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  John Barth uses intricate techniques in order to achieve something different in terms of writing.

The story is about how a writer is creating his works, thus referring to the development of the

short-story itself. Its a story about someone who is writing a story and so on, in a postmodernist

manner which goes against the predicament of the traditional structure in order to deconstruct the

idea of the story as a linguistic construct. The narrator believes that plots consist of a !ground-

situation" as in !#chehera$ade desires not to die" and !vehicle-situations" as in !#chehera$ade

 beguiling the %ing by telling endless stories". &owever, the lack of a ground-situation, or the

lack of a good basis for a meaningful story, is not a cause for despair, and the narrator eventually

reali$es that the lack of a good ground-situation can become a good ground-situation itself. &er

stories have a structure of !e'position, rising action, clima' and denouncement", but she does

not invent them herself, as they are fed to her by a genie, a writer like Barth, who travels back

through time to share with her his enthusiasm for The Arabian Nights. &e uses this analogy in

order to describe the relation between the writers and the readers. #chehera$ade tells stories to

the %ing every night so that she wont be killed. #o is the case of writers, who are supposed to

write what is e'pected of them so that they wont be !killed" by the readers. The characters,

represented by letters, act as both narrators and writers, as is the case of (, who suspects the

world is a novel and he is a fictional character. )oreover, there is no clear line between reality

and fiction, between life and art. The self refle'ive metafictional tendency is presented in the first

sentence !*ithout discarding what hed already written, he began his story afresh in a somewhatdifferent manner". The readers are told here how the nature of fiction is composed. In +ife #tory,

there are various characters, such as the writer, the wife or the imagined mistress but the real

 protagonist is the novel itself or rather its creation.

“Life Story” represents a story-within-story structure, while at the same time

the process of writing is described It is a short story about someone who is writing a story, describing at the

same time the creation of a novel while rejecting the traditional structure of

writing  The lac of a meaningful basis!ground-situation" can become a good ground-

situation itself 

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#o particular meaning to be found in words

$arth is obsessed with style, with complicated structure, inter-te%tual

reference and play in order to deconstruct the idea of the story as a linguistic

construct  There is no clear line between reality and &ction

 The relation writer-reader relation through the Shehera'ade analogy

 The novel itself as the protagonist ! or rather, its creation"