The Fragile Relationship of Author, Reader, and Text

This chapter deals with the fragile relationship of author, reader, and text—thus putting a particular emphasis on the relation of diegetic and exodiegetic integration of theory into literature (after the analysis of a mostly diegetic/allegorical and endodiegetic/dialogical integration in the previous chapters). The novels analyzed all start from a ‘traditional’ hermeneutic understanding of the reception process, which they reflect upon and subvert. In Daniel Kehlmann’s F, each of the main characters serves as an author, presenting various and competing forms of authorship. Throughout the novel, the question of who is an author of what remains uncertain in many respects: it is a question of perspective and choice rather than immutable fact. Italo Calvino’s If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler, in contrast, multiplies the readers. The novel presents a plurality of readings, showcasing a multitude of diegetic readers, introducing the model of an implied reader, and arriving at the real readers’ readings. In Christoph Ransmayr’s The Last World, finally, everything turns out to be text, even author and reader as diegetic and exodiegetic entities. The novel presents ever-new scraps of narratives and textual remnants, reforming the existing knowledge of the world. It thereby develops into a palimpsest, dispensing with a hierarchical order such as that offered by the author.