From The Art of Fiction by John Gardner

-78- Fiction is a kind of play. The writer works out what he thinks as much for the joy of it as for any other reason.

This is my number one reason for writing-it’s an entirely personal process that. It’s nice when others enjoy it, but that’s completely secondary to me.

-79- the writer of fiction restates what has always been known, finding new expression for familiar truths, adapting to the age truths that may seem outmoded.

-80- in treating human emotion the writer discovers nothing, merely clarifies for the moment.

-81- The true writer’s joy in the fictional process is his pleasure in discovering what he believes and can affirm for all time.

Metafiction, Deconstruction, and Jazzing Around

-82- Not all fiction, old or new, works by the principles we’ve been examining so far

-83- Changes in narrative method reflect changes in the way human beings see—or think they ought to see—the world.

-84- The poet who truly dramatizes a conflict, carefully exploring causal-event chains cannot be sure what the end of his story will be until he gets there. For him, fiction is a means of discovery. For the allegorist, fiction is largely a means of expressing what the writer already knows.

-85- Any narrative that moves from scene to scene and episode to episode not according to the exigencies of cause and effect but according to some abstract scheme is likely to be a demonstration.

-86- One kind of narrative, the kind I describe as authoritarian, is sometimes said to look at its story line “spatially”, each of its elements existing for the sake of a predetermined “end” or conclusion.

-87- Metafiction: fiction that investigates fiction…a story that calls attention to its methods and shows the reader what is happening to him as he reads.

-88- It is useful to distinguish between meta fiction and fictional deconstruction, though technically the latter term encloses the former. All metafictions and deconstructions; not all deconstructions are metafictions.

-89- Deconstruction is the practice of taking language apart, or taking works of art apart, to discover their unacknowledged inner workings… Deconstructive fiction is parallel to revisionist history in that it tells the story from the other side or from some queer angle that casts doubt on the generally accepted values handed down by legend.

-90- All great literature has a deconstructive impulse. This is natural—if the business of the first man is to create, the business of the second is at least partly to correct