ellauri067.html on line 363: Foil: In fiction or non-fiction, a foil is a character who contrasts with another character; most of the time it is the protagonist, to highlight qualities of the other character. In some cases, a subplot can be used as a foil to the main plot. This is especially true in the case of metafiction and the story within a story motif. The word foil comes from the old practice of backing gems with foil to make them shine more brightly. Paranoids like Pynchon make foil hats to foil conspiracies.
ellauri077.html on line 555: In his interview with Larry McCaffery, Wallace shows he was aware of his failure to overcome the use of postmodern irony: “I got trapped just trying to expose the illusions of metafiction the same way metafiction had tried to expose the illusions of the pseudo-unmediated realist fiction that had come before it. It was a horror show.”
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