Rosenberg, Donald A.

Solipsism, the assertion that the self is the only reality and the only thing that can be known and verified, is less pessimistic than nihilism, the radical doctrine that nothing exists, is knowable, or can be communicated. All novels may be solipsistic in the sense that fictions have reality: the author, knowingly or not, is creating a "reality" that may be no less valid than what the author assumes to be his or her own experienced "real" life. In some cases, readers interpreting such novels as Sartre's La Nausee and Garcia Marquez's Cien anos de soledad may find their own solipsistic leanings interacting with those of the authors, and it may be through such interaction that these texts work. Hence, the solipsistic perspective presents an authorial paradox, since the expression of this or any other idea would be meaningless outside the closed circle of writer and text. In these two texts. this solipsistic paradox and the problematic role of the reader are, in great part, the subject.