Even the antiheroes who appear from time to time in literature, for example, and who seem to communicate a philosophy of life that finds meaning nowhere (characters like Meursault from The Stranger, and Raskolnikov from Crime and Punishment, and Patrick Bateman from American Psycho), exist within an artifact (the novel itself) that is beholden to, or in possession of, meaning. This is owing partly to the fact that a novel’s author is distinct from its narrator, and partly to the fact that the form in which a novel is articulated influences that very articulation.