Both of them are also gamblers ('double or nothing'), although the reader would have no way of knowing this. Most importantly, both of them write books. Both come to America after the war.įederman, of course, also shares biographical details with the author. Both are Jewish and from families who were massacred in the Holocaust. He even worries about how weird it will look when he carries in the dozens of toilet paper rolls he has computed that he needs.Ĭomplicating all of these (playful) complications is the fact that, if you know anything about Federman, you will realize that Boris' 'biography' is remarkably similar to Federman's. And it spends an equal amount of time speculating about the daily needs of the author in his motel room. The book, however, only speculates about what the author will write or might write about 'Boris.' He never actually commits to a story, though he does spin a lot of potential story lines that are quite interesting to follow. It follows an author getting ready to lock himself in a cheap motel room for 365 days with a typewriter, noodles, cigarettes, sugar, coffee, and a few other things in order to write the story of a character he initially calls 'Boris' who comes to the U.S. The 18th-century's Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne is an early, if not the earliest metafiction, in that it spins its wheels obsessively focusing on details before the putative beginning of the story so as to almost not get there. (See page 9.) It is a classic contemporary novel, one of the landmarks of meta-fiction, where the author reflects on the making of the fiction as the book is made. Federman may even on occasion have used freehand ink lettering or stencils. The novel is a typescript in which each page is conceived of as an object and typed differently.

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Double or nothing federman