What are some short stories where the characters discuss fiction?
October 5, 2020 9:05 PM   Subscribe

Have you ever read a short story where the characters spend a large part of the time talking about specific works of fiction? I'm interested in how the author does it, given that the reader may not be familiar with the story in question.
posted by storybored to Writing & Language (9 answers total) 3 users marked this as a favorite
 
A Secret History by Donna Tartt
posted by Grandysaur at 10:08 PM on October 5, 2020


Are you looking for characters talking about "real" fiction (ie, other books or stories you could actually physically buy)? Or are works that only exist in the authorial world fine?

The latter is often used as a framing device (House of Leaves comes to mind, although it's pointedly not a short story) but I don't know if that's what you mean here.
posted by solarion at 1:31 AM on October 6, 2020


The Jane Austen Project by Kathleen Flynn, though I had read all the Austen novels. I think there is enough information to get the gist if you hadn't.
posted by pangolin party at 3:36 AM on October 6, 2020


The Thursday Next series of novels involve a lot of (sometimes literal) jumping into and out of other works of fiction. In one book these exploits make a change to the ending of Jane Eyre, although it turns out the changed version is the same ending as the version in our reality. There's not too much work done to telegraph that fact; I suppose it reads fine if you have never read Jane Eyre and don't get that the change has returned the book to its original ending, but it's funnier if you're familiar with the real Jane Eyre.
posted by tiamat at 6:35 AM on October 6, 2020


This version of "What We Talk about Love" refers to . (Sorry, I can't pull up the final version right now.) This is such an interesting question and I started looking through stories by Carver, Lorrie Moore and Murakami; this is the only reference to fiction in an actual short story that I have found so far. It seems to happen a lot in novels. "The Death of Ivan Ilych" becomes a major plot point in A Married man by Piers Paul Read. Mystery writers always show their characters reading novels. And so on, I guess a novel has more room for that kind of thing.
posted by BibiRose at 6:51 AM on October 6, 2020


This is almost 100% not what you're asking about, but it does so much of what you're asking for that I figured it couldn't hurt to throw it into the mix. The powerpoint chapter from Jennifer Egan's A Visit From the Goon Squad (which can stand alone as a short story) talks about pauses within songs, in a way that even if you don't know the song, you can get a sense of what the character is talking about. (Link is to the chapter as an actual presentation with music added (which you can mute), but in the book it's just the layout and the words).
posted by Mchelly at 8:09 AM on October 6, 2020


The Odd Woman by Gail Godwin is about an English Professor is teaching a book called The Odd Women, by George Gissing.
posted by essexjan at 8:11 AM on October 6, 2020


If we are talking movies:
Wit (2001). Starring Emma Thompson, Christopher Lloyd, Jonathan M. Woodward, Audra McDonald and Eileen Atkins. The teleplay by Mike Nichols and Thompson is based on the 1999 Pulitzer Prize winning play of the same title by Margaret Edson. It covers the medical and emotional journey of an English literature professor with stage IV cancer.

The Jane Austen Book Club (2007). Starring Kathy Baker, Emily Blunt, Amy Brenneman, Maggie Grace, Maria Bello and Hugh Darcy. The screenplay, adapted from the 2004 novel of the same name by Karen Joy Fowler, focuses on a book club formed specifically to discuss the six novels written by Jane Austen.

Austenland (2013). Starring Keri Russell, Jane Seymour, Bret McKenzie, J. J. Field and Jennifer Coolidge. Shannon Hale's 2007 novel of the same name and its sequel follow the adventures of guests at a British resort called Austenland, patterned after the settings of Jane Austen's Regency era novels.

Book Club (2018). Starring Diane Keaton, Jane Fonda, Candice Bergen, and Mary Steenburgen. Four friends read Fifty Shades of Grey as part of their monthly book club.
posted by TrishaU at 6:31 PM on October 6, 2020


Not a short story, but I think the structure would be useful for your purposes, Kiss of the Spider Woman spends a good deal of the novel with one character recounting the plots of five or six films (mostly fictional themselves). Almost the whole novel is simply dialogue between one character and another - no descriptions, no authorial interventions, etc.
posted by humuhumu at 4:44 AM on October 7, 2020


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