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The illusion of people and place created by a story is the algebraic product of a writer’s art and a reader’s engagement. This world exists not on the page but in the reader’s mind. The writer is responsible for the surface story of character and conflict, the evocation of a fictional reality (including the terms by which it operates), and the execution of a full narrative shape. If the writer’s goal is literary fiction—a slippery term, but for the moment let’s call it “fiction that aspires to be art”—then there are additional responsibilities. One of these, I’ll argue, is the creation of the half-known world. To accomplish this, the writer must suggest a dimension to the fictional reality that escapes comprehension. The writer wishes to make his characters and their world known to the reader, and he simultaneously wishes to make them resonate with the unknown.
    It may be easier to understand this argument if I start with stories that create fully known worlds.
    The theme song to one of the most successful sitcoms in television history argues, “Sometimes you want to go where everybody knows your name, and they’re always glad you came.” This pretty much sums up the “situation” in most situation comedies. A sitcom offers an unchanging community to which the viewer is always welcome.
    Cheers is a classic example of the static world of situation comedy. From week to week, the cast of characters remains essentially the same. The primary landscape does not change. In each episode every character merely repeats his defining characteristics. The range of what can happen is limited, guaranteed to be essentially comedic, and nothing that occurs in any individual episode will upset the reliable sameness. (This, of course, is the opposite goal of the literary short story, which promises some kind of change.) For a sitcom viewer, there is comfort in consistency and repetition. This community will remain unaltered, no matter what particular hell the viewer may be going through.
    Now and then real life interferes with the sitcom—an actor dies or wants out of her contract—and the show is forced to accommodate, but Coach, the loveable bartender who was hit once too often by a fastball, is replaced by Woody, the Indiana farm hick who is sweetly dumb as a plank. Even when something changes it remains the same.
    We can’t predict exactly the rejoinder that Sam will make to Diane (or Diane’s replacement), but we know the type of comment it will be, the relative degree of wit involved, and just how far it will go. Having our expectations almost perfectly met makes us feel knowing, possessively fond, and calm. These are our rewards for watching. After just a few episodes, the sitcom world is fully known. A character may have a secret, but it will be revealed before the half hour expires, and it will not change the way you think of him. The TV sitcom is an explicit medium: nothing that is under the surface can remain there for long.
    While the sitcom is perhaps the clearest example of a fully known world, television dramas and most Hollywood movies are nearly its equal. Popular films work to give you the sense that you are being shown everything. As a result, character motivations tend to come from the big categories, such as “They killed my family, so I will get them,” or “He saved my life, so I like him.” Every action is motivated by something that you witness firsthand or that is explained to you.
    To make something fully known is to make it unreal. Think of Disneyland, think of the speeches of politicians, think of McDonald’s, Burger King, Kentucky Fried Chicken. The fast-food goal is not to give you a great meal but to give you exactly what you expect. There is comfort in this, especially for children, for people traveling abroad, and for people whose lives are in upheaval. People in a crisis long for KFC and Seinfeld, McDonald’s and Arnold Schwarzenegger, Pizza Hut and a president who says, “We are good, they are evil.”
    It should be no surprise that the fully known worlds presented on television and in commercial movies are populated by stereotypes. To call a character a type is to say that he’s so true to a group of characters that he is distinguishable from all the others in that group. Here’s another definition of a stereotype: any character that is fully known.