SOURCE: Waugh, Patricia. “What Is Metafiction and Why Are They Saying Such Awful Things about It?” In Metafiction: The Theory and Practice of Self-Conscious Fiction, pp. 1-21. London: Methuen, 1984.

In the following essay, Waugh defines the genre of metafiction and asserts that “this form of fiction is worth studying not only because of its contemporary emergence but also because of the insights it offers into both the representational nature of all fiction and the literary history of the novel as genre.”

What Is Metafiction?

The thing is this.

That of all the several ways of beginning a book which are now in practice throughout the known world, I am confident my own way of doing it is the best—I'm sure it is the most religious—for I begin with writing the first sentence—and trusting to Almighty God for the second.

(Laurence Sterne, Tristram Shandy, p. 438)

Fuck...