One "device" that I have found throughout Alice in Wonderland and Sunderland is the use of frames. I think I mean but I'm not sure I mean what I say when I say that my understanding of frames is, essentially a story within a story. When you step back from a story you realize there are many different stories inside of the one you are reading, revealing many layers of meaning. Its usually done in the context of narration, like in Lolita. Other examples I can think of off the top of my head would be The Notebook (how the story is being read years later) and The Turn of the Screw, by Henry James.
Brian Talbott's book is made up entirely of frames, one story inside of another story, one story framed by the historicity surrounding it, and, in comic fashion, most of it is illustrated in frames. If it is the case that framing a story is a way of buttressing a story with another story, providing for it a frame work from which to base itself, then it lends itself very well to intertextuality, or the allusions we commonly see and the connections we have been stressing. Talbott shows these connections, supporting them with history and stories within stories. Because there is six degrees of separation between literature, us, and everything else, there are stories in stories everywhere. I also like how Talbott really plays with narration, often engaging himself personally with the reader, making you a part of the story, which adds to the numbers of frames in and layers of meaning surrounding the story
And I cannot think of a painting or a mirror that isn't surrounded by a frame. Have you ever been in an elevator that is surrounded by mirrors? You are basically in a mirror box, except for the doors, and if you look left you see hundreds of yourself, one image being reflected off the mirror behind you and then reflected off that. What did Dr. Sexson call this sort of perpetual reflexivity, like a mirror in a mirror in a mirror, or tv within a tv within a tv?
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