82: That's one of Wolterstorff's examples, something about how impossibilities are tolerated within certain parameters (it's not possible that characters could walk onto a stage and demand to be written, but it's happening!) without all epistemological baselines being overthrown. (Some are, but we tend to partition them off from other conclusions we might draw from the work.)
77: Hehe, had missed your earlier comment. Sometimes I think analytic philosophers of fiction need to read more fantasy (or at least, that's how I justify wasting time...). Ludlow's got a fun article on Everquest, though.
Thanks all! I am the aforementioned friend, and I found your comments very helpful. To clear up slightly the goal of my question, as some people seem to have worries that I am taking on too broad a goal, all that I need for my paper is a moment in literature in which the author uses the characters' names as characters, instead of simply referring to them.
For those who are curious, the philosopher Nathan Salmon has an article out called "Nonexistence" (Nous 32:3 (1998) 277-319) in which he distinguishes between a "pretend use" and a "real use" and he claims that _whenever_ an author uses a fictional name, it is a pretend use. I'm trying to draw a finer distinction and to argue that it's in these self-referential (or what-have-you) contexts that the use is clearly "pretend." I think that in more "normal" contexts, the use is closer to our reference to ordinary living people.
Although I know this is bad blogging practice, I probably won't be checking this site to respond to your comments -- I have half a million things to do tonight. But thanks again for your help!
For the sake of fraternity, I reprint the e-mail I just sent Catreb (real name obvs. Bertac):
From How Far Can You Go?/Souls and Bodies, by David Lodge
"...and a girl you have not yet been introduced to, who now
comes forward from the shadows of the side aisle, where she
has been lurking, to join the others at the altar rail. Let her be
called Violet, no, Veronica, no Violet, improbably a name as
that is for Catholic girls of Irish extraction, customarily named
after saints and figures of Celtic legend, for I like the connotations
of Violet -- shrinking, penitential, melancholy -- a diminutive,
dark-haired girl, a pale, pretty face ravaged by eczema, fingernails
bitten down to the quick and stained by nicotine, a smartly cut
needlecord coat sadly creased and soiled; a girl, you might
guess from all this evidence, with problems, guilts, hangups.
Reprinted in The Art of Fiction, p. 35 (ch. 8, Names).
Salmon sounds like one of those carpetbagging philosophers
of language I was complaining about. Or maybe not, I'd have to read the article to see if I really object to that thesis.
Catreb: Cool! That Salmon paper's a bitch and a half, so I don't envy you.
Different tack, too. Most people it seems would grant some kind of pretense account of the ordinary reference contexts ('Sherlock Holmes lived in London' as 'According to the story, ....'), but balk at expanding them to critical/non-fictional contexts ('Doyle hated his best creation, Sherlock Holmes, but couldn't find a way to dispose of him...') Cf. van Inwagen, Thomasson, etc. Also lots of expanding pretense accounts (Walton's official versus unofficial games, pretense theories of truth.)
But yeah, on the bleg, any reference to the characters as characters would work. Maybe the opening of Romeo and Juliet, which is pretty much 'We're going to tell you a story now" ? Plays are tricky though.
Salmon's thesis is just weird. IIRC, he's trying to argue that direct reference works even for fictional characters, without postulating that fictional characters exist. He treats ordinary statements about the fiction as pretenses (no objects necessary), and then does something totally screwy for the critical non-fictional references that is totally escaping me at the moment.
Ok, I might be running into the disciplinary wall here, but when literary critics talk about "characters," one of the central problems we run into is the extent to which our understanding of these "characters" is reliant on--and determined by--plot. Do these philosophers of fictional characters take plot-necessary constructs like Bertha Rochester into account?
(Disciplinary wall acknowledged: this might be altogether irrelevant or too muzzily worded for the specific inquiries undertaken by the abovenamed philosophers.)
Not an answer to the revised question, but a great instance of an author being a character in his own fiction is Yann Martel's Life of Pi, in which the entire introduction to the novel is fictional, though you only realize that once you get into the novel itself. Also, the novel's protagonist/narrator ends the novel by telling his story to some listeners, who don't believe it, and present a much more realistic and plausible explanation for the events, at which point he asks them (and by extension us), "which story would you rather believe?"
There's the ever-popular (at least among children's lit) "… which is the very book you're reading now" ending, instances of which you can find, off the top of my head, in
SPOILERZ RUN AWAY
Roald Dahl (could be The BFG, can't remember), and particularly well executed in Jill Paton Walsh's The Green Book.
And somewhere in Time Regained, the narrator recounts a heroic story and says "Although every other name in these books is changed, I'm going to give their real name here: Suchandsuch."
Back on topic: Why doesn't one of the bloggers just CLOSE the "Innocence" thread? That reduces the number of people who have to behave well. (I actually expected the 'testing' comment not to go through.)
To augment JM's comment, John Barth does this quite a lot, in the rather good Tidewater Tales and also in the less-good Somebody the Sailor, as well as elsewhere.
Martin Amis in The Information wraps up a rather sadistic plot by saying in effect, but I will be kind, and this will not be that kind of book. It's one of the things I dislike about Amis, the cruel toying with the reader's sensitivities.
I want to say Philip Roth, but I'm not quite sure there's the same level of explicit metacommentary you want. Certainly he appears in his fictions, as "himself", especially in Operation Shylock. But does he actually say, this is a cardboard cutout of me, a character, and here's what he will do? Can't remember that happening.
I enthusiastically support the move to close the Innocence thread, since it takes me about five minutes to load the damned thing when someone links to it without warning. And I vote that that person should be Wolfsen, for the Giant Mutant Cockroaches and the Little Bitches shall indeed inherit the Earth.
Yeah, if anyone cares I back the end of "Innocence" too. Not least, out of pique, because in the recent mishegoss some comments got deleted, mine among them.
Why doesn't one of the bloggers just CLOSE the "Innocence" thread? That reduces the number of people who have to behave well. (I actually expected the 'testing' comment not to go through.)
I have closed it, as have others. It gets reopened.
I'm not entirely sure I don't understand the self-referentiality in literature part of this thread, but Robert Louis Stevenson's A Chapter on Dreams is about the influence of dreams upon Stevenson's work, but framed at first as a story about a young man afflicted with vivid dreams who begins to discipline his dreaming, becomes a writer, and has some of his ideas brought to him in his sleep. Here's the (somewhat long) self-referentiality quotation, which follows a story in which the dreamer, already a character in Stevenson's essay, is a character in a dream ("the little people" is the name he gives to whatever it is that's structuring the dream):
Hereupon, with a pang of wonder and mercantile delight, the dreamer awoke. His mercantile delight was not of long endurance; for it soon became plain that in this spirited tale there were unmarketable elements; which is just the reason why you have it here so briefly told. But his wonder has still kept growing; and I think the reader’s will also, if he consider it ripely. For now he sees why I speak of the little people as of substantive inventors and performers. To the end they had kept their secret. I will go bail for the dreamer (having excellent grounds for valuing his candour) that he had no guess whatever at the motive of the woman — the hinge of the whole well-invented plot — until the instant of that highly dramatic declaration. It was not his tale; it was the little people’s! And observe: not only was the secret kept, the story was told with really guileful craftsmanship. The conduct of both actors is (in the cant phrase) psychologically correct, and the emotion aptly graduated up to the surprising climax. I am awake now, and I know this trade; and yet I cannot better it. I am awake, and I live by this business; and yet I could not outdo — could not perhaps equal — that crafty artifice (as of some old, experienced carpenter of plays, some Dennery or Sardou) by which the same situation is twice presented and the two actors twice brought face to face over the evidence, only once it is in her hand, once in his — and these in their due order, the least dramatic first. The more I think of it, the more I am moved to press upon the world my question: Who are the Little People? They are near connections of the dreamer’s, beyond doubt; they share in his financial worries and have an eye to the bank-book; they share plainly in his training; they have plainly learned like him to build the scheme of a considerate story and to arrange emotion in progressive order; only I think they have more talent; and one thing is beyond doubt, they can tell him a story piece by piece, like a serial, and keep him all the while in ignorance of where they aim. Who are they, then? and who is the dreamer?
Well, as regards the dreamer, I can answer that, for he is no less a person than myself; — as I might have told you from the beginning, only that the critics murmur over my consistent egotism; —and as I am positively forced to tell you now, or I could advance but little farther with my story.
all that I need for my paper is a moment in literature in which the author uses the characters' names as characters, instead of simply referring to them.
I'm feeling thick here, but I'm not quite following this. Can someone who gets it give me an example?
The following might be wrong, both because I'm not entirely sure what distinction Catreb is getting at with use/refer (use/mention and sense/reference both being familiar dichotomies) and because I'm half asleep.
"Little Red Riding Hood was walking through the forest, frolicking with the little animals."
"It is totally unclear what the classic fairy tale figure of Little Red Riding Hood is doing in this comment, she popped up and demaned inclusion."
I think Catreb is looking for an instance in which the author 'breaks the fourth wall', and acknowledges that the characters she's writing about are characters, instead of presenting them and treating them like they're real people/independent actors/etc.
"While the scene looked frightening, Little Red Riding Hood knew there was nothing to fear, because the background music remained light and cheerful."
82: That's one of Wolterstorff's examples, something about how impossibilities are tolerated within certain parameters (it's not possible that characters could walk onto a stage and demand to be written, but it's happening!) without all epistemological baselines being overthrown. (Some are, but we tend to partition them off from other conclusions we might draw from the work.)
77: Hehe, had missed your earlier comment. Sometimes I think analytic philosophers of fiction need to read more fantasy (or at least, that's how I justify wasting time...). Ludlow's got a fun article on Everquest, though.
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 04-17-06 3:17 PM
Thanks all! I am the aforementioned friend, and I found your comments very helpful. To clear up slightly the goal of my question, as some people seem to have worries that I am taking on too broad a goal, all that I need for my paper is a moment in literature in which the author uses the characters' names as characters, instead of simply referring to them.
For those who are curious, the philosopher Nathan Salmon has an article out called "Nonexistence" (Nous 32:3 (1998) 277-319) in which he distinguishes between a "pretend use" and a "real use" and he claims that _whenever_ an author uses a fictional name, it is a pretend use. I'm trying to draw a finer distinction and to argue that it's in these self-referential (or what-have-you) contexts that the use is clearly "pretend." I think that in more "normal" contexts, the use is closer to our reference to ordinary living people.
Although I know this is bad blogging practice, I probably won't be checking this site to respond to your comments -- I have half a million things to do tonight. But thanks again for your help!
Posted by Catreb | Link to this comment | 04-17-06 5:56 PM
Testing
Posted by Becks | Link to this comment | 04-17-06 6:01 PM
For the sake of fraternity, I reprint the e-mail I just sent Catreb (real name obvs. Bertac):
Reprinted in The Art of Fiction, p. 35 (ch. 8, Names).
Salmon sounds like one of those carpetbagging philosophers
of language I was complaining about. Or maybe not, I'd have to read the article to see if I really object to that thesis.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 04-17-06 6:29 PM
Catreb: Cool! That Salmon paper's a bitch and a half, so I don't envy you.
Different tack, too. Most people it seems would grant some kind of pretense account of the ordinary reference contexts ('Sherlock Holmes lived in London' as 'According to the story, ....'), but balk at expanding them to critical/non-fictional contexts ('Doyle hated his best creation, Sherlock Holmes, but couldn't find a way to dispose of him...') Cf. van Inwagen, Thomasson, etc. Also lots of expanding pretense accounts (Walton's official versus unofficial games, pretense theories of truth.)
But yeah, on the bleg, any reference to the characters as characters would work. Maybe the opening of Romeo and Juliet, which is pretty much 'We're going to tell you a story now" ? Plays are tricky though.
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 04-17-06 6:36 PM
And then there's that Reagan biography with the biographer as a character. Has anyone ever read that?
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 04-17-06 6:38 PM
Salmon's thesis is just weird. IIRC, he's trying to argue that direct reference works even for fictional characters, without postulating that fictional characters exist. He treats ordinary statements about the fiction as pretenses (no objects necessary), and then does something totally screwy for the critical non-fictional references that is totally escaping me at the moment.
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 04-17-06 6:41 PM
critical non-fictional references
Such as "Sherlock Holmes is a character in Conan Doyle stories"?
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 04-17-06 7:11 PM
Yup, exactly. What van Inwagen would call 'theoretical entities of literary criticism.'
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 04-17-06 7:17 PM
I think that the whole idea of an author "pretending" to do something when he or she's writing is kind of dumb, but hey.
It will come as no surprise that I don't particularly care for M m s s s M k B l v .
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 04-17-06 7:22 PM
Ok, I might be running into the disciplinary wall here, but when literary critics talk about "characters," one of the central problems we run into is the extent to which our understanding of these "characters" is reliant on--and determined by--plot. Do these philosophers of fictional characters take plot-necessary constructs like Bertha Rochester into account?
(Disciplinary wall acknowledged: this might be altogether irrelevant or too muzzily worded for the specific inquiries undertaken by the abovenamed philosophers.)
Posted by Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 04-17-06 8:36 PM
Not an answer to the revised question, but a great instance of an author being a character in his own fiction is Yann Martel's Life of Pi, in which the entire introduction to the novel is fictional, though you only realize that once you get into the novel itself. Also, the novel's protagonist/narrator ends the novel by telling his story to some listeners, who don't believe it, and present a much more realistic and plausible explanation for the events, at which point he asks them (and by extension us), "which story would you rather believe?"
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 04-17-06 9:06 PM
There's the ever-popular (at least among children's lit) "… which is the very book you're reading now" ending, instances of which you can find, off the top of my head, in
SPOILERZ RUN AWAY
Roald Dahl (could be The BFG, can't remember), and particularly well executed in Jill Paton Walsh's The Green Book.
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 04-17-06 9:27 PM
And somewhere in Time Regained, the narrator recounts a heroic story and says "Although every other name in these books is changed, I'm going to give their real name here: Suchandsuch."
Back on topic: Why doesn't one of the bloggers just CLOSE the "Innocence" thread? That reduces the number of people who have to behave well. (I actually expected the 'testing' comment not to go through.)
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 04-17-06 9:31 PM
To augment JM's comment, John Barth does this quite a lot, in the rather good Tidewater Tales and also in the less-good Somebody the Sailor, as well as elsewhere.
Martin Amis in The Information wraps up a rather sadistic plot by saying in effect, but I will be kind, and this will not be that kind of book. It's one of the things I dislike about Amis, the cruel toying with the reader's sensitivities.
I want to say Philip Roth, but I'm not quite sure there's the same level of explicit metacommentary you want. Certainly he appears in his fictions, as "himself", especially in Operation Shylock. But does he actually say, this is a cardboard cutout of me, a character, and here's what he will do? Can't remember that happening.
Posted by slolernr | Link to this comment | 04-17-06 9:59 PM
I enthusiastically support the move to close the Innocence thread, since it takes me about five minutes to load the damned thing when someone links to it without warning. And I vote that that person should be Wolfsen, for the Giant Mutant Cockroaches and the Little Bitches shall indeed inherit the Earth.
Posted by Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 04-17-06 10:02 PM
Yeah, if anyone cares I back the end of "Innocence" too. Not least, out of pique, because in the recent mishegoss some comments got deleted, mine among them.
Posted by slolernr | Link to this comment | 04-17-06 10:16 PM
100!
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 04-17-06 10:21 PM
I vote not to close it, b/c it amuses me.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 04-17-06 10:22 PM
But is your amusement of greater social utility than the relief of my pique?
Posted by slolernr | Link to this comment | 04-17-06 10:23 PM
How to put this. Innocence didn't mean to hurt anyone. Innocence just wanted to pet the rabbits. But, sadly, *BLAMMO*
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 04-17-06 10:43 PM
102: That depends. Which of us is more unpleasant when piqued?
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 04-17-06 10:46 PM
103 gets it exactly right.
Posted by Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 04-17-06 11:04 PM
As long as no one changes comment 1000 I don't care what happens to that thread.
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 04-17-06 11:07 PM
Why doesn't one of the bloggers just CLOSE the "Innocence" thread? That reduces the number of people who have to behave well. (I actually expected the 'testing' comment not to go through.)
I have closed it, as have others. It gets reopened.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 04-18-06 12:17 AM
I'm not entirely sure I don't understand the self-referentiality in literature part of this thread, but Robert Louis Stevenson's A Chapter on Dreams is about the influence of dreams upon Stevenson's work, but framed at first as a story about a young man afflicted with vivid dreams who begins to discipline his dreaming, becomes a writer, and has some of his ideas brought to him in his sleep. Here's the (somewhat long) self-referentiality quotation, which follows a story in which the dreamer, already a character in Stevenson's essay, is a character in a dream ("the little people" is the name he gives to whatever it is that's structuring the dream):
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 04-18-06 12:31 AM
That takes care of that.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 04-18-06 12:32 AM
I never got an error, but the recent comments sidebar hasn't updated to show comments 108 and 109.
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 04-18-06 12:47 AM
Now it's updated. Maybe it was just a delay.
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 04-18-06 1:00 AM
I haven't clicked on the Innocence thread in months because it crashes my computer.
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 04-18-06 6:11 AM
the Giant Mutant Cockroaches and the Little Bitches shall indeed inherit the Earth
Anybody know a good probate lawyer? This could get ugly.
Posted by Giant Mutant Cockroach | Link to this comment | 04-18-06 7:44 AM
all that I need for my paper is a moment in literature in which the author uses the characters' names as characters, instead of simply referring to them.
I'm feeling thick here, but I'm not quite following this. Can someone who gets it give me an example?
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 04-18-06 7:48 AM
The following might be wrong, both because I'm not entirely sure what distinction Catreb is getting at with use/refer (use/mention and sense/reference both being familiar dichotomies) and because I'm half asleep.
"Little Red Riding Hood was walking through the forest, frolicking with the little animals."
"It is totally unclear what the classic fairy tale figure of Little Red Riding Hood is doing in this comment, she popped up and demaned inclusion."
Posted by washerdreyer | Link to this comment | 04-18-06 8:15 AM
I think Catreb is looking for an instance in which the author 'breaks the fourth wall', and acknowledges that the characters she's writing about are characters, instead of presenting them and treating them like they're real people/independent actors/etc.
"While the scene looked frightening, Little Red Riding Hood knew there was nothing to fear, because the background music remained light and cheerful."
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 04-18-06 8:29 AM
Then I retract what I said above about Pynchon not fitting the criteria -- Gravity's Rainbow has that kind of stuff in spades.
Posted by The Modesto Kid | Link to this comment | 04-18-06 9:00 AM