Michael Martone: How to Hide a Tank: Camouflage Realism and Believing Our Eyes (January 1995)

In what ways does fiction camouflage or conceal? How does it disclose or reveal? In this lecture, Michael Martone uses the metaphor of camouflage in war to consider how fiction often pretends to be something it’s not—a memoir, for example, or a series of letters. Drawing on Art & Camouflage by Roy Behrens, and a story by Stephen Dixon, Martone reveals how writers can effectively use techniques of concealment and also frame the story to “let the reader in on the deception.”