SOURCE: “Invention in Girl in Gingham,” in Fiddlehead, Vol. 114, Summer, 1977, pp. 120–29.

In the following essay, Cameron analyzes stylistic aspects of Girl in Gingham, maintaining that “it demands that the reader become a co-creator through acts of inference and imagination.”

My concern here is to offer some directions for the way in which I think Girl in Gingham should be read. For me, as both critic and ordinary reader, as for Metcalf, the least interesting aspect of a story is its meaning, which, if a story has been fully experienced as story, will take care of itself. Like Metcalf, I believe that stories should be approached “not as things to be understood but rather as things to be lived through and experienced.” A good story should be capable of being “lived through more than once,” and it is language itself and “texture that send you back into a story...