Summary
Ana goes and sits next to Harold on the couch while he plays. When he looks over at her, they begin kissing passionately. The scene shifts and we see the two of them lying in bed the next morning. “He knew she was falling in love with him,” Karen narrates.
Harold goes to Jules’ office to tell him that his life is actually a comedy, as Ana is falling in love with him. “The voice confirmed it in the middle of the night,” Harold says, as Jules pulls out his list of possible authors that might be narrating Harold’s life. On television, Karen Eiffel is being interviewed, and Jules notes that she is one of his favorite authors, that she writes “beautiful tragedies.”
As Karen explains her next book, Death and Taxes, Harold recognizes her voice as the narrator of his story. Karen describes the book: “It’s about interconnectivity, the looming certainty of death, men’s fashion accessories…” Harold is sure that Karen is his author, but Jules thinks it’s impossible, as the interview on television is over a decade old. “Professor Hilbert, I know that voice,” Harold insists, and Jules is shocked because he knows that in every one of her books, Karen Eiffel kills the hero. When Harold wants to know where he can find her, Jules explains that she’s “untraceable,” impossible to find, and she hasn’t published in 10 years. Frantically, Harold picks up her last book, finds the publisher, and rushes out of the office to find her. Jules yells after him, “She only writes tragedies!”
Karen comes out of a shop and lights a cigarette. She intently watches an apple roll into the street, then promptly returns to her apartment, where Penny is laying out notecards that describe the plot of Karen’s book. With a vaguely excited expression, Karen tells Penny that while she was buying cigarettes, she figured out how to kill Harold Crick: “It’s simple, ironic, possibly heartbreaking.” Karen tells Penny she will finish the novel today, Penny says she’ll let the publisher know and begin packing her things.
Harold goes to Karen’s publishers and asks the woman at the front desk where he can find Karen. The woman cannot give out her address and asks how Harold knows Karen. “I’m her brother-in-law,” Harold says, before revealing, “I’m one of her characters. I’m new. I’m in her new book. And she’s going to kill me. Not actually. But in the book.” The receptionist looks understanding, but Harold leaves with nothing. He goes to his office and wanders through the rows of cubicles to his desk. He finds Karen Eiffel’s number and goes to call her, but the phones are out. He asks Dave for some change and runs to the nearest payphone, just as Karen is beginning to narrate his experience.
When Harold gets to the payphone, it is occupied and Harold runs down to the subway terminal to find another phone. He runs down a long hallway to a row of phones and calls Karen. As Karen types “the phone rang” on her typewriter, the phone in her apartment rings, and she looks confused. Penny goes to answer it, but Karen tells her not to. When the phone rings yet again, Karen runs to it and answers. Harold tells her who he is, and she is completely bewildered and drops the phone in fear.
Later that day, Harold visits Karen’s apartment. Penny answers the door and lets him in and he introduces himself as “her main character.” When he enters the room, Karen cannot believe it and gasps in shock. They talk, and Karen asks him, “Didn’t you think you were crazy?” to which Harold responds, “Sort of, but then you were right about everything.” When Harold mentions Jules, Karen knows him and tells Harold, “I love his letters.”
Harold asks Karen not to kill him off, and she admits that she’s already written an outline. They get into a tense argument, but Penny interrupts them to suggest that Harold read the untyped outline.
We see Harold at the pool where Jules works as a lifeguard. He tells Jules that he found Karen and he has the outline of his death scene. He then asks Jules to read it—he cannot bring himself to—and tell him what he ought to do. Jules agrees, and Harold leaves the pool, looking distressed. Dramatic music plays and we see Jules sit down to read the pages. Interspersed with the scenes of Jules reading the manuscript, we see Harold lying in bed next to Ana.
The next day, Harold goes to Jules and asks what he read. Turning to Harold, Jules tells him that he has to die, because it’s Karen’s masterpiece, and “it’s possibly the most important novel in her already stunning career.” Harold sighs, disappointed in Jules. He wants to figure out if there’s a way she could change the novel, but Jules insists, “In the grand scheme it wouldn’t matter.”
“I can’t die right now, it’s just really bad timing,” Harold says, weeping. Calmly, Jules says, “Even if you avoid this death, another will find you, and I guarantee that it won’t be nearly as poetic or meaningful as what she’s written.”
Analysis
Just as things begin to look up for Harold Crick, and it seems like his life might just be a comedy that will end happily ever after, he finds the author who is intent on killing him off. On the day that he goes to Jules’ office to tell him that his life is going well, he sees Karen discussing her book on television, and it is the book in which he, Harold, is the protagonist. While Harold’s project has hitherto been to try and make his life better, to find some kind of happy ending and transform his life into a comedy, his mission changes now that he knows about Karen Eiffel. Now he must meet his maker, contend with the person whose creative and professional duty it is to control his fate.
Not only must Harold speak to his author and assert his control over his own life, but he must also prevent his own death by finding and confronting Karen Eiffel. An instance of tense dramatic irony occurs when we the audience see Karen Eiffel arrive at an idea for the conclusion of her novel before Harold has any awareness of it. She tells Penny that she has figured out how to kill Harold Crick and sets to work writing the final pages of the novel, which she promises will be “simple, ironic, possibly heartbreaking.” Thus, there is a disconnect between our knowledge of Harold’s precarious fate and his own knowledge of Karen’s whereabouts and intentions. As we see him rush through his day, the viewer wonders if Harold will make it to Karen before she has a chance to kill him off.
As bewildering as being a character in his own life is for Harold, the experience of being confronted with the existence of one of her characters is immensely disturbing for the reclusive author Karen Eiffel. When she first answers the phone, she gasps at the information that Harold Crick, a man whom she thought she invented, is a living, breathing human being. Thus, just as Harold has had to learn about his own humanity through the narrativization of his life, now Karen must come to grips with the fact that her characters are not simply pawns for her stories, but living breathing people, with hopes and dreams. Both Harold and Karen are shaken out of their respective antisocial tendencies by their confrontation with one another.
The tension between Harold and Karen becomes a dramatic allegory for the power of the writer in society. While literary critics and professors often debate and discuss the power of the author, Stranger than Fiction renders this theoretical concept all too real, by giving Karen Eiffel the power literally to kill Harold Crick with her words. By writing down a death, Karen becomes a godlike figure, capable of completely changing the course of a human being’s life. She is surprised as anyone to learn that her words have that kind of power, and she insists to Harold that she doesn’t know what all this is about—“I’m just trying to write a book!” Writing a book, however, in the supernatural world of the film, is enough to get someone killed. The typing of a word onto a page might be the thing to change the fate of poor Harold.
Tonally, the film is multifarious, switching between absurdly comic and existential. For instance, the meeting between Karen and Harold is surreal and comic all at once. The situation of a reclusive author meeting the bland character she thought she dreamt up is a comic one, and Karen cannot believe that what she thought was a fixture of her imagination is standing right in front of her. As absurd as it all may seem, however, Karen’s writing has a significant bearing on Harold’s life, and as he waits for Jules’ verdict about what might be done to save his life, a melancholic song plays. The film seeks to make the viewer think about mortality and the nature of existence, but it wants to do so in a playful and whimsical way. In this way, the tone of the film veers between bittersweet and comedic, never dipping into overt sentimentality or farce.
