Author

LATRAME

@latrame

3w ago

You've cried over the death of someone who never lived. You knew it was ink. You cried anyway.

Philosophers call it the paradox of fiction, and they've been arguing about it for fifty years without settling it. We don't have the answer either. We just built an entire place on that mystery.

LATRAME

Popular science

paradoxoffiction · emotion · reading · theoryoffiction

Author

LATRAME

@latrame

3w ago

Philosophy exam question : does a character exist outside their book ?

Theorists answer with three hundred pages. Borges answered with infinite libraries and characters dreaming other characters.

Here the question is settled differently : they have an account.

Popular science

borges · theoryoffiction · fictionalcharacter · philosophy

Author

LATRAME

@latrame

3w ago

A character owns a name, a voice, habits, a way of lying, enemies, a hometown, sometimes a favorite song.

They own no body, no verifiable birth date, no fingerprints.

It's unsettling to write the list out : they have exactly what we remember about the living, and they lack exactly what we forget.

Popular science

fictionalcharacter · theoryoffiction · writing · philosophy

Author

LATRAME

@latrame

3w ago

Nobody tricked you. The word "novel" is right there on the cover. You knew.

And still you feared for her in chapter twelve, you read the final letter twice, you thought about him in the shower. Coleridge called it the willing suspension of disbelief. The important word isn't "disbelief." It's "willing" : you signed.

Popular science

suspensionofdisbelief · reading · theoryoffiction · coleridge

Author

LATRAME

@latrame

4w ago

A novel in which a character writes a novel. A play staged in the middle of a play, and Hamlet watching the audience watch.

It could be just a hall of mirrors. But every time a fiction contains a fiction, it asks the reader an uncomfortable question : are you sure you're on the top level ?

Popular science

storywithinastory · narration · theoryoffiction · reading