One of the central concerns of metafiction from Borges to Barth—or perhaps, more accurately, from Laurence Sterne to Barth—has been the reanimation and expansion of the commonplace that each man's life is a novel of which that man is the author. If the commonplace is accepted, it follows that almost all novels are about "novels"; and that a novel in which the problem of fictiveness becomes explicit will be required in order to satisfy the thirst of the ironic consciousness for an adequate complexity of treatment. John Fowles's brilliant exploration of these ideas and their ramifications in his three novels points to a very complex and sophisticated view of the relation between "art" and "life." (p. 204)
[Frank Kermode's concept of the modern novel states that in] order to make sense to his reader, in order to present a humanized perception of existence, the novelist must fall back upon "eidetic images—illusions persisting from past acts of perception, as some abnormal children 'see' the page or object that is no longer before them…." It is obvious that "eidetic," in this sense, must apply to almost all of the generalizations and patterns by which we organize our sense perceptions. The very act of using these images, however, belies the contingency and the perpetual flux of reality. This dilemma of the novelist obviously derives, by analogy, from the existential dilemma of achieving authenticity—of avoiding Sartrean mauvaise foi.
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