Every reader finds himself. The writer's work is merely a kind of optical
instrument that makes it possible for the reader to discern what, without
this book, he would perhaps never have seen in himself.

Marcel Proust, novelist

It is interesting to think of literature in terms of mathematics, having a common denominator of sorts that brings together all literary pieces and gives them an identity different from other examples of mere writing. I believe that this is a valid action; there is something inherently different in reading Emerson or Shakespeare versus Cosmopolitan. This is not to say that I am not highly entertained by Cosmo, but it is not where I would turn if I were seeking serious insight and inspiration. Except perhaps on what the sexiest color to dye my hair would be.

Boris Tomashevski and the Formalists analyze something I have sometimes wondered about in the past; the inherent similarities in most works of fiction. Take the modern fantasy novel, for a prime example. Every single one involves an unlikely hero, a quest, magic, monsters, damsels, and is always a bare minimum of 600 pages long. This is the fabula, correlating with the Latin fabula for story or tale. The differences, and the reason we continue to read and enjoy these types of novel, arises from the author's creative spin on this skeletal structure, the syuzhet. I believe that Vladimir Propp's analysis of role as opposed to character is a good insight into the extent of the effect of these differences on the central sequence of events.

The term "literary structuralism" strikes me as a rather odd one to apply to something as fluid and dynamic as writing, especially where narratology is concerned. Beyond the fabula, which seems to exist as a library of options from which the storyteller may choose the elements of his story, the trappings are up to the author's discretion. Of course there is a fabula, because in a certain genre the options for bare-bones story plots soon become exhausted and no more creativity is possible. However, chronology, point of view, and a horde of other aspects of the story are free for manipulation. "Any reasonably experienced reader knows that the relationship between narrator and narrated world is a complicated matter" (74). Therefore true structure is not an idea that can be easily connected with literature. Genre, perhaps, but literature as a whole relies on creativity, and there are far too many ways to organize (or not) a work of literature to claim that all writing follows a certain set of structural rules.