List of metafictional texts

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Metafiction is a form of fiction in which the text - either directly or through the characters within - is 'aware' that is a form of fiction.

This is a partial list of works using various metafictional ideas.

Contents 1 Novels, novellas and short stories 2 Animated short films 3 Stage plays 4 Films 5 Television shows 6 Comic strips, comic books and graphic novels 7 Artist's Books

[edit] Novels, novellas and short stories

• Peter Ackroyd, English Music
• Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
• Richard Adams, The Plague Dogs
• Rabih Alameddine, I, the Divine
• Felipe Alfau, Locos: A Comedy of Gestures
• Martin Amis, Money, London Fields, Time's Arrow, The Information
• Isaac Asimov, Murder at the ABA
• Paul Auster, The New York Trilogy: City of Glass (1985), Ghosts (1986) and The Locked Room (1986)
• Nicholson Baker, The Mezzanine
• John Barnes, One for the Morning Glory
• John Barnes, Gaudeamus
• Julian Barnes, Flaubert's Parrot
• John Barth, Chimera, Coming Soon!!!, The Floating Opera, Lost in the Funhouse among others
• Samuel Beckett, Watt
• Thomas Bernhard, Wittgensteins Neffe
• Jorge Luis Borges, "The Garden of Forking Paths", "Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius"
• William S. Burroughs, Junkie, Naked Lunch, Queer
• Michel Butor, La Modification
• Richard Brautigan, Sombrero Fallout

• Steven Brust and collaborators, the Paarfi books, especially Five Hundred Years After
• A. S. Byatt, Possession: A Romance
• Guillermo Cabrera Infante, Tres tristes tigres
• Italo Calvino, If On a Winter's Night a Traveler
• Peter Carey, Illywhacker
• Jonathon Carroll, The Land of Laughs
• Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote
• J. M. Coetzee, Slow Man
• Brendan Connell, Dr. Black and the Guerrillia
• Douglas Cooper, Amnesia, Delirium
• Julio Cortazar, Rayuela, Hopscotch
• Douglas Coupland, jPod
• John Crowley, Little, Big, "Novelty", Lord Byron's Novel, The Solitudes (first book of the Ægypt cycle)
• Mark Z. Danielewski, House of Leaves
• Peter David, Young Justice, Sir Apropos of Nothing
• Samuel R. Delany, The Einstein Intersection, Dhalgren, Return to Nevèrÿon (series)
• Philip K. Dick, VALIS, The Man in the High Castle
• Joan Didion, Democracy
• Umberto Eco, Foucault's Pendulum, The Island of the Day Before, The Name of the Rose
• Dave Eggers, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
• Bret Easton Ellis, Lunar Park
• Gilad Elbom, Scream Queens of the Dead Sea
• Michael Ende, The Neverending Story
• Steve Erickson, "Arc d'X", "The Sea Came in at Midnight"
• Raymond Federman, Twofold Vibration, Smiles on Washington Square, Take It Or Leave It
• F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
• Jasper Fforde, The Eyre Affair, Lost in a Good Book, The Well of Lost Plots, Something Rotten, The Big Over Easy, The Fourth Bear
• Henry Fielding, The History of the Adventures of Joseph Andrews, and of his Friend Mr Abraham Adams
• Ian Fleming, You Only Live Twice
• John Fowles, The French Lieutenant's Woman
• Jonathan Safran Foer, Everything Is Illuminated
• Jostein Gaarder, Sophie's World
• John Gardner, October Light
• William H. Gass, The Tunnel
• Andre Gide, The Counterfeiters
• William Goldman, The Princess Bride
• Alasdair Gray, Lanark
• Robert Grudin, Book
• Larry Heinemann, Paco's Story
• Robert A. Heinlein, The Number of the Beast and Glory Road, at least.
• Douglas Hofstadter, dialogues in Gödel, Escher, Bach
• Rhys Hughes, Nowhere Near Milk Wood, The Postmodern Mariner, The Less Lonely Planet
• John Irving, The World According to Garp
• Diana Wynne Jones, Fire and Hemlock
• Stephen King, The Dark Tower, Misery, The Dark Half, Bag of Bones
• Milan Kundera, "The Book of Laughter and Forgetting"
• Doris Lessing, The Golden Notebook
• Penelope Lively, Moon Tiger
• David Lodge (author), Therapy
• Dimitris Lyacos, Nyctivoe
• Steve Lyons, Doctor Who Virgin New Adventures:Conundrum
• Barry N. Malzberg, Galaxies, Herovit's World
• Yann Martell, Life of Pi
• Ian McEwan, Atonement
• Walter Moers, Die 13½ Leben des Käpt'n Blaubär, Ensel und Kretel, Die Stadt der Träumenden Bücher
• Michael Moorcock, The Second Ether sequence (Blood, Fabulous Harbours & The War Amongst The Angels)
• Scott O. Moore, Lullabye for Thunderstorms
• Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore
• Vladimir Nabokov, The Gift, Lolita, Pale Fire, Look at the Harlequins!, Speak, Memory, many other novels
• Flann O'Brien, At Swim-Two-Birds
• Tim O'Brien, The Things They Carried
• Michael Ondaatje, Running in the Family
• Juan Carlos Onetti, El Pozo
• Chuck Palahniuk, "Fight Club" "Diary", "Haunted"
• Kenneth Patchen, The Journal of Albion Moonlight
• Milorad Pavić's novels.
• Daniel Pellizzari, Dedo Negro Com Unha
• Arturo Pérez-Reverte, The Club Dumas
• Salvador Plascencia, The People of Paper
• Robert Rankin's novels
• Alain Robbe-Grillet, La Jalousie, La maison de rendez-vous
• Salman Rushdie, Haroun and the Sea of Stories
• Douglas Rushkoff, Exit Strategy
• José Carlos Somoza, The Athenian Murders
• José Saramago, Ensaio sobre a Cegueira, A Caverna, O Homem Duplicado
• Robert Sheckley, Options
• Iain Sinclair, Landor's Tower
• Dan Sleigh, Islands
• Lemony Snicket (Daniel Handler), A Series of Unfortunate Events (13 book series)
• Gilbert Sorrentino, Mulligan Stew
• Laurence Sterne, Tristram Shandy
• Jonathan Stroud, The Bartimaeus Trilogy
• Janet Tashjian, The Gospel According to Larry and Vote for Larry
• J. R. R. Tolkien, Leaf by Niggle
• Roderick Townley, The Great Good Thing
• Terry Pratchett, several of the Discworld, The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents
• Aritha van Herk, Restlessness
• Miguel de Unamuno, Niebla
• Jeff Vandermeer, City of Saints and Madmen
• Gore Vidal, Myra Breckinridge
• Kurt Vonnegut, Breakfast of Champions, Slaughterhouse-Five, Bluebeard (indeed, almost all of Vonnegut's middle and later period novels use this technique; see his entry for more details)
• David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest, Brief Interviews with Hideous Men
• H. G. Wells, Tono-Bungay
• Colin Wilson, The Personality Surgeon
• Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea, The Illuminatus! Trilogy
• Jeanette Winterson, Sexing the Cherry, The Powerbook
• Gene Wolfe, The Fifth Head of Cerberus
• Virginia Woolf, Orlando: A Biography
• Ronald Wright, A Scientific Romance

[edit] Animated short films

• Chuck Jones, Duck Amuck, (1953) and (Rabbit Rampage), 1955.

[edit] Stage plays

• Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot and Endgame
• Joseph Heller, We Bombed in New Haven
• Arthur L. Kopit, End of the World With Symposium to Follow
• Thomas Kyd, The Spanish Tragedy
• Ira Levin, Deathtrap (play)
• Dimitris Lyacos, Nyctivoe
• Steve Martin, Picasso at the Lapin Agile
• Luigi Pirandello, Six Characters in Search of an Author
• William Shakespeare,Hamlet
• Tom Stoppard, Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead
• Peter Weiss, Marat/Sade (The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat As Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton Under the Direction of The Marquis de Sade)
• Thornton Wilder, The Skin of Our Teeth
• Doug Wright, I Am My Own Wife
• Federico García Lorca, Play Without a Title / Untitled Play (1935)

[edit] Films

• Robert Altman, The Player
• David Cronenberg, screenplay for eXistenZ and Naked Lunch
• David Fincher, Fight Club
• Peter Greenaway's The Baby of Mâcon
• Charlie Kaufman, screenplay for Adaptation.
• David Lynch's Inland Empire
• George Nolfi, screenplay for Ocean's Twelve
• Zak Penn, Adam Leff, Shane Black and David Arnott, screenplay for Last Action Hero
• Robert Pulcini and Shari Springer Berman, screenplay for American Splendor
• A Cock and Bull Story, film adaptation of Tristram Shandy
• Some of Wyllis Cooper's Quiet, Please scripts
• Keith Allen and Peter Richardson's Comic Strip film Detectives on the Edge of a Nervous Breakdown
• Stranger than Fiction
• Mel Brooks' Spaceballs: the Movie
• Wes Craven's New Nightmare
• Scream

[edit] Television shows

• The Simpsons
• Arrested Development
• It's Garry Shandling's Show
• Sean's Show
• Princess Tutu
• Drawn Together, occasionally.

[edit] Comic strips, comic books and graphic novels

• Berke Breathed, Bloom County
• Penny Arcade frequently features metafiction, particularly their fantasy setting Epic Legends of the Hierarchs: The Elemenstor Saga, which has a detailed wiki devoted to it.
• John Byrne's run on The Sensational She-Hulk and Dan Slott's run on She-Hulk.
• Grant Morrison's run on Animal Man and Doom Patrol, Flex Mentallo, The Filth'
• Dave Sim, chapters "Minds" and "Guys" from his six thousand pages graphic novel Cerebus.
• The characters Deadpool and Purple Man are both aware they are in a comic book.
• Claudio Sanchez's Good Apollo, I'm Burning Star IV, Vol. 1, first half of the fourth chapter of The Amory Wars presents a metafictional aspect to the story when The Writing Writer goes into the story to persuade the main character to accept his destiny.
• Triangle and Robert is heavily metafictional.
• Alan Moore's Promethea and Supreme
• The Order of the Stick by Rich Burlew
• There have also been suggestions that DC Comics' character the Joker may in fact be a metafictional character, suggested by moments when the Joker "breaks the fourth wall" and addresses (or seems to address) the reader audience. This is further heightened in the cartoon adaptations in which the Joker (voiced by Mark Hamill) speaks and refers to the audience when no one else is around. However, this may be due to the character's insanity, or possibly his knowledge contributes to same.
• Kristofer Straub's Checkerboard Nightmare, portrayed as the workplace of several professional webcomic actors and marketers

[edit] Artist's Books

• Space Opera: The Artist's Book by Michael J. Weller