DOCSLIB.ORG

The Myth of 9/11

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
The Myth of 9/11 THE MYTH OF 9/11 Zoë Formby Thesis submitted to the University of Nottingham for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy July 2011 Abstract Conceptualisations of modern literary history are premised upon a series of dynastic successions, whereby one is able to trace, albeit simplistically, the evolution of the novel through its realist, modernist and postmodernist manifestations. Considered in this linear manner, the emergence of altered cultural movements is ordinarily attributed to a crisis within the former mood; as society ruptures and alters, existing modes of representation prove inadequate to reflect, or else engage with, the emergent structure of feeling. As an event with far-reaching implications, many critics and cultural commentators have attributed the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 with the inception of an altered global mood. Moreover, in the days and weeks following 9/11, the publication of a number of articles penned by authors emphasised the extent to which the event had precipitated a profound crisis in representation. As an ever greater number of articles and studies emerged proclaiming the final death knell of postmodernism and the emergence of a more anxious global mood, so the myth of 9/11 quickly developed. The thesis rests upon a very simple question: to what extent has 9/11 precipitated a change in the novel? Through examining a wide range of fictions published largely within Britain in the last fifteen years, the study explores and ultimately dispels the assumptions of the myth. Rather than examining the fictional representation of 9/11, the study’s focus is on assessing the significance of the novel after the event, and moreover on interrogating the manner in which the terrorist attacks might have engendered a shift in the contemporary mood that is reflected in the subsequent novels published. Through emphasising the novelistic concerns and themes that transcend the assumed cultural rift, the thesis proposes that the ‘post-9/11 mood’ might more usefully be interpreted as an exacerbation of an already existing structure of feeling that responds to the banal superficiality of the postmodern condition. i Acknowledgements There are many people who have offered support of various kinds over the last five years to whom I am indebted. My profound thanks, first and foremost, go to my principal supervisors, Professor Dominic Head and Doctor Sean Matthews who have provided me with continual intellectual and moral support throughout. I want to thank Sean particularly for his keen critical eye and his persistence (and patience) in helping to refine the many ideas of the thesis into something, which I hope, is largely coherent. His unremitting belief in both the project and my abilities has been invaluable, and his continual reassurance over the past ten years is something that I am hugely appreciative of. I am also immensely grateful to Doctor David James for his guidance within the latter stages of the thesis. It can’t have been easy picking up the project at such a late point in its development, but having a fresh pair of eyes to help further focus the critical and analytical aspects of the thesis has been extremely helpful. I am grateful to the various members of the Nottingham Contemporary Fiction Reading Group, whose discussions have both helped to refine my own critical perspective and have encouraged me to consider alternate ways of approaching texts. Particular thanks go to Peter Preston, Emily Horton and Caroline Edwards. There is a strong postgraduate community that has made my time at Nottingham both intellectually stimulating and enjoyable. Dawn Knight, Jo Pready and Sarah Grandage deserve special thanks for the support and advice they have provided over the years, and for being on-hand at those moments when I needed to distance myself from the thesis and gain a wider perspective. I am lucky to have a supportive family who have continued to encourage me throughout, and have been understanding when I have had to forego various family occasions. I’m particularly grateful to my mother, grandmother and two brothers for their unwavering support and reassurance. My wholehearted thanks go to my husband Mark – henceforth to be known as Saint Mark – whose enduring support, encouragement and belief over the past ten years has been nothing short of remarkable; my gratitude to him is boundless. My final acknowledgement goes to my late grandfather. An ardent reader of my earlier work, his ethics continue to inspire me, and it is to him that this thesis is dedicated. ii Contents Abstract i Acknowledgements ii Introduction: The Myth of 9/11 5 1. Defining the Postmodern Moment 11 1.1 Naming the System: Looking Back at Postmodernism 11 1.2 Dropping the Postmodern Baton? Locating the British Tradition 24 1.3 Hesitation at the Crossroads: the ‘Problematic’ Novel 30 1.4 The End of History and Disintegration of Self 42 1.5 The ‘New’ Postmodern Tradition 56 2. ‘The Worldflash of a Coming Future’? 69 2.1 On or About September 11, 2001… 72 2.2 Impatient Periodisation: Defining the Post-9/11 Mood 76 2.3 Framing Post-9/11 Fiction: The Four Prophecies of Mao II 81 2.4 The Function of Literature After 9/11 91 2.5 Boredom and Arbitrary Acts of Terror 110 2.6 The Dawning of the Age of Anxiety? 123 3. Species Consciousness and Post-9/11 Subjects 134 3.1. Species Consciousness and the ‘Return of an Ancient Human 134 Universal’ 3.2 The Human in the Age of its Technological Reproducibility 141 3.3 Lost in the City: The Dislocated Urban Subject 162 3.4 Cognitive Social Mapping: The Relocation of the Subject 166 3.5 Cataloguing the Self: Urban Archiving 176 4. ‘Chimerical Monstrous Others’? The Representation of the 184 Muslim in the Post-9/11 Novel 4.1 The Reluctant Ostraciser and the Fundamentalist 184 4.2 Tracing the Post-Migrant Tradition 187 4.2.1 The Post-Migrant Tradition 189 4.2.2 The ‘New’ Post-Migrant Tradition 198 4.3 The Burden of Representation 212 4.4 ‘The Start of the Madness’? Brick Lane, 9/11 and the Muslim 224 4.5 Radical Fictions: The Fundamentalist in Post-9/11 Literature 230 4.5.1 The ‘Real’ Fundamentalist 230 4.5.2 The ‘Ambiguous’ Fundamentalist 237 5. Conclusion: Zadie Smith and the Deconstruction of the Myth 245 5.1 Smith at the Crossroads 245 5.2 Naming the Systems: Multiculturalism and Cosmopolitanism 249 5.3 The Speculative Multiculturalism of White Teeth 255 5.4 Anticipating Cosmopolitanism: The Autograph Man 276 5.5 The Revitalisation of Forsterian Humanism in On Beauty 282 Bibliography 292 Introduction: The Myth of 9/11 Myths […] purport to relate one’s experience to grand beginnings and ends.1 On or about September 2001 Western culture changed. The change was sudden and definite, and since one need not be arbitrary, let us date it to September 11, 2001. The first signs of it are recorded in the newspaper articles penned by Western authors, Ian McEwan’s ‘Beyond Belief’ in particular; their fictions continue to record it. In society one can see the change, if I may use a socio-cultural illustration, in the assumed responsibilities of the author. The pre-9/11, postmodern writer of fiction is an eclectic creator of alternate realities; playfully in and out of the literary tradition, now to borrow from modernism, now to pastiche and deconstruct ‘reality’; the fictions exuberantly challenge conventions, and the author revels in his lack of mimetic responsibility. The post-9/11 writer lives like a leviathan at the forefront of the public consciousness; revelment ended, he is called upon to explain, and interpret faithfully, the incomprehensible reality of the emerging landscape; formal experimentation is discarded as mimesis is demanded by the reading public. All cultural relations have shifted – those between authors and society, fiction and reality, East and West. And when cultural relations change there is at the same time a change in perceptions of religion, conduct, politics and literature. Let us agree to place one of these changes about September 11, 2001. So might be envisaged the contemporary cultural mood: a period of transition precipitated by an event of such magnitude that the established tools of perception are unable to make comprehensible the emergent post-9/11 reality. Following the events of September 11, politicians and cultural commentators alike were quick to announce the inception of a new global era. In the days and weeks that followed, articles penned by novelists attempting to make sense of the new global reality, saturated the broadsheets. While many proclaimed an impending crisis within representation – what meaningful role could fiction have within a climate where reality had taken on a heightened potency? – that society turned to its authors as a means to decipher the events is significant, and seemingly imbues the writer with a social responsibility at 1 Frank Kermode, The Sense of an Ending: Studies in the Theory of Fiction (1967; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), p.35 5 odds with his positioning as an agent of postmodern vacuity. Indeed, in demanding a clarity of perception beyond the grasp of mere mortals, the post-9/11 author is apotheosized, having been resurrected from his postmodern death. For many such writers, the increased burden of expectation served to stifle creativity. Martin Amis is perhaps the most notable instance, temporarily abandoning a work in progress (Yellow Dog would later be published in 2003), and hyperbolically declaring that following 9/11, ‘all the writers on earth were reluctantly considering a change in occupation’2 (a statement that, having itself been published, contains an inherent incongruity). That, however, the immediate response to the cultural impact of 9/11 is the instinctive proclamation that ‘things will never be the same again,’ may be just that: an immediate reaction, rather than a considered analysis documenting a lasting shift in the cultural mood.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Inspirational Students Give New Year Cheer
    WORLE COMMUNITY SCHOOL An Academy News from Worle Community School and Priory Community School Academies ISSUE 2 - WINTER TERM 2019 W e s t o n THEin partnership with Weston Hospicecare POSTHospicecare Deadline 1st March DOG and HOG Winners will be published in WORDS250 The Post and in an ebook. 250 SHORT STORY Amazing prizes! WORDS250 See back page for COMPETITION full details. Please get in touch for tours at any time: PCSA [email protected] WCSA [email protected] General [email protected] INSPIRATIONAL STUDENTS GIVE NEW YEAR CHEER PRIORY Student Aiden Hunt, 11, They are two of thousands of students in won a Child of Courage award for Weston and Worle that have stories to make Aiden and Lewis are truly us proud. his positive attitude and inspiration inspirational young people. through five operations for a brain Neville Coles, Executive Principal of The “ “ tumour. Priory Learning Trust, said: We value kindness, courage And budding Ed Sheeran WCSA By Lacey Madge, 13, and positivity at our schools student Lewis Edwards, 11, has Aimee Braithwaite, 12, and these two are brilliant helped raise £60,000 for people in Olivia Finch, 13, examples of this need with his singing. and Leah Duffy, 12. INSIDE THIS ISSUE Jill Dando legacy lives on Singing Students Shine ME student trains TPLT pup Thousands of brilliant Weston and Arley, Emilio and Kezia map out After meeting Olly Murs, Jeffrey Worle students become part of world singing futures after links PLT is trained by amazing charity- unique Jill Dando News Centre, with Elvis and Robbie Williams.
    [Show full text]
  • Curriculum Vitae
    CURRICULUM VITAE Benjamin F. Stickle Middle Tennessee State University Department of Criminal Justice Administration 1301 East Main Street - MTSU Box 238 Murfreesboro, Tennessee 37132 [email protected] www.benstickle.com (615) 898-2265 EDUCATION Doctor of Philosophy, 2015, Justice Administration University of Louisville, Louisville, Kentucky Master of Science, 2010, Justice Administration University of Louisville, Louisville, Kentucky Bachelor of Arts, 2005, Sociology Cedarville University, Cedarville, Ohio ACADEMIC POSITIONS Middle Tennessee State University, Department of Criminal Justice Administration 2019 – Present Associate Professor 2016 – 2019 Assistant Professor Campbellsville University, Department of Criminal Justice Administration 2014 – 2016 Assistant Professor 2011 – 2014 Instructor (Full-time) University of Louisville, Department of Justice Administration 2014 – 2015 Lecturer ADMINISTRATIVE POSITIONS Middle Tennessee State University, Department of Criminal Justice Administration 2018 – Present Coordinator, Online Bachelor of Criminal Justice Administration 2018 – Present Chair, Curriculum Committee Campbellsville University, Department of Criminal Justice Administration 2011-2016 Site Coordinator, Louisville Education Center PROFESSIONAL APPOINTMENTS & AFFILIATIONS 2019 – Present Affiliated Faculty, Political Economy Research Institute, Middle Tennessee State University 2017 – Present Senior Fellow for Criminal Justice, Beacon Center of Tennessee Ben Stickle CV, Page 2 AREAS OF SPECIALIZATION • Property Crime: Metal
    [Show full text]
  • Contemporary British Literary Culture, Higher Education, and the Diversity Scandal
    Contemporary British Literary Culture, Higher Education, and the Diversity Scandal by John Coleman A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Graduate and Postdoctoral Affairs in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English Language and Literature Carleton University Ottawa, Ontario © 2019, John Coleman Abstract Sociologists have demonstrated that neoliberal British education policies reproduce cultural and racial homogeneity in creative industries workforces. These policies have made fine art and design programs key pathways to work in the creative economy. Yet escalating tuition and the reliance on unpaid internships to gain course credit have meant that students are increasingly drawn from the more affluent socio-economic communities – often predominantly white. The impact on contemporary British literature, particularly writing by minoritized authors, has been remarkable. Despite efforts to increase diversity in the literary book trades, the vast majority of publishing professionals are white, independently wealthy graduates of elite universities. Scholars have said little about how the literary field responds to, manifests, and perpetuates this escalating – and racialized – inequality, whose ramifications are evident in everything from Brexit to the emboldening of the anti-immigrant alt-right movement. My research takes up this task. I discuss how neoliberal education policy has privileged a relatively homogenous creative class, whose hegemony resonates across literary production and literature itself. I analyze responses to this class’ control over the literary sphere in chapters studying the reading charity BookTrust, the decibel program’s prizing of Hari Kunzru’s 2005 novel Transmission, and Spread the Word’s Complete Works Scheme for poets of colour. ii Acknowledgements The devotion of many family members, friends and loved ones has combined to form an invaluable support system throughout my time in university and while writing this dissertation.
    [Show full text]
  • Handle with Care
    Handle with Care Jill H. Casid What was so special about this song? Well the thing was, I didn’t used to listen properly to the words; I just waited for that bit that went: “Baby, baby, never let me go...” — Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go ([2005] 2006:70) Restating the ethically critical gap of empathy in terms of the problems of understanding the qualitative how of the way someone feels, in the language and techniques of the quantitative, Emily Dickinson begins her poem: “I measure every Grief I meet / With narrow probing eyes / I wonder if it weighs like Mine / or has an Easier size” ([1863] 1999:248–49). I begin this essay with some numbers, some quantitative measurements pertaining to the costs of the affective and material labors of care that are at the heart of our compounded condition of precarity and about which I wonder no less. Under a global capitalist system in which the terms of moneti- zation have become the sign of value, how does one measure grief, affective and material labor, or what I call throughout this essay the “labors of care”? One answer has been to measure the labors of care in terms of “cost,” rendering the physical and emotional toll on “unpaid caregiv- ers” (usually family in the enlarged sense or friends) in the quantitative fiscal language of lost Figure 1. Barbed wire fence in the film adaptation of Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go (2010, directed by Mark Romanek). (©2010 Twentieth Century Fox. All rights reserved) TDR: The Drama Review 56:4 (T216) Winter 2012.
    [Show full text]
  • The Dutch House Ann Patchett
    AUSTRALIA SEPTEMBER 2019 The Dutch House Ann Patchett A masterpiece from the Orange Prize-winning, New York Times number one bestselling author of Commonwealth and Bel Canto: a story of love, family, sacrifice, and the power of place Description Danny Conroy grows up in the Dutch House, a lavish folly in small-town Pennsylvania taken on by his property developer father. Though his father is distant and his mother is absent, Danny has his beloved sister Maeve: Maeve, with her wall of black hair, her delicacy, her brilliance. Life is comfortable and coherent, played out under the watchful eyes of the house's former owners in the frames of their oil paintings, or under the cover of the draperies around the window seat in Maeve's room. Then one day their father brings Andrea home: Andrea, small and neat, a dark hat no bigger than a saucer pinned over a twist of her fair hair. Though they cannot know it, Andrea's advent to the Dutch House sows the seed of the defining loss of Danny and Maeve's lives. Her arrival will exact a banishment: a banishment whose reverberations will echo for the rest of their lives. For all that the world is open to him, for all that he can accumulate, for all that life is full, Danny and his sister are drawn back time and again to the place they can never enter, knocking in vain on the locked door of the past. For behind the mystery of their own enforced exile is that of their mother's self-imposed one: an absence more powerful than any presence they have known.
    [Show full text]
  • Zadie Smith and Monica Ali
    UDC 821.111.09 Ali M. 821.111.09 Smit Z. P P University of Nottingham ZADIE SMITH7 AND MONICA ALI: ARRIVAL AND SETTLEMENT IN RECENT BRITISH FICTION INTRODUCTION: THE IMMIGRANT EXPERIENCE AND NEW BRITISH WRITING !e thirteenth and "nal volume in the Oxford English Literary History covers the period 1948-2000 and is entitled !e Internationalization of English Literature . !is title refers not to the astonishing extent to which English Literature has become an international subject, studied in schools, colleges and universities all over the world, but to the way in which the very concept of what constitutes ‘English’ literature has been transformed. As Bruce King, the author of the volume puts it, during the post-war period ”the literature of England went through a major change, a change in subject matter and sensitivities as historically signi"cant as earlier shi#s in sensibility given such names as Romanticism, Victorianism and Modernism” (King 2004: 1). !is transformation has come about because of the arrival in Britain of successive waves of immigrants, largely from countries that were formerly part of the British Empire. Authors from these communities brought to English writing new contexts, new narratives, both personal and national, and a new sense of language and form. In the work of such writers as Monica Ali, Hanif Kureishi, Andrea Levey, Timothy Mo, Salman Rushdie and Zadie Smith, readers have been confronted with texts that challenge them in unfamiliar ways, requiring them not only to adapt to new literary modes, but also to consider the experiences of distant countries and to understand and assess the part played by Britain in those countries’ histories.
    [Show full text]
  • The Thought of Literature: Notes to Contemporary Fictions
    The Thought of Literature Notes to contemporary fictions Jason Childs A dissertation submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at the University of Technology Sydney, February 2018. Certificate of original authorship I certify that the work in this thesis has not previously been submitted for a degree nor has it been submitted as part of requirements for a degree except as acknowledged within the text. I also certify that the thesis has been written by me. Any help that I have received in my research work and the preparation of the thesis itself has been acknowledged. In addition, I certify that all information sources and literature used are indicated in the thesis. This research is supported by an Austalian Government Research Training Program Scholarship. Signature of Candidate: Production Note: Signature removed prior to publication. February 20, 2018 Acknowledgements First and foremost, I am deeply grateful to Robyn Ferrell for taking over my supervision at a late stage in my candidature. Her feedback on my ideas and drafts, always generous and incisive, was invaluable in completing this work. Without Berndt Sellheim’s encouragement, I would not have begun this project; without his support, I would not have finished it. I am blessed to call him my friend. Martin Harrison was an important mentor for several years prior to starting this work and my supervisor during its defining early stages. Fellow students of Martin's will understand when I say that, despite his untimely death in 2014, there is not a sentence here that wasn’t written in conversation with him.
    [Show full text]
  • A Contemporary Representation of Reality: the Hysterical Realist Novel
    Dissertação de Mestrado Erasmus Mundus em ‘Crossways in Cultural Narratives’ A Contemporary Representation of Reality: the Hysterical Realist Novel Cristina Liseţchi Orientadores: Universidad de Santiago de Compostela: Dr César Domínguez Universidade Nova de Lisboa: Dr Maria Fernanda de Abreu Lisboa, Julho 2015 1 “I, Cristina Liseţchi, hereby certify that this dissertation, which is 21559 words in length, has been written by me, that it is a record of work carried out by me, and that it has not been submitted in any previous application for a higher degree. All sentences or passages quoted in this dissertation from other people's work (with or without trivial changes) have been placed within quotation marks, and specifically acknowledged by reference to author, work and page. I understand that plagiarism – the unacknowledged use of such passages – will be considered grounds for failure in this dissertation and, if serious, in the degree programme as a whole. I also affirm that, with the exception of the specific acknowledgements, these answers are entirely my own work." Signature of candidate 2 ABSTRACT Literary critics are faced with the difficult task of categorizing a wide corpus of contemporary narratives that have conquered the hearts of millions of readers worldwide, through their sardonic way of representing today’s reality and their particular interpretation of the novel’s traditional form. It is the case of hysterical realist novels, a new literary genre that constitutes the object of this present study, which explores the main aspects of this type of narratives by considering their perspective of the world and their means of achieving the effect of reality.
    [Show full text]
  • Durham Research Online
    Durham Research Online Deposited in DRO: 28 June 2018 Version of attached le: Submitted Version Peer-review status of attached le: Peer-reviewed Citation for published item: Atkinson, S. (2016) 'Care, kidneys and clones : the distance of space, time and imagination.', in The Edinburgh companion to the critical medical humanities. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press., pp. 611-626. Edinburgh companions to literature and the humanities. Further information on publisher's website: https://edinburghuniversitypress.com/book-the-edinburgh-companion-to-the-critical-medical-humanities.html Publisher's copyright statement: Additional information: Use policy The full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, without prior permission or charge, for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-prot purposes provided that: • a full bibliographic reference is made to the original source • a link is made to the metadata record in DRO • the full-text is not changed in any way The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders. Please consult the full DRO policy for further details. Durham University Library, Stockton Road, Durham DH1 3LY, United Kingdom Tel : +44 (0)191 334 3042 | Fax : +44 (0)191 334 2971 https://dro.dur.ac.uk Care, Kidneys and Clones: the distance of space, time and imagination Sarah Atkinson Department of Geography and the Centre for Medical Humanities, Durham University ‘We lived, as usual by ignoring. Ignoring isn't the same as ignorance, you have to work at it.’ (Margaret Atwood in The Handmaid’s Tale)1 Care as a concept is central to any engagement with health, ill-health and the practices that aim to prevent, mitigate or cure, and the term itself is mobilised in a variety of different ways and at a variety of different scales.
    [Show full text]
  • Curriculum Vitae
    CURRICULUM VITAE Benjamin F. Stickle Middle Tennessee State University Department of Criminal Justice Administration 1301 East Main Street - MTSU Box 238 Murfreesboro, Tennessee 37132 [email protected] www.benstickle.com (615) 898-2265 EDUCATION Doctor of Philosophy, 2015, Justice Administration University of Louisville, Louisville, Kentucky Master of Science, 2010, Justice Administration University of Louisville, Louisville, Kentucky Bachelor of Arts, 2005, Sociology Cedarville University, Cedarville, Ohio ACADEMIC POSITIONS Middle Tennessee State University, Department of Criminal Justice Administration 2019 – Present Associate Professor 2016 – 2019 Assistant Professor Campbellsville University, Department of Criminal Justice Administration 2014 – 2016 Assistant Professor 2011 – 2014 Instructor (Full-time) University of Louisville, Department of Justice Administration 2014 – 2015 Lecturer ADMINISTRATIVE POSITIONS Middle Tennessee State University, Department of Criminal Justice Administration 2018 – Present Coordinator, Online Bachelor of Criminal Justice Administration 2018 – Present Chair, Curriculum Committee Campbellsville University, Department of Criminal Justice Administration 2011-2016 Site Coordinator, Louisville Education Center PROFESSIONAL APPOINTMENTS & AFFILIATIONS 2019 – Present Affiliated Faculty, Political Economy Research Institute, Middle Tennessee State University 2017 – Present Senior Fellow for Criminal Justice, Beacon Center of Tennessee Ben Stickle CV, Page 2 AREAS OF SPECIALIZATION • Property Crime: Metal
    [Show full text]
  • Narrative Topography: Fictions of Country, City, and Suburb in the Work of Virginia Woolf, W. G. Sebald, Kazuo Ishiguro, and Ian Mcewan
    Narrative Topography: Fictions of Country, City, and Suburb in the Work of Virginia Woolf, W. G. Sebald, Kazuo Ishiguro, and Ian McEwan Elizabeth Andrews McArthur Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 2012 © 2012 Elizabeth Andrews McArthur All rights reserved ABSTRACT Narrative Topography: Fictions of Country, City, and Suburb in the Work of Virginia Woolf, W. G. Sebald, Kazuo Ishiguro, and Ian McEwan Elizabeth Andrews McArthur This dissertation analyzes how twentieth- and early twenty-first- century novelists respond to the English landscape through their presentation of narrative and their experiments with novelistic form. Opening with a discussion of the English planning movement, “Narrative Topography” reveals how shifting perceptions of the structure of English space affect the content and form of the contemporary novel. The first chapter investigates literary responses to the English landscape between the World Wars, a period characterized by rapid suburban growth. It reveals how Virginia Woolf, in Mrs. Dalloway and Between the Acts, reconsiders which narrative choices might be appropriate for mobilizing and critiquing arguments about the relationship between city, country, and suburb. The following chapters focus on responses to the English landscape during the present era. The second chapter argues that W. G. Sebald, in The Rings of Saturn, constructs rural Norfolk and Suffolk as containing landscapes of horror—spaces riddled with sinkholes that lead his narrator to think about near and distant acts of violence. As Sebald intimates that this forms a porous “landscape” in its own right, he draws attention to the fallibility of representation and the erosion of cultural memory.
    [Show full text]
  • Life and Truth in Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go
    Life and Truth in Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go Bernadette Waterman Ward* ABSTRACT: Showing us a society in which questions about life issues cannot be asked, non-Christian Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go vivifies the prophetic observations of Evangelium vitae. Ishiguro immerses readers in the interrelation of technological threats to the family and to undefended lives. Despair rises from untruths about family and sexuality. The protagonists surrender to homicidal and suicidal meaninglessness. Both texts preach the sacredness of every being that comes from human ancestry, powerfully indicting the passion for power in biotechnology that overshadows the truth inscribed in the body. Although the novel makes the truths of Evangelium vitae painfully vivid, almost all its critics evade attending to the interrelated life issues in a way that curiously echoes the very accusation about complicity and falsehood that is at the heart of the novel’s cultural critique. AZUO ISHIGURO’S Never Let Me Go puts readers into peculiar sympathy with its narrator.1 We like and empathize with Kathy H., as she narrates Kher upbringing with others like herself: clones manufactured for what they call “donations” of organs. Placid, compassionate, sensitive and intelligent, she is enmeshed in a bureaucracy that condemns her, and her only friends, to be dismembered for parts by medical professionals. Unlike George Orwell’s 1984, which was set in a future into which we might descend if we did not take heed, Ishiguro’s novel is not warning us of what might happen or what could happen. He sets the novel in the 1990s, with close-grained social detail, and with only one alteration in technology: that cloning has allowed for the production of human individuals.
    [Show full text]