silent scream

Back a couple three years ago my friend Andre suggested I should start a blog. I scoffed, who the hell wants to know what I am thinking about??? Well if yer reading you must be numbered among the sick and twisted folk that I adore. You may even be slightly concerned that I am slowly losing my mind. I am starting to feel like the narrator in Charlotte Perkins Gillman's The Yellow Wallpaper. Or perhaps I am more Slyvia Plath-ish? There is a faint aroma of propane in my kitchen. Normally I can cheerfully deal with stress in the bittersweet fashion of one Mrs. Dalloway, or the sardonic and off kilter Antoinette of Wide Sargasso Sea. Oh if only I were a character in a feminist tract. Then somebody could shut the fucking book and I could get a break!!

I am fascinated by this idea, who is reading me? What character am I? Actually does anyone know the title of this tome? I want to propose a class. A LIT class, duh--but one dealing with meta-fiction. A genre I am not even sure exists. I may have mislabeled it. But I am thinking of books where the fictional characters exist in non-fictional world. That their "downtime" is when the book is closed. If someone is reading then the characters are like actors in sitcom or a movie. They are working at a job, with a script. I immediately propose the works of Jasper Fforde click here Mom ( pronounce both F's ffff fff forde). His Thursday Next novels are delicious romps. I also call to mind Cornelia Funke's Inkspell & Inkheart, where "real" humans get in and out of the narrative. The movie trailer is in theatres now. We could also play with the aforementioned Antoinette of Wide Sargasso Sea where author Jean Rhys has launched an universe that is transcendently hypnotizing. Fforde started that mythology, for me anyway, with his Eyre Affair . Okay, so I have already overextended an undergrad reading list but if any of these are familiar to you please suggest more to me. Titles like A.S. Byatt's Possession and the newer Diana Setterfield novel The Thirteenth Tale are on this list too--does the author count as the character? If the author's character is an author then yes. But they also dabble with history/time jumping and I may need to stick with the same time continuum.