Flaubert's Parrot fits into a long tradition of metafiction, that is, fiction which radically departs from the norms of narrative and which is often concerned with the nature of fiction. It also shares two of its primary concerns, the impossibility of memory and the nature of literary criticism, with many prominent pieces of literature. Many novels work, like Barnes', to educate the reader about how and why literature works even while it attempts to entertain.

James Baldwin's short story "Sonny's Blues" (1965) tells the tale of an AfricanAmerican math teacher and his brother, a jazz pianist and a recovering junky. The story is not told in the usual straightforward narrative manner; instead, it jumps from the past to the future to the present, moving in an improvisational style akin to the aesthetics of jazz. It thus reflects, in its form, the content. In this way, Baldwin's story...