Reading Endlessly: The Case of Enrique Vila-Matas's parís no se Acaba Nunca.

París no se acaba nunca (2003) is a prismatic text, the product of an artistic impulse on the part of its author, Enrique Vila-Matas, to connect himself and his novel to other authors, works, literary characters, and visual artists through the city of Paris. It is a deconstructionist model of representational art and a foray into postmodern artistic expression. The novel does not evolve as a system of uniform meaning. Vila-Matas interweaves fact and fiction and thematizes the reader and the act of reading to create an intertextual narrative that is more an experience of discovery than a means to a coherent and harmonious whole. Relying on mise-en-abyme, a haphazard structure, textual and contextual coincidence, and the confluence of art and life, Vila-Matas invites his readers to breach ontological boundaries as he draws them into his text to participate actively in the construction of his novel. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]