Obscure invitations : the persistence of the author in twentieth-century American literature / Benjamin Widiss.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Widiss, Benjamin Leigh, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

American literature--20th century--History and criticism.

American literature.

Authorship in literature.

Authorship--History--20th century.

Authorship.

Authors and readers--History--20th century.

Authors and readers.

History.

Physical Description:

x, 208 pages ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Stanford, California : Stanford University Press, [2011]

Summary:

While literary studies in the postwar era have varied widely in emphasis and approach, they have consistently barred arguments attributing specific intentions to authors based on textual evidence or ascribing textual presences to the authors themselves. Obscure Invitations argues that this taboo has blinded us to many fundamental elements of twentieth-century literature. Widiss focuses on the particularly self-conscious constructions of authorship that characterize both modernist and postmodernist writing, elaborating the narrative strategies they demand and the reading practices they yield. He reveals that apparent manifestations of "the death of the Author" and of the "free play" of language are in fact carefully staged performances that ultimately affirm authorial vitality and control-of both text and reader. The cannily oblique authorial self-portraits that emerge from these performances illuminate the ways in which authors use their writing itself to manage their reputations and celebrity. In advancing these claims, the book significantly revises received understandings of central texts by William Faulkner, Gertrude Stein, and Vladimir Nabokov. It then discusses Dave Eggers' Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius and the films Seven and The Usual Suspects, demonstrating that each is a theoretically informed and highly self-aware rebuttal of the notion of authorial absence or death. Book jacket.

Contents:

Fit and surfeit : As I lay dying (seesawing)

You know me, Alice : The autobiography of Alice B. Toklas (driving)

See monkey, do monkey : Lolita (aping)

The gospel according to Dave : A heartbreaking work of staggering genius (imbibing)

The death of Kevin Spacey : Seven and The usual suspects (envisioning).

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780804773225

080477322X

9780804773232

0804773238

OCLC:

709407555