The Review of Contemporary Fiction

Not Quite Fiction by Stephen-Paul Martin
Jeffrey DeShell

Stephen-Paul Martin. Not Quite Fiction. Vatic Hum, 1997. 115 pp. Paper: $8.95.

Don’t let the blurbs on the back cover of this extraordinary book fool you: these “essay-fictions” are not cloudy memoirs of a repressed childhood, all-too-clever observations detailing the tiny absurdities of everyday life, or ax-grinding political rants raging against the soulless bureaucratic machine. Instead, these texts, in their wanderings and improvisations, articulate fundamental questions about the relationships between language and representation, while leading the reader on a sort of linguistic joyride, a playful meandering where linguistic indeterminacy, freedom and pleasure are the only constants.
These fictions are about language, about themselves as fiction, about all language as fiction and about all self as language, i.e. as fiction. These are stories that constantly try to describe themselves, with this attempt at description becoming the story that the story is trying to describe. At times, Martin’s writing gives the reader the feeling of being trapped inside language, where the only possible escape is more language, which is no escape at all.
Or maybe it is. For in Not Quite Fiction Martin makes an all-important connection between the literary and political and shows that those writers who are interested primarily in language can be the most committed of all: “And perhaps most important, if a work of fiction helps readers to think about what self-acceptance is, to see that the self they need to accept is a fiction, an invention, isn’t it helping them see themselves as creators, giving them the responsibility to tell stories—interesting stories—as a means of inventing themselves?”
Not Quite Fiction is writing, with all its implications, resonances, and problems, at its best. [Jeffrey DeShell]


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The Review of Contemporary Fiction Not Quite Fiction by Stephen-Paul Martin Jeffrey DeShell Stephen-Paul Martin. Not Quite Fiction. Vatic Hum, 1997. 115 pp. Paper: $8.95. Don’t let the blurbs on the back cover of this extraordinary book fool you: these “essay-fictions” are not cloudy memoirs of a repressed childhood, all-too-clever observations detailing the tiny absurdities of everyday life, or ax-grinding political rants raging against the soulless bureaucratic machine. Instead, these texts, in their wanderings and improvisations, articulate fundamental questions about the relationships between language and representation, while leading the reader on a sort of linguistic joyride, a playful meandering where linguistic indeterminacy, freedom and pleasure are the only constants. These fictions are about language, about themselves as fiction, about all language as fiction and about all self as language, i.e. as fiction. These are stories that constantly try to describe themselves, with this attempt at description becoming the story that the story is trying to describe. At times, Martin’s writing gives the reader the feeling of being trapped inside language, where the only possible escape is more language, which is no escape at all. Or maybe it is. For in Not Quite Fiction Martin makes an all-important connection between the literary and political and shows that those writers who are interested primarily in language can be the most committed of all: “And perhaps most important, if a work of fiction helps readers to think about what self-acceptance is, to see that the self they need to accept is a fiction, an invention, isn’t it helping them see themselves as creators, giving them the responsibility to tell stories—interesting stories—as a means of inventing themselves?” Not Quite Fiction is writing, with all its implications, resonances, and problems, at its best. [Jeffrey DeShell]

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