Cause and Effect in Fiction: An Introduction

This chapter introduces the topic of the book: causationcausationcausation within, or according to, stories, and my intention to explore and defend George SaundersGeorge Saunders’ claim that the successful deployment of such causation makes fiction better. In addition, this chapter tries to make sense of the notion of literary merit. If no stories are better than any others, there is no point writing about what makes stories better. I explore several different accounts of literary merit and argue that some of these are false, and the ones that remain provide a sensible basis for exploring the question of whether and how and why causation makes fiction better.