Fictional Theories and Theoretical Fictions

Abstract

ars Ole Sauerberg's Fact into Fiction: Documentary Realism in the Contemporary Novel is an interesting investigation of the realist documentary mode that also explores the relationship between textual ontology and the reliance on outer references from the real world. Sauerberg's basic claim is that despite the tendencies toward fragmentary narrative and literary devices (vaguely compounded as the postmodern), the realist mode of representation still prevails. Indeed, it must prevail, considering that we share much the same obsession with the ontological condition as our nineteenth-century cousins. The continuation of bourgeois values into the twentieth century has meant that literary investigation and experimentation, indeed all forms of representation, have followed the basic patterns of realistic convention. The key to the continuation of literary realism (whether specifically documentary or not) rests with the necessity of language to represent and the obvious limitations that lie within this ground of representation. All fiction works on the level of representation, as does all nonfiction, and both rely on the naturalizing function of narrative. Thus whether the text makes the rhetorical conventions