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tion, and will establish itself as it writes itself. This does not mean,
however, that the future novel will be only "a novel of the novel," but
rather it will create a kind of writing, a kind of discourse whose shape
will be an interrogation, an endless interrogation of what it is doing
while doing it, an endless denunciation of its fraudulence, of what
it
really is: an illusion (a fiction) , just as life is an illusion (a fiction).
PROPOSITION FOUR -
The Material of Fiction
If
the experiences of any man (in this case the writer) exist only
as fiction, as they are recalled or recounted, afterwards, and always in
a distorted, glorified, sublimated manner, then these experiences are
inventions. And if most fiction is (more or less ) based on the experi–
ences of the one who writes (experiences which are not anterior to,
but simultaneous with, the writing process), there cannot be any
truth nor any reality exterior to fiction. In other words, if the material
of fiction is invention (lies, simulations, or distortions ), then writing
fiction will be a process of inventing, on the spot, the material of
fiction. The writer simply materializes (renders concrete) fiction into
words. And as such, there are no limits to the material of fiction - no
limits beyond the writer's power of imagination, and beyond the pos–
sibilities of language. Everything can be said, and must be said, in
any possible way. While pretending to be telling the story of his life,
or the story of any life, the fiction writer can at the same time tell the
story of the story he is telling, the story of the language he is em–
ploying, the story of the methods he is using, the story of the pencil
or the typewriter he is using to write his story, the story of the fiction
he is inventing, and even the story of the anguish (or joy) he is feel–
ing while telling his story. And since writing now means filling a space
(the pages), in those spaces where there is nothing to write, the fic–
tion writer can, at any time, introduce material (quotations, pictures,
diagrams, designs, pieces of other discourses, doodles, etc.) totally un–
related to the story he is in the process of telling; or else, he can
simply leave those spaces blank, because fiction is as much what is
said as what is not said, since what is said is not necessarily true, and
since what is said can always be said another way.
As
a result, the people of fiction, the fictitious beings, will also
no longer be well-made characters who carry with them a fixed iden–
tity, a stable set of social and psychological attributes - a name, a
situation, a profession, a condition, etc. The creatures of the new fic-
