DOCSLIB.ORG

Nabokovilia: References to Vladimir Nabokov in British and American Literature and Culture, 1960-2009

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Nabokovilia: References to Vladimir Nabokov in British and American Literature and Culture, 1960-2009 UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones 5-2011 Nabokovilia: References to Vladimir Nabokov in British and American Literature and Culture, 1960-2009 Juan Martinez University of Nevada, Las Vegas Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalscholarship.unlv.edu/thesesdissertations Part of the American Literature Commons, American Material Culture Commons, and the Literature in English, British Isles Commons Repository Citation Martinez, Juan, "Nabokovilia: References to Vladimir Nabokov in British and American Literature and Culture, 1960-2009" (2011). UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones. 1459. http://dx.doi.org/10.34917/3476293 This Dissertation is protected by copyright and/or related rights. It has been brought to you by Digital Scholarship@UNLV with permission from the rights-holder(s). You are free to use this Dissertation in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use. For other uses you need to obtain permission from the rights-holder(s) directly, unless additional rights are indicated by a Creative Commons license in the record and/or on the work itself. This Dissertation has been accepted for inclusion in UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones by an authorized administrator of Digital Scholarship@UNLV. For more information, please contact [email protected]. NABOKOVILIA: REFERENCES TO VLADIMIR NABOKOV IN BRITISH AND AMERICAN LITERATURE AND CULTURE, 1960-2009 by Juan Martinez Bachelor of Arts in English University of Central Florida, 2000 Master of Arts in Creative Writing University of Central Florida, 2004 A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Doctor of Philosophy in English Department of English College of Liberal Arts Graduate College University of Nevada, Las Vegas May 2011 Copyright by Juan Martinez 2011 All rights reserved THE GRADUATE COLLEGE We recommend the dissertation prepared under our supervision by Juan Martinez entitled Nabokovilia: References to Vladimir Nabokov in British and American Literature and Culture, 1960-2009 be accepted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English Department of English Anne Stevens, Committee Chair Righard Harp, Committee Member Kelly Mays, Committee Member Douglas Unger, Committee Member Michelle Tusan, Graduate Faculty Representative Ronald Smith, Ph. D., Vice President for Research and Graduate Studies and Dean of the Graduate College May 2011 ii ABSTRACT Nabokovilia: Nabokov References in British and American Literature and Culture, 1960-2009 by Juan Martinez Dr. Anne Stevens, Examination Committee Chair Associate Professor of English University of Nevada, Las Vegas The dissertation examines allusions to the Russian-American novelist Vladimir Nabokov in the work of 147 contemporary cultural producers and – through this filter – the way in which allusion functions as symbolic capital in the field of cultural production. Critics have traditionally considered allusion a strictly localized phenomenon, but this approach – which draws upon the work of sociologists of literature such as Franco Moretti and Pierre Bourdieu, as well as the poetics of Gérard Genette – considers how a Nabokov allusion operates as an intra-authorial calling card, where Nabokov appears as an idealized, intransigent autonomous authorial figure in the work of Zadie Smith, Martin Amis, John Updike, Nicholson Baker, Salman Rushdie, Shelley Jackson, Guillermo Cabrera Infante, writers associated with the McSweeney’s literary journal, and Anthony Burgess, among many others. Writers reassert the autonomy of the individual author when they reference Nabokov in their own novels, and in doing so these authors form a sort of ad-hoc Nabokovian group or school even when the members and their immediate milieu would not seem to have anything in common otherwise. Nabokov functions as a particularly valuable unit of cultural capital given his symbolic freight: Nabokov stands for autonomous, intransigent authorial figures everywhere, bulwarked by equal parts mainstream bestselling success, iii critical respectability, and seeming invisibility. Nabokov’s intertextual narrative approaches serve as a means of positioning the reader and controlling readerly and critical reception, which in turn guide how Nabokov himself is referenced in other people's novels, short stories, poems, songs, and television shows. The aim is to provide quantifiable evidence of Nabokov's influence, and to explore the ways in which influence can (and cannot) be roughly quantified; these references allow for a narrower, better understanding of influence by positioning its function within the scope of contemporary intertextual criticism, specifically by examining the intersection of Bourdieu’s field of cultural production and Genette’s notions of hypertextuality and paratextuality. By delineating the nature and the degree of Nabokov's influence in the field of contemporary literature – an influence made explicit in allusions to Nabokov’s work – the research further refines notions of authorial agency in intertextual studies. Nabokov is one of the twentieth century's most densely allusive authors, one whose novels playfully referenced a dizzying array of literary figures, and one whose own influence on the contemporary literary field is often noted but seldom quantified. Nabokov-related publications aimed at both scholars and general readers will make a note of his influence, often by grouping him with Joyce, Borges, Beckett, and Kafka (with Nabokov as the Fifth Beatle in the panoply of influential literary figures), though the claim is made and then abandoned. The dissertation charts the impact of Nabokov’s presence in contemporary literature. Please note: the dissertation contains an embedded Excel spreadsheet, containing multiple spreadsheets, created using Microsoft Office 2007. iv LIST OF TABLES Table 1 References in Popular Culture and Literature ..................................................72 Table 2 References by Percentage in Popular Culture and Literature ..........................73 Table 3 References by Decade ......................................................................................85 Table 4 Comparison of Novel References and Nabokov Articles ................................94 Table 5 Numbers and Percentage of References by Decade ......................................119 Table 6 Writers and their Relationship to McSweeney's .............................................171 Table 7 Neal Pollack's Timeline of Literary History ..................................................189 v TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT ....................................................................................................................... iii LIST OF TABLES ...............................................................................................................v PREFACE ............................................................................................................................1 CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION ....................................................................................4 Theoretical Framework ..................................................................................................6 Methods, Limitations, and Terminology .....................................................................21 A Brief Literature Review of Intertextual Theory .......................................................27 A Case Study in Nested Authorial Allusions ...............................................................35 Conclusion ...................................................................................................................61 CHAPTER 2 AN OVERVIEW OF NABOKOV REFERENCES ...............................64 A General Description and Preliminary Findings ........................................................69 Authorially-Minded Transtextual Connections ...........................................................78 Pale Fire and its Readers ..............................................................................................97 Hypotextual Distortions .............................................................................................100 Race, Gender, Age, and Other Demographics in the Data-Set ..................................105 Nabokov in Popular Fiction .......................................................................................108 CHAPTER 3 NABOKOV IN TELEVISION AND MOVIES ...................................112 Overviews ..................................................................................................................116 Nabokov References in Movies .................................................................................121 Nabokov References in Television Shows ................................................................131 Conclusion .................................................................................................................137 CHAPTER 4 NABOKOV IN UPDIKE AND BAKER .............................................139 Nabokov in Updike ....................................................................................................141 Nabokov and Updike in Baker ...................................................................................154 CHAPTER 5 NABOKOV IN AMIS, SMITH, AND OTHERS .................................165 Nabokov in Amis, Barnes, and Rushdie ....................................................................174
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Vladimir Nabokov-1899-1977 Ann-Margret “Maggie Yonan” 1998
    Vladimir Nabokov-1899-1977 Ann-Margret “Maggie Yonan” 1998 The eldest son of Vladimir Dmitrievich Nabokov and his wife Elena, Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov was born on April 22, 1899 into a Russian aristocratic family who fled Russia in the wake of the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution. One of five children, Nabokov was born and raised in Saint Petersburg, Russia, and was part of a household that spoke Russian, English, and French, making Nabokov tri-lingual at an early age. In 1917 the Nabokov family left Vyra for a friend's estate near Yalta in the Crimea, where they remained for 18 months. Following the defeat of the White Army in the Crimea, the Nabokovs left Russia for exile in western Europe. After emigrating from Russia in 1919 the family settled briefly in England, where Vladimir enrolled in Trinity College in Cambridge and studied Slavic and romance languages. In 1923 he graduated from Cambridge and relocated to Berlin, where he gained some reputation within the colony of Russian emigres as a novelist and poet, writing under the pseudonym Vladimir Sirin. Nabokov had lived in Vyra, Russia with his family, and in 1925 marries Véra Slonim, a Russian émigré, living in Berlin. Their son, Dmitri, was born in 1934. In 1937, Vladimir and his family left Berlin for Paris due to their disgust with the Nazi regime and in light of Mrs. Nabokov's Jewish heritage. In Paris, VN continued to write in Russian, composed a few works in French, and also wrote his first novel in English, The Real Life of Sebastian Knight.
    [Show full text]
  • Vladimir Nabokov Lolita by John Lennard “There Are No Verbal Obscenities
    Literature Insights General Editor: Charles Moseley Vladimir Nabokov Lolita by John Lennard “there are no verbal obscenities ... in Lolita, only the low moans of ... abused pain.” HEB ☼ FOR ADVICE ON THE USE OF THIS EBOOK PLEASE SCROLL TO PAGE 2 Reading t * This book is designed to be read in single page view, using the ‘fit page’ command. * To navigate through the contents use the hyperlinked ‘Book- marks’ at the left of the screen. * To search, click the magnifying glass symbol and select ‘show all results’. * For ease of reading, use <CTRL+L> to enlarge the page to full screen, and return to normal view using < Esc >. * Hyperlinks (if any) appear in Blue Underlined Text. Permissions Your purchase of this ebook licenses you to read this work on- screen. No part of this publication may be otherwise reproduced or transmitted or distributed without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the publisher. You may print one copy of the book for your own use but copy and paste functions are disabled. Making or distributing copies of this book would constitute copyright infringement and would be liable to prosecution. Thank you for respecting the rights of the author. ISBN 978-1-84760-073-8 Vladimir Nabokov: ‘Lolita’ John Lennard HEB ☼ Humanities-Ebooks, LLP Copyright © John Lennard, 2008 The Author has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this Work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published by Humanities-Ebooks, LLP, Tirril Hall, Tirril, Penrith CA10 2JE Contents Preface Part 1.
    [Show full text]
  • British Fiction Today
    Birkbeck ePrints: an open access repository of the research output of Birkbeck College http://eprints.bbk.ac.uk Brooker, Joseph (2006). The middle years of Martin Amis. In Rod Mengham and Philip Tew eds. British Fiction Today. London/New York: Continuum International Publishing Group Ltd., pp.3-14. This is an author-produced version of a paper published in British Fiction Today (ISBN 0826487319). This version has been peer-reviewed but does not include the final publisher proof corrections, published layout or pagination. All articles available through Birkbeck ePrints are protected by intellectual property law, including copyright law. Any use made of the contents should comply with the relevant law. Citation for this version: Brooker, Joseph (2006). The middle years of Martin Amis. London: Birkbeck ePrints. Available at: http://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/archive/00000437 Citation for the publisher’s version: Brooker, Joseph (2006). The middle years of Martin Amis. In Rod Mengham and Philip Tew eds. British Fiction Today. London/New York: Continuum International Publishing Group Ltd., pp.3-14. http://eprints.bbk.ac.uk Contact Birkbeck ePrints at [email protected] The Middle Years of Martin Amis Joseph Brooker Martin Amis (b.1949) was a fancied newcomer in the 1970s and a defining voice in the 1980s. He entered the 1990s as a leading player in British fiction; by his early forties, the young talent had grown into a dominant force. Following his debut The Rachel Papers (1973), he subsidised his fictional output through the 1970s with journalistic work, notably as literary editor at the New Statesman.
    [Show full text]
  • Syllabus Midlife Nabokov - 44842
    Syllabus Midlife Nabokov - 44842 Last update 29-07-2018 HU Credits: 2 Degree/Cycle: 2nd degree (Master) Responsible Department: English Academic year: 0 Semester: 2nd Semester Teaching Languages: English Campus: Mt. Scopus Course/Module Coordinator: Leona Toker Coordinator Email: [email protected] Coordinator Office Hours: Mondays 17:15-18:15, room 7824 Teaching Staff: Prof Leona Toker page 1 / 4 Course/Module description: The course is devoted to a shift of concerns and values that began in Vladimir Nabokovs fiction in the late 1930s. It focuses on the features that replaced the motif of the happiness of freedom that characterized much of his early fiction. Methodologies of close reading will be used to analyze the relationship between his narrative art and the ethical concerns of his fiction up to the late 1950s: though Nabokov refused to put literature at the service of political engagement, the themes and attitudes of his work were, in their own way, responsive to the socio-political realities of the twentieth century. Course/Module aims: To relate narratological issues to the ethical attitudes explored in each work. To enhance the appreciation of the artistic merit and potential effects of literary works that reject political engagement. To point to indirect artistic expressions of ideological positions. To practice methods of close narratological analysis. To demonstrate the creative potential of multilingualism. To refute sundry misconceptions about Nabokovs work. To work towards a theory of narrative ethics. Learning outcomes - On successful completion of this module, students should be able to: understand the nature of Nabokovs artistic achievement, analyze the structure, the contexts, and the aims of some of Nabokovs major works, observe a mid-career shift in the values and the methods of Nabokovs fiction, perfect methods of narratological and stylistic analysis, be prepared to tackle other texts by Nabokov and his contemporaries, be aware of the main trends in Nabokov criticism, write research papers based on nuanced textual analysis.
    [Show full text]
  • Athletic Inspiration: Vladimir Nabokov and the Aesthetic Thrill of Sports Tim Harte Bryn Mawr College, [email protected]
    Bryn Mawr College Scholarship, Research, and Creative Work at Bryn Mawr College Russian Faculty Research and Scholarship Russian 2009 Athletic Inspiration: Vladimir Nabokov and the Aesthetic Thrill of Sports Tim Harte Bryn Mawr College, [email protected] Let us know how access to this document benefits ouy . Follow this and additional works at: http://repository.brynmawr.edu/russian_pubs Custom Citation Harte, Tim. "Athletic Inspiration: Vladimir Nabokov and the Aesthetic Thrill of Sports," Nabokov Studies 12.1 (2009): 147-166. This paper is posted at Scholarship, Research, and Creative Work at Bryn Mawr College. http://repository.brynmawr.edu/russian_pubs/1 For more information, please contact [email protected]. Tim Harte Bryn Mawr College Dec. 2012 Athletic Inspiration: Vladimir Nabokov and the Aesthetic Thrill of Sports “People have played for as long as they have existed,” Vladimir Nabokov remarked in 1925. “During certain eras—holidays for humanity—people have taken a particular fancy to games. As it was in ancient Greece and ancient Rome, so it is in our present-day Europe” (“Braitenshtreter – Paolino,” 749). 1 For Nabokov, foremost among these popular games were sports competitions. An ardent athlete and avid sports fan, Nabokov delighted in the competitive spirit of athletics and creatively explored their aesthetic as well as philosophical ramifications through his poetry and prose. As an essential, yet underappreciated component of the Russian-American writer’s art, sports appeared first in early verse by Nabokov before subsequently providing a recurring theme in his fiction. The literary and the athletic, although seemingly incongruous modes of human activity, frequently intersected for Nabokov, who celebrated the thrills, vigor, and beauty of sports in his present-day “holiday for humanity” with a joyous energy befitting such physical activity.
    [Show full text]
  • Presentations of the Self As Author in Prefaces and Autobiographies. (Volumes I and II)
    Louisiana State University LSU Digital Commons LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses Graduate School 1990 Authorial Introductions: Presentations of the Self as Author in Prefaces and Autobiographies. (Volumes I and II). Laurie Frances Leach Louisiana State University and Agricultural & Mechanical College Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_disstheses Recommended Citation Leach, Laurie Frances, "Authorial Introductions: Presentations of the Self as Author in Prefaces and Autobiographies. (Volumes I and II)." (1990). LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses. 4998. https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_disstheses/4998 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at LSU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses by an authorized administrator of LSU Digital Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. INFORMATION TO USERS The most advanced technology has been used to photograph and reproduce this manuscript from the microfilm master. UMI films the text directly from the original or copy submitted. Thus, some thesis and dissertation copies are in typewriter face, while others may be from any type of computer printer. The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. Broken or indistinct print, colored or poor quality illustrations and photographs, print bleedthrough, substandard margins, and improper alignment can adversely affect reproduction. In the unlikely event that the author did not send UMI a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if unauthorized copyright material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. Oversize materials (e.g., maps, drawings, charts) are reproduced by sectioning the original, beginning at the upper left-hand corner and continuing from left to right in equal sections with small overlaps.
    [Show full text]
  • Authorship in Nabokov's Prefaces
    Authorship in Nabokov’s Prefaces Authorship in Nabokov’s Prefaces By Jacqueline Hamrit Authorship in Nabokov’s Prefaces, by Jacqueline Hamrit This book first published 2014 Cambridge Scholars Publishing 12 Back Chapman Street, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2XX, UK British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Copyright © 2014 by Jacqueline Hamrit All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. ISBN (10): 1-4438-6682-2, ISBN (13): 978-1-4438-6682-8 To Marine TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction ................................................................................................. 1 Chapter One ................................................................................................. 5 On a Book Entitled Lolita 1) Publishers and first readers - Desire to publish - Resistance to publish and censorship - Incorrect interpretations - Misunderstandings 2) Good readers and good interpretations - Lolita as a love affair - Good readers - Nabokov’s interpretation 3) The author as a Janus-like persona - The author as a constraining figure - The author and the reader facing each other - The author as a ghostly figure Chapter Two .............................................................................................. 30 Introduction to Bend Sinister 1)
    [Show full text]
  • Chronology of Lolita
    Chronology of Lolita CHRONOLOGY OF LOLITA This chronology is based on information gathered from the text of Nabokov’s Lolita as well as from the chronological reconstructions prepared by Carl Proffer in his Keys to Lolita and Dieter Zimmer’s online chronology at <http://www.d-e-zimmer.de/LolitaUSA/LoChrono.htm> (last accessed on No- vember 13, 2008). For a discussion of the problems of chronology in the novel, see Zimmer’s site. The page numbers in parenthesis refer to passages in the text where the information on chronology can be found. 1910 Humbert Humbert born in Paris, France (9) 1911 Clare Quilty born in Ocean City, Maryland (31) 1913 Humbert’s mother dies from a lightning strike (10) 1923 Summer: Humbert and Annabel Leigh have romance (11) Autumn: Humbert attends lycée in Lyon (11) December (?): Annabel dies in Corfu (13) 1934 Charlotte Becker and Harold E. Haze honeymoon in Veracruz, Mexico; Dolores Haze conceived on this trip (57, 100) 1935 January 1: Dolores Haze born in Pisky, a town in the Midwest (65, 46) April: Humbert has brief relationship with Monique, a Parisian prostitute (23) Humbert marries Valeria Zborovski (25, 30) 1937 Dolly’s brother born (68) 1939 Dolly’s brother dies (68) Humbert receives inheritance from relative in America (27) Valeria discloses to Humbert that she is having an affair; divorce proceedings ensue (27, 32) xv Chronology of Lolita 1940 Winter: Humbert spends winter in Portugal (32) Spring: Humbert arrives in United States and takes up job devising and editing perfume ads (32) Over next two years
    [Show full text]
  • Cover Boys ­ Books ­ Entertainment ­ Smh.Com.Au
    Cover boys ­ Books ­ Entertainment ­ smh.com.au http://www.smh.com.au/news/books/cover­boys/2005/12/29/113573267... Cover boys Stephen King and Martin Amis. Photo: John Shakespeare December 29, 2005 Never write sex scenes. A weird story is best kept a short story. Martin Amis and Stephen King slug it out onstage. Madeleine Murray takes notes. No writers could be more different than Martin Amis and Stephen King. Amis, enfant terrible of the British literati, inherited his famous father's flair for lacerating, bilious prose. King never knew his father, who left his Maine home to get cigarettes one evening in 1949 and disappeared forever. His mother supported her two young sons by working in a home for the mentally ill. Amis's first novel concerned an Oxford­bound adolescent determined to sleep with an older woman. King's first published story, I was a Teenage Grave Robber, about a scientist who bred giant maggots, appeared in Comics Review in 1967. Amis has been short­listed for the Booker prize, but only a couple of his novels have ever been filmed, quite forgettably. Intellectuals pooh­pooh King, yet more than 90 of his stories have been adapted for TV and films. Yet on this Saturday morning at The New Yorker festival, the prince and the showman were meeting three other writers to discuss fantasy and invention in fiction. King, rangy and relaxed, seemed to have recovered from his gruesome accident on a deserted Maine road six years ago. While trying to stop one of his Rottweilers rummaging in a beer cooler, Bryan 1 of 5 11/25/2006 11:26 AM Cover boys ­ Books ­ Entertainment ­ smh.com.au http://www.smh.com.au/news/books/cover­boys/2005/12/29/113573267..
    [Show full text]
  • Nabokov's Speak, Memory As
    THE EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF LIFE WRITING VOLUME VIII(2019)28–46 The Memoirist against History: Nabokov’s Speak, Memory as the (re)negotiation of a literary form at the intersection of personal experience and historical narrative Michael Sala University of Newcastle, Australia Abstract: Nabokov’s Speak, Memory is a literary memoir that negotiates the relationship between history and personal experience by illuminating one end of a spectrum of authoritative effects that range from artifice to sponta- neity. In using play to leverage and highlight the tension between the artifice of a work of literature and the spontaneity of personal expression (or sense making on an individual level,) and by implicating both reader and writer within that tension, it demonstrates how literary memoir can negotiate its relationship to its genre. There are thus two forms of negotiation at work in Speak, Memory, the one between artifice and spontaneity, the other between individual experience and historical narrative. In this way, by using play to invite the reader into the interpretative act, Nabokov emphasises the role of artifice in the autobiographical project, and, by doing so, stakes out a claim for the literary autobiographical writer in the face of historical narrative. Keywords: Nabokov, history, memoir, artifice One of the most studied episodes in Vladimir Nabokov’s autobiographi- cal work, Speak, Memory, is a sequence of events in the opening chapter unified by what the author describes as “the match stick theme.” The episode involves two encounters with Alexey Nikolayevich Kuropatkin, a member of the old Russian aristocracy. During the first encounter, at the European Journal of Life Writing, Vol VIII, 28–46 2019.
    [Show full text]
  • From Russia to America: the Depiction of Nationality in Nabokov’S Work
    From Russia to America: The Depiction of Nationality in Nabokov’s Work Julian W. Connolly University of Virginia A truly international writer, Vladimir Nabokov once 26). Of course, even at this point Nabokov had declared: “the nationality of a worthwhile writer is moved on from America to Switzerland, though he of secondary importance […] The writer’s art is his always thought he might return to the States and he real passport. His identity should be immediately never relinquished in American citizenship. recognized by a special pattern or unique coloration” (Strong Opinions, 63). Despite this affirmation, An avid and accomplished lepidopterist as well however, the treatment of nationalities in Nabokov’s as a celebrated writer, Nabokov was a perceptive work is highly individualized and distinctive. He observer of the world around him. It is not surprising, himself traveled along an extraordinarily complex then, that his creative work would feature indelible path through life. Born into a wealthy family in St. portraits of the peoples and places he had come Petersburg, Russia, Nabokov was forced to leave to know in his life. As one looks carefully at his his homeland in 1919 because of the Bolshevik writings, one sees that each of the lands Nabokov Revolution. He attended Cambridge University in depicted is given a distinctive national coloring, England, and after graduation moved to Berlin to and it is likely that Nabokov’s personal experience launch a career as a writer. After a decade and a of living in these different lands had a decisive half he moved again, this time to France when life influence on they way they emerge in his art.
    [Show full text]
  • Political Discourse in Martin Amis's Other People: a Mystery Story
    Martin, Karl, and Maggie Too: Political Discourse in Martin Amis’s Other People: A Mystery Story Stephen Jones common thread that runs throughout criticism of Martin Amis’s Awork is a concentration on the formal aspects of his writing. In his earlier work, this concentration often comes at the expense of his novels’ political content. Martin Cropper has written that: Martin Amis has published two novels worth re-reading, his third and fourth: Success (1978) and Other People: A Mystery Story (1981). Each is structurally exquisite—a double helix; a Möbius strip (Cropper, p.6) While I would argue that all of Amis’s work is worth reading regardless, and possibly because, of any ‘aesthetic shortcomings’ that Cropper may identify, his description of Amis’s precise structuring is enlightening. The analogy to the mathematical structures of a double helix and a Möbius strip suggests the precision and rigidity with which Amis has ‘calculated’ his narrative structures, and it is the Möbius strip structure of Other People: A Mystery Story (1981) in particular that appears to have distracted many critics from any political content that the novel may contain. Brian Finney pays close attention to the novel’s metafictional elements, concluding that its cyclical structure entraps ‘the narrator and the reader ... in the web of the fictional construct’ (Finney, p.53). Finney’s suggestion is that the main purpose of the novel’s metafictional devices is to draw attention to the problems of narrative closure. While Finney is correct in noting this, it is also possible to read these devices as drawing attention to social as well as narrative issues.
    [Show full text]