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The Double Bind of Metafiction: Implicating Narrative in The Crying of Lot 49 and Travesty

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Abstract

Both Thomas Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49 (1966) and John Hawkes' Travesty (1976) employ unconventional and unsettling narrative strategies: unconventional in that these works deliberately flout the traditions of the conventional canonical novel, and unsettling as a result of techniques consciously and deliberately adopted by the narrator of each work. The unconventionality and the deliberate assault on the reader's expectations are both characteristic of metafictions--those self-conscious texts which demand that the reader react intensely to the world of the text while simultaneously acknowledging its fictionality. As Linda Hutcheon observes, metafiction is characterized by paradox.

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How to Cite: Rundle, V. (1989) “The Double Bind of Metafiction: Implicating Narrative in The Crying of Lot 49 and Travesty”, Pynchon Notes.(0). doi: https://doi.org/10.16995/pn.291