Faketion's Progress
November 8, 2005 10:48 AM   Subscribe

The Rise of Faketion I want them to know that even in the age of Faketion, fiction still survived.
posted by oldleada (13 comments total)
 
Readable web pages, not so much.
posted by InfidelZombie at 10:56 AM on November 8, 2005


I read a few
paragraphs,
but my eyes
quickly tired
of reading
the whole
thing in a one-
inch column.
posted by brain_drain at 11:38 AM on November 8, 2005


Interesting. If you use firefox, the page looks just fine. Only has the smushed column in IE.
posted by misterioso at 11:52 AM on November 8, 2005


Looks fine in Firefox.
posted by zeoslap at 11:53 AM on November 8, 2005


Fascinating read though. About halfway through right now.
posted by klangklangston at 11:53 AM on November 8, 2005


Funny. I'm getting perfectly readable, wide columns in Firefox on a Mac.

Btw, the page is more interesting for its collection of links than its maudlin lament about the state of fiction vs. faketion. I'm pro-faketion myself.
posted by oldleada at 11:54 AM on November 8, 2005


I'm all about the faketion - especially now that I know it's got a name!

Or does it?
posted by nromanek at 12:25 PM on November 8, 2005


The Life and Strange, Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of York, Mariner... Written by Himself, a book some might consider a foundational text of the English novel genre, did not originally bear Daniel Defoe's name. It appeared to its readers, who had never before encountered fabricated tales written in a realistic fashion, to be an autobiography.
posted by cobra libre at 1:10 PM on November 8, 2005


I appreciated the reading, but this is a deeply stupid complaint. Maybe he's right that "faketion" can't provide the sensation that somewhere, some time, there was somebody like them who understood, who had been there too, but why the hell does all fiction have to do that?

Books don't exist solely to console the angsty.
posted by grobstein at 3:53 PM on November 8, 2005


An enjoyable rant.
posted by VanRoosta at 4:12 PM on November 8, 2005


It's appreciated by the kind of person who thinks an artist sawing a cow in half is awesome because it freaks so many people out.

Pfft. If you've never moved beyond "OOO I'm freaking people out!" well then you're Damien Hirsch. And that's just sad.
posted by PinkStainlessTail at 4:17 PM on November 8, 2005


I think it's possible to draw a distinction between a general idea of metanarrative, like Cervantes' Don Quixote, or even this, my first comment, and a postmodern sense that "fiction" and "author" are like sculpting clay, redefined by the artist at will. I'm a a bigger fan of the former than the latter: I suppose you could say that displaying my identity is part of the reason I've joined.
posted by StrikeTheViol at 9:37 PM on November 8, 2005


It'd be nice if the author went into an explanation of all of his faketion references, instead of forcing us to do the research, which I can't be arsed to do.
posted by Deathalicious at 3:46 AM on November 9, 2005


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