An Introduction to Postmodern Fiction

En route to Ocean City he sat in the back seat of the family car with his brother Peter, age fifteen, and Magda G----, age fourteen, a pretty girl, an exquisite young lady, who lived not far from them on B---- Street in the town of D-----, Maryland. Initials, blanks, or both were often substituted for proper names in nineteenth-century fiction to enhance the illusion of reality. It is as if the author felt it necessary to delete the names for reasons of tact or legal liability. Interestingly, as with other aspects of realism it is an illusion that is being enhanced, by purely artificial means. Is it likely, does it violate the principle of verisimilitude, that a thirteen-year-old boy could make such a sophisticated observation?

John Barth, "Lost in the Funhouse"