Stacie Friend's theory of fiction departs from those ap- proaches that seek to identify the necessary and sufficient conditions for a work to count as fiction. She argues that this goal cannot really be achieved; instead, she appeals to the notion of genre to distinguish between fiction and nonfiction. This notion is significantly more flex- ible, since it invites us to identify standard¿but not necessary¿and counter-standard features of works of fiction in light of our classifi- catory practices. More specifically, Friend argues that the genre of fiction has the genre of nonfiction¿and only that genre¿as its con- trast class. I will refer to the particular way in which Friend elabo- rates this claim as the contrast view. I have, nevertheless, the impres- sion that this view unnecessarily narrows down the array of perspec- tives and attitudes from which we can approach works of fiction. I will thus develop a line of reasoning to the effect that the contrast view should rather be construed as picking out a particular way of relating to works of fiction that lies at the end of a continuum defined by different degrees of reflectivity and estrangement. This implies that the contrast view is false as a general claim about how we expe- rience works of fiction, even though this view may appropriately de- pict a specific way of approaching such works.