“[Postmodern] fiction, in fact, requires more coherence than traditional fiction does. For one of the things this new fiction does is bare its own structure.… This fiction sees that the formal relationship among parts is the essential value of all works of art. So it strips the narration of inessentials….It bares instead its structural bones, brings them to the surface, and retires. Those bones had better be good….Traditional fiction has the advantage here, I think. In a conservative work well fleshed, we may not notice at once that the joints do not articulate, nor the limbs even meet the torso. There may in fact be so much flesh that the parts cohere as it were bonelessly. But it is easy to see, if we look, taped joints on a skeleton.” (34, Living by Fiction)
Questions to Consider:
- What does Dillard mean when she says that postmodern novels “bare [their] own structure” like bones?
- Why makes “traditional fiction” fleshy?
- How can we apply this body metaphor (flesh, bones, limbs, torso) to Invisible Cities?
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