Structural Fractals in Literature

Finding fractal structures in literature and poetry is challenging, though elementary yet clever methods are presented in Pollard-Gott and in Cantoring Poetry. Seeking a rigidly fractal structure is likely to be unsuccessful: a story in which the events or moods of a day reflect at a quicker pace those of a year, cannot strongly be viewed as a fractal, any more than my two fists, separated by a few inches, represents a Cantor set. Self-similarity sets in motion a regress to ever-smaller levels, infinitely many in the mathematical case, only finitely many (but more than 2) in the physical or literary world. Although this may appear to contradict the criticism just given, a hint of structural fractal was given by Paul Auster. In an interview about his novel Mr. Vertigo, Auster said the first sentence contains the essence of the whole book. Schenker made a similar comment great music.