Text 1: Critic Park argues that the postmodern novel's emphasis on self-reference — characters aware they are in a book, narrators addressing readers directly — is a healthy refusal of the false immersions of realism. By reminding readers that fiction is fiction, postmodernists protect them from the manipulations realism quietly performs.
Text 2: Critic Singh accepts that self-reference can be valuable but argues that, taken as program, it has produced its own manipulations. The wink-at-the-reader posture can flatter sophistication while evading the harder work of making a fictional world matter to anyone outside the joke. The cure for one bad habit, Singh contends, has bred another.
The authors most clearly disagree about
- Acheck_circle
whether postmodern self-reference, as a program, is unambiguously beneficial.
- B
whether fiction has readers.
- C
whether self-referential techniques exist in postmodern fiction.
- D
whether realism and postmodernism are different modes.
Explanation
Both accept self-reference as a postmodern technique. They differ on its evaluation as a program. B captures the dispute.