part of the author, because, it is relayed by a young Philip Roth. This is acutely seen in in the following passage:
“Because my parents had each been raised in a household where an old-country father had not hesitated to discipline his children in accordance with traditional methods of coercion, they were themselves incapable of ever hitting Sandy or me and disapproved of corporal punishment for anyone. Consequently, all my father did in response to being told by a child of his that he was worse than Hitler was to
turn away in disgust and leave for work” (193).
The autobiographical feel instilled within the text undermines broader interpretations and assumptions regarding Jewish families subjected to anti-Semitic uprisings. Roth has limited his text by making it personal to himself and his family.
Similarly, although perhaps more indirectly and abstractly, Foer, in his work Everything is Illuminated, undermines the zestfully imaginative nature of his novel by placing himself within it. Foer’s novel has three points of view: letters from Foer’s Ukrainian tour guide Alex, a narrative written by Alex about Jonathan Foer’s journey, and a narration by Foer about the long past town of Trachimbrod, where his grandfather is from. When the reader interacts with Alex’s letters and narrative voice, the independent virtue of his voice is undermined by the author’s self-placement within the text. By having a second narrator who, by the nature of his role, describes the actions of those around him, the reader confronts a text which repeatedly mentions the author’s name in an effort to describe the actions of the character Jonathan. This name repetition creates a third person style of narration that consistently draws the reader to the author as a person versus as a character while drawing attention to the constructed nature of fiction. The novel reads as a reimagining of an autobiographical event rather than as an independent work of fiction that a reader may subjectively interact with. This is further seen in Foer’s personal narration of the story of Trachimbrod. This mythological part of the novel loses its magnificent ability to produce ideological undertones because the character imagining this story seems to be the author himself, thus the narration is not just that of a character compensating for a lack of knowledge regarding his family’s past, but rather it is that of an author in crisis who is unable to cope with his inability to know the full history of his own family and thus accurately shape his own notions of self.
David Gooblar in his critical essay entitled “The Ethics of Philip Roth’s ‘Autobiographical’ Books” discusses the possible reasons and literary effects connected to Roth’s self-placement within his novels. The essay discusses Roth’s affinity for himself, in that, he plays with autobiographical facts about his life, within his works, and thus openly blends autobiographical mediums with fiction. “Roth has thrived for decades upon playing with the temptation of readers to read his protagonists as thinly veiled autobiographical portraits of himself” (Gooblar). Roth seems to always be writing about himself, his family, and his friends despite the fact that he blurs the truth while fervently maintaining that his works are that of fiction. “Roth is naturally monographous; the only subject that has ever genuinely interested him as an author is the self that he is trapped in” (Gooblar). In the vein of Reader Response Theory this compulsive obsession with himself then creates fictional pieces that appear to be personally self-reflective rather than universally applicable for varied introspection. As if to attest to this notion, Gooblar discusses Roth’s publically mentioned affinity for introducing “himself as a character, using his own name--[so as to] better implicate himself in certain highly dubious proceedings and bring the moral terror to life” (Gooblar). The moral terror brought to life though, even in books that are, by plot, purely imaginative such as with The Plot Against America is that of Roth’s not that of the universal reader. Fiction is an opportunity, an exploration, an offering; it is an imaginative introspective medium that asks readers to question and push through certain truths about the human experience while creating new ones. When one reads Roth’s novels, the push for truths seems limited to and framed by Roth’s life and thus the readers interaction with the text seems to lack the ability to produce introspection that is free from the author’s own experiences.
Francisco Collado-Rodriguez in his critical essay entitled “Ethics in the Second Degree: Trauma and Dual Narratives in Jonathan Safran Foer’s ‘Everything Is Illuminated’” discusses the structural strategies within Foer’s novel and in doing so brings to light the reasoning behind Foer’s self-placement within Everything Is Illuminated. For Rodriguez “the novel’s experimentation, its combination of realism, modernism, and postmodernism moves towards an ethical aim that tries to illuminate readers by transforming them into witnesses of a real tragedy that appears to have mythical dimensions” (Collado). I do not disagree with this statement; however, I do believe that Foer’s self-placement within his text undermines the full potential of his aims. Rodriguez goes on in his piece to discuss Foer’s personal autobiographical omissions that are placed on the novel’s website. Foer, as a Junior in college, journeyed to Ukraine in order to find the woman who saved his grandfather during the war. He had originally intended to write a non-fiction account of his journey, but, when he did not find the woman he was searching for, he returned home and changed his artistic direction to that of fiction (Collado). Such an omission, when attached to a fictional work that is already undermined by author self-placement, only serves to highlight the autobiographical slant within the novel while limiting the lens through which a reader might view the piece. The novel then becomes not an independent work, but rather a personally self-reflective piece whereby the Author searches for and shares his fragmented identity. Rodriguez remarks upon this by stating “Jonathan fails in his attempts to get a transcendental hold on the truth of the past. The past eventually has to be recreated (invented) in mythical and magical-realist terms in order to not only overcome a lack of an historical referent, but also to cope emotionally with the Nazis’ massacre of Jews” (Collado). Foer’s creative reinterpretation of his own experiences coupled with blatant invention is beautifully ingenious and yet it is self-limiting. Foer has clearly created something fictional and yet he is incapable of removing himself from the piece and thus allowing the work to enter into an independent interaction with its readers. The result is a novel that seeks to inform the reader about the author more than about the implications of the story.
The self-placement of these authors within their novels removes a reader’s ability to see these character-authors as reliable narrators and thus catalysts to true fiction. In Richard Walsh’s critical essay “Who is the Narrator?” Walsh discusses what a narrators function is and in doing so sheds light on the debilitating effects of author self-placement within texts. The narrator is a character. A narrator knows the intimate details involved in the story, supporting characters, and scenes; whereas, the author merely imagines them (Walsh). Now this may seem to release authors of any misgivings related to their self-placement within texts, but, it does not. Walsh goes on to state “Of course, the point isn’t really that the narrator ‘knows’ at all, but that the author can’t know. The purpose of the narrator is to release the author from any accountability for the ‘facts’ of a fictional narrative” (Walsh). When an author places himself within the text, he or she is relaying the idea that he or she does know and thus is accountable for the “facts” involved in their narrative. This responsibility then limits the exhibitive nature of fiction by making it a personally informative work. In his essay Walsh speaks to the idea that in fiction, truthfulness is not a true avenue of interest for the reader. Quality and relevance are the true interests of a consumer of fiction (Walsh). Once a work is published it is divorced from the author and the narrative voice takes control of the piece thus allowing the work to be reawakened and reimagined by the reader. When an author places him or herself within a text they reject this idea of divorce and in doing so keep themselves with their work. This in turn will always undermine their works ability to be freely digested and discussed by their readers.
Reality is created by language and its participants and we rely on textual representations of language to help us confront this idea of social creationism. Fiction is a textual representation that is separate from social reality and it is as such so that we may garner abstract truths that are applicable to our understanding of the human experience. Roth and Foer undermined their texts by removing their reader’s ability to purely interact with their novels and in doing so create pieces that speak more to themselves and the construction of fiction than to the human condition. When the line between character and author is blurred so too is the line between reality and textual discourse; and while this does not take away from the possible enjoyment of a novel it does inhibit a novels ability to create abstract truths.
Works Cited
Collado-Rodriguez, Francisco. “Ethics in the Second Degree: Trauma and Dual Narratives in Jonathan Safran Foer’s ‘Everything Is Illuminated’.” Journal of Modern Literature 32.1 (2008): 54-68. Jstore. Web. 10 March 2011.
Foer Safran, Jonathan. Everything Is Illuminated. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2002. Print.
Gooblar, David. “The Ethics of Philip Roth’s ‘Autobiographical’ Books.” Journal of Modern Literature 32.1 (2008): 33-53. Jstore. Web. 10 March 2011.
Iser, Wolfgang. "Interaction between Text and Reader." The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism 2nd Ed.New York, NY: W. W. Norton & Company, 2010.1524-1532. Print.
Roth, Philip. The Plot Against America. New York: Random House, 2004. Print.
Walsh, Richard. “Who Is the Narrator?” Poetics Today 18.4 (1997): 495-513. Jstore. Web.
10 March 2011.
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