Hofstadter, Dennett - The Mind's I

27Robert NozickFictionI am a fictional character. However, you would be in error to smile smugly, feelingontologically superior. For you are a fictional character too. All my readers are exceptone who is, properly, not reader but author.I am a fictional character; this is not, however, a work of fiction, no more so thanany other work you've ever read. It is not a modernist work that self-consciously says it'sa work of fiction, nor one even more tricky that denies its fictional status. We all arefamiliar with such works and know how to deal with them, how to frame them so thatnothing the author says-nothing the first person voices even in an afterword or insomething headed "author's note"-can convince us that anyone is speaking seriously, nonfictionallyin his own first person.All the more severe is my own problem of informing you that this very piece youare reading is a work of non-fiction, yet we are fictional characters, nevertheless. Withinthis world of fiction we inhabit, this writing is non-fictional, although in a wider sense,encased as it is in a work of fiction, it too can only be a fiction.Think of our world as a novel in which you yourself are a character. Is there anyway to tell what our author is like? Perhaps. If this is a work in which the authorexpresses himself, we can draw inferences about his facets, while noting that each suchinference we draw will be written by"Fiction" by Robert Nozick appeared in Ploughshares, vol. 6, no. 3, Fall 1980. Copyright © 1980by Ploughshares.