HELLO KITTY

2 . 1 . NONFICTION

Where are we to place Darwin's Origin of Species, Pres- cott's History of the Conquest of Peru, and Sandburg's biography of Abraham Lincoln, not to mention philosophical treatises, mathema- tics textbooks, instruction manuals, recipes, legal documents, and requests to pass the salt? How do such "works of nonfiction" com- pare with novels and other works of fiction?

Postponing for the moment certain qualifications and refinements, we can say this: It is not the function of biographies, textbooks, and newspaper articles, as such, to serve as props in games of make- believe. They are used to claim truth for certain propositions rather than to make propositions fictional. Instead of establishing fictional worlds, they purport to describe the real world. We read the New

York Times to find out what actually happened in Washington or

Walla Walla, not what happened "in the world of the Times." Works of nonfiction do not, in general, qualify as representations in our special sense.

Here is an objection: Darwin's Origin of Species, for example, is designed to elicit beliefs. It is arguable that believing something involves imagining it (or at least that occurrent believing involves imagining, and perhaps Darwin's work is designed to induce occur- rent beliefs). So doesn't The Origin of Species prescribe imaginings, and thus generate fictional truths?

No. In writing his book Darwin no doubt intended to get readers to believe certain things. But there is no understanding to the effect that readers are to believe whatever the book says just because it says it. If we are to believe the theory of evolution, it is because that theory is true, or because there is good evidence for it, not because it is expressed in The Origin of Species-although of course The Origin of

Species might convince us of the theory's truth or inform us of ‟

evidence for it. Darwin's book itself does not prescribe believings. So we cannot conclude that it prescribes imaginings, even if believing involves imagining.

Perhaps the reader of The Origin of Species, qua reader of that work, is obliged at least to consider, understand, attend to, entertain the propositions expressed in it, regardless of their truth or falsity. If lie does not do so, perhaps he is not "playing the game" of reading the book properly. But as we saw earlier (§1.2.) considering or entertain- ing propositions falls short of imagining them.

An important symptom of the difference between The Origin of

Species and works like Gulliver's Travels which I count as

representa-tional is that what is said in The Origin of Species does not of itself warrant assertions like "Species evolved by means of natural selec-tion." It justifies such assertions only insofar as it provides good reason to think they are true. But the sentences in Gulliver's Travels warrant the assertive utterance "A war was fought over how to break eggs," quite apart from whether they give us reason to think such a war actually was fought.

Of course it is possible to read histories or biographies or treatises or committee reports as novels. One can resolve to imagine whatever propositions Sandburg's biography of Lincoln expresses; one can adopt a principle that one is to do so. (This may but need not involve ignoring whether the propositions are true or false.) One thus plays a game of make-believe in which the biography is a prop of the kind novels usually are. If one does, we might allow that the biography is a representation for that reader. But we might deny that it is a represen- tation simpliciter (in our sense), on the ground that its function, in the relevant sense, is not to be a prop in games of make-believe, no matter how anyone chooses to use it.

Some works straddle the fence. Many historical novels, for instance, are best understood as prescribing the imagining of the propositions they express and also seeking to elicit the reader's belief in many of them. (It is usually understood, however, that the reader is not to believe propositions about details of conversations between historical figures which the novelist could not possibly be in a position to know, for example.) Some histories are written in such a vivid, novelistic style that they almost inevitably induce the reader to imag- ine what is said, regardless of whether or not he believes it. (Indeed this may be true of Prescott's History of the Conquest of Peru.) If we think of the work as prescribing such a reaction, it serves as a prop in a game of make-believe. We might even allow that its function is

partly to serve as a prop, although this function may be subordinate to that of attempting to inform the reader. There are differences of degree along several dimensions here.

We thus find ourselves with a way of distinguishing fiction from

nonfiction. Works of fiction are simply representations in our special

sense, works whose function is to serve as props in games of make- believe. Except for the fact that representations need not be works, human artifacts-an important fact, as we shall see-we could use "representation" and "work of fiction" interchangeably.

This notion of fiction is a natural descendant of the one used by booksellers and librarians in separating fairy tales, short stories, nov- els, and Superman comic books from newspaper articles, instruction manuals, geography textbooks, biographies, and histories. This is not to say that we should expect to draw the line just where they do, however; the rough everyday classification needs refining in order to serve our theoretical purposes. Berkeley's Dialogues between Hylas

and Philonous, for example, containing those two fictional characters

as they do, will fall in our category of fiction.

Berkeley's Dialogues constitute a serious attempt to illuminate the reader about the real world, and the manner in which he pursues this objective is similar in many respects to the way Hume, for example, pursues it in The Treatise of Human Nature, notwithstanding Berkeley's use of fictional characters. We can understand why the

Dialogues are commonly classified as "nonfiction." But this classifica-

tion, together with an understanding of "fiction" in the spirit of ours, raises the disconcerting specter of an overlap between "fiction" and "nonfiction." We might find ourselves counting the Dialogues, and also certain histories and historical novels, as both. Better to find a more perspicuous way of characterizing the complexities of these works. For the sake of clarity I will mean by "nonfiction" simply "not fiction." Any work with the function of serving as a prop in games of make-believe, however minor or peripheral or instrumental this func- tion might be, qualifies as "fiction"; only what lacks this function entirely will be called nonfiction.

I have not drawn a precise line around the category of fiction. Nor is it desirable to do so; that would obscure some of the most interest- ing features of the many complex and subtle works in the border area. But one of the aims of my theory is to develop tools for understanding works that resist classification, works that are in one way or another mixed or marginal or indeterminate or ambiguous. This will be the burden of §2.7.

It is important to consider this way of understanding "fiction" against the background of alternatives. In the following several sec- tions we will examine a selection of more standard accounts. Their shortcomings will point all the more strongly to my own rather unor- thodox one, and will reinforce the make-believe approach as a whole. In particular, we will note important advantages that the make- believe theory enjoys over certain linguistically based ones.

2 . 2 . FICTION VERSUS REALI TY

Our present concern is not with "fiction" as opposed to "reality," nor with contrasts between "fiction" and "fact" or "truth." These oppo- sitions have little to do with the intuitions on which my recent sugges-tions are based, and little to do, I think, with the intuitions dominant in the shelving practices of booksellers and librarians. The difference we are interested in is between works of fiction and works

of nonfiction. The potential for confusion here is considerable and

has been amply realized.1

Let us put aside for the moment my proposal to understand "work of fiction" in terms of make-believe and start from scratch, reverting to a preanalytic conception of a fundamental, if rough, differentiation between novels, stories, fables, and fairy tales on the one hand and biographies, histories, textbooks, instruction manuals, and newspaper articles on the other. This conception is by no means univocal, and it is murky in various ways, but one can plausibly claim it to be a conception of a distinction essentially independent of the family of differentiations between fiction and reality or truth.

The distinction we are after is certainly not that between things that are real and things that are merely "fictional." Novels and comic books are no less real than newspaper articles and textbooks. Obvi- ously. But the presumption persists that the two senses of "fictional" are somehow crucially connected, and that the notion of works of fiction is to be understood in terms of fictitious entities. A not infre- quent suggestion is that novels and stories, though real themselves, are works that are largely about mere fictions, whereas biographies and textbooks are about real things. (Let's allow for the sake of

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1. Even the phrases "work of fiction" and "work of nonfiction" fail to point unambiguosly in the right direction. Their use, in theorizing as well as in practice, is a muddle capahle of driving the conscientious commentator up a skyscraper. Suffice it to say that the distinction I will draw is one of considerable importance, and is a prominent ingredient, at least, in the confused mix of ordinary uses of "fiction" and its compounds.

argument that there are things that are merely fictional.) "When we call a piece of literature a work of fiction we mean no more than that the characters could not be identified with any persons who have lived in the flesh, nor the incidents with any particular events that have actually taken place."2

This will not do. William Hazlitt's Characters of Shakespeare's

Plays (1817) is largely about mere fictions, yet nothing is more unam-

biguously a work of nonfiction. Tomasso Landolfi's incredible fantasy "Gogol's Wife" is about something real―Nikolay Vasilevich Gogol. Joyce Carol Oates's story "How I Contemplated the World from the Detroit House of Corrections" is about the Detroit House of Corrections, Detroit itself, and many of its streets, stores, suburbs― actual existents all. Both are works of fiction nonetheless. No doubt some or all of the characters in these stories are fictitious. But there is no reason why a work of fiction could not be exclusively about people and things (particulars) that actually exist. Reality can be the subject of fantasy.

But when works of fiction are about real things, what they say about them is frequently untrue. Does the difference consist in the fact that works of nonfiction express truths whereas works of fiction express falsehoods or untruths? No. A fantasy remains fiction even if it happens to correspond to the actual course of events. A novel set in the future or on an alien planet might turn out, by coincidence or otherwise, to be prophetically "accurate" down to the last detail without endangering its status as fiction. We did not have to compare George Orwell's 1984 with the events of that year to decide whether it is fiction or nonfiction, nor must we wait until 2002 to classify 2002. Conversely, an inaccurate history is still a history―a false one. Even a totally fabricated biography or textbook would not for that reason qualify as a novel, a work of fiction. Fact can be fiction and fiction fact.3

(Does the difference depend on whether the author claims truth for what he writes, whether or not his claims are correct? No, as we shall see in § 2.4.)

2. A. J. Toynbee, quoted in Webster's Third New International Dictionary, p. 844. See also MacDonald, "Language of Fiction," p. 342; Beardsley, "Fiction as representation," p. 300; and Wilshire, Role Playing, p. z8.

3. "Literal falsity distinguishes fiction from true report," Goodman claims, although he thinks that fiction must be literary, as well as literally false. "The novel containing a high percentage of literally true statements approaches nonfiction; the [literary] history with a high percentage of false statements approaches fiction" ("Fiction for Five Fingers," pp. 124, 126).

The moral of this section is scarcely profound, but it is absolutely essential. Notions of works of fiction akin to ours, in the library and bookstore spirit, are in many discussions intertwined irresponsibly with fiction-reality contrasts, with chaotic results. Understanding fic- tion in terms of make-believe keeps these distinctions appropriately distinct.

But we need to consider other more thoughtful alternatives to our way of understanding fiction than those just mentioned. Some depend less directly on contrasts between fiction and reality; some not at all.

2 . 3 . LINGUISTIC S TRATEGI ES

Most attempts to separate works of fiction from works of nonfiction focus on fictional uses of language. The home of the distinction lies in literature. Partly because of this, no doubt, theories of language have played prominent roles in attempts to explain it. But herein lies a danger. Not all fiction is linguistic. Any adequate theory of fiction must accommodate pictorial fictions, for instance, as well as literary ones. A theory that does not will not be adequate to explain even literary fiction. If our aim is to understand novels, stories, tales, and yarns, we need to know what it is about them that makes them works of fiction, and that requires knowing what fictionality in general is- what literary works of fiction have in common with works of fiction of other kinds. Distortions arise from concentration on literary fic- tions and too exclusive reliance on theories of language, as we shall see.

Theories of language invariably focus on standard, literal, nonfic- tional discourse.4 The usual procedure, in developing an account of fiction, is first to devise or adopt a theory of language and then to utilize its central concepts in explaining how fictional discourse devi- ates from "normal," nonfictional uses of language. Eventually per- haps, and as an afterthought, one attempts to stretch the account of literary fiction to cover fiction in other media. A central assumption underlying this procedure-that fiction is to be understood in terms of and as derivative from nonfiction-is fundamentally mistaken.

4. "Typically issues of much literary interest such as metaphor, simile, transference of sense, irony, satire, allegory, fictionalisation, and so on, are set aside at the beginning of logical and semantical studies, where the emphasis has always been on literal meaning and reportative discourse, to the cost of most of the remainder of discourse. The literary phenomena set aside are at best given perfunctory treatment after the important work of dealing with literal reportative discourse has been accomplished" (Routley, Exploring Meinong‘s Jungle, p. 537).

This is dramatically evident when nonliterary fiction is considered at an earlier stage than is usually done, and more seriously.

Theories of language of some kinds have been more prominent than others in discussions of fiction. Emphasis on semantic properties such as denotation and truth lead quickly to questions about "fiction" as opposed to fact or reality-not the questions we are now con- cerned with-forcing one to consider what if anything names like "Gulliver" denote and whether sentences like "Gulliver visited Lilli- put" are true. Goodman speaks of fictive representations, works like unicorn-pictures which are representational but do not represent any- thing.5 But there is little connection between fictive representation as he understands it and the notion of fiction we are interested in now. I think it is fair to say that Goodman's theory simply does not counte- nance a distinction corresponding even vaguely to ours. This neglect may be deliberate on Goodman's part. It is ill advised nonetheless.

Fiction and nonfiction differ more on pragmatic than on semantic grounds. So it is not surprising that speech-act theories of language have been used more often in attempts to understand the distinction than have theories like Goodman's. John Austin's notion of "illocu- tionary actions"-actions such as asserting, questioning, and request- ing-has seen wide service in this area. In the following three sections we will examine several popular ways of accounting for the distinc- tion within the framework of speech-act theories. My conclusions will be largely negative: speech-act theories will prove to be remarkably unhelpful in explaining fiction. We have here an unfortunate instance of the "Have theory will travel" syndrome-the tendency of theor- vvists, when faced with a new problem, to dust off an old theory they know and love, one devised with other questions in mind, shove it into the breach, and pray that it will fit. In this case it does not fit, and the result is confusion rather than illumination.

Lest I step on toes other than the ones I am aiming at, let me emphasize that my present concern is not with the viability of speech- act theories as theories of language. Nor do I deny that they can be used fruitfully to illuminate important features of literary and other fictions. I am now addressing only the basic question of what fiction is, how works of fiction are to be differentiated from other things. Whatever the other merits of speech-act theories, their applications to this question have been distinctly infelicitous.

Speech-act theories have been applied to the question of the nature

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of fiction in various ways, but most applications share an emphasis on the action of fiction-making. Fiction, it is thought, is to be understood in terms of the actions whereby works of fiction are produced. This is not surprising, since speech-act theories propose to understand lan- guage in terms of actions performed by language users. But it is exactly backwards. The basic notion is that of works of fiction, or rather that of things, whether human artifacts or not, which function as works of fiction do, not the notion of acts of fiction-making.

2 . 4 . FICTION AND ASSERTIO N

Whether a literary work is fiction or nonfiction does not necessarily show in its words. The very same sequence of words, the same sen- tences, might constitute either a biography or a novel.6 Nor does the essential difference lie in the relation of the words to the world. We have already seen that it is not a matter of being about real or fic- titious entities, and that it does not consist in the truth values of a