The distinction between metafiction and meta-metafiction can be seen by comparing the beginnings of two metafictional texts: If on a winter's night a traveler (1979) by Italo Calvino and If una notte A Traveler in Winter (1979) and Vladimir Nabokov's Pale Fire (1962). Traveler exemplifies the metanarrative mode of writing in what Linda Hutcheon identifies as her “overt” form of self-awareness enacted through her explicit reference to the text's title (Narcissistic Narrative 7). However, in the first chapter there is no further degree of commentary on the self-reflexive nature of the text; this only appears later in a more hidden way. In contrast, the beginning of Pale Fire explicitly begins with layers of commentary, exemplifying a meta-metanarrative mode of writing. Near the beginning of the Preface (this term is used interchangeably with "Preface" in the novel), the narrator, Charles Kinbote, comments that "Frank recognized the safe return of the galleys that had been sent to me here and asked to mention in my preface – and I gladly do so – that I alone am responsible for any errors in my commentary” (Nabokov 15). It is evident that Kinbote's commentary illustrates a self-reflexive narrative mode as it records what another character “asked him to mention in [his] Preface” (Nabokov 15), thus referring to the writing of the Preface in the Preface itself. However, the self-reflexivity of his commentary does not stop there [his] commentary” (Nabokov 15) refers to the “Commentary” section of the novel. The Commentary is also narrated and presumably written by Kinbote as a commentary on the character’s poem “Pale Fire.” John Shade. These textual cues show us that Pale Fire contains at least two layers of commen...... middle of paper ......ing, not literary genres, which belong to the broader mode of fictional writing. Likewise, meta-metafiction belongs to the broader mode of metafictional writing. These writing modes are not mutually exclusive, but indicate different degrees of self-reflexivity that can be simultaneously present within the same text. To move from one degree of self-reflexivity to another, the text alternately exposes and hides the frames of reference – the literary structures – that organize the reader's experience and interpretation of fictional texts. These frames can range from literary conventions such as the "happily ever after" ending in a fairy tale, to narrative techniques such as stream-of-consciousness narration in modernist novels such as Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse (1927), to the framing device of stories within stories within metafiction.