Metafictional traitsMetafictional traits found in The Parrot by Flaubert and in The French Lieutenant's Wife by John Fowles, before comparing them with the elements of realism in The Moskat Family by Isaac Singer. "For some, life is rich and creamy... while Art is a pale commercial confection... For others, Art is the truest thing, full, animated and emotionally satisfying, while Life is worse than the poorest novel: devoid of story, populated by troubles and rascals, devoid of spirit... and leading to a painfully predictable outcome”1 Thus Barnes compares life and art. in Flaubert's Parrot; but these words could just as easily refer to the different perspectives of realist and metafictional writers. With these perspectives in mind, this essay will examine the metafictional traits found in Flaubert's Parrot and in La Femme du. French lieutenant by John Fowles, before comparing them with the elements of realism in Isaac Singer's The Family Moskat. Considering the advantages and disadvantages of these fictional schools of thought, it will then be demonstrated that the reader's own opinions on the Life and art can determine the value placed on these alternative styles. When Braithwaite reflects: "If I were a dictator of fiction"2, the process of creating fiction itself becomes the subject of the narrative. Barnes himself is clearly a dictator in the sense that he controls the content of his own novel, but in this case Braithwaite is referring to all fiction This reference to the production of fiction is a common quality of metafiction, and it recurs frequently in Flaubert's Parrot. The theme is taken up later when Braithwaite says: “Many critics would like to be dictators of literature,...... in the middle of a newspaper...... for example, p. 87.19 Ibid., throughout, for example, p. 108.20 Ibid. ., p. 97.21 Ibid., p. 261.22 Ibid., p. 98.25 Barnes, p. p. Isaac Bashevis, The Family Moskat, translated by Gross, AH, Penguin, London, 1980, p. 582.36 Ibid., p. 606.38 Ibid., p. 46.42 See Fowles, p. 268.43 Ibid., p. 98.44 Barnes, pp. 49-65.45 For example, Singer, pp. 444-52 (Hadassah journal entries).46 Barnes, p.. 88.