Textual deceptions : false memoirs and literary hoaxes in the contemporary era / Sue Vice.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Vice, Sue, 1961- author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Literary forgeries and mystifications.

Autobiography.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (215 pages) : digital, PDF file(s).

Place of Publication:

Edinburgh : Edinburgh University Press, 2014.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Textual Deceptions considers a wide range of twentieth- and twenty-first century literary works in which the relationship between text and author is not what it seems. By exploring a variety of examples of false or embellished memoirs, purportedly autobiographical novels that are in fact thoroughly fictional, as well as bogus authorial personae, Sue Vice discusses whether it is possible to judge veracity by means of textual clues alone. The accounts featured range from 'misery memoirs' to Holocaust testimony, poetry purportedly by a Hiroshima survivor, short stories by an Albanian civil servant, fiction by an Aboriginal woman and by a former male prostitute.The book explores both why such texts arise, including consideration of writers' motives as well as pressures from the publishing industry, readers' tastes and contemporary social issues, and also how such texts are constructed, concluding with an assessment of their literary merit. Key Features: * Analyses the background, literary construction and value of a wide range of recent false memoirs and literary deceptions *Considers whether internal detail alone is sufficient to identify the truth-value or otherwise of a text, or if other evidence must be invoked *Explores the contradiction between contemporary literary critics' adherence to Roland Barthes's notion of the 'death of the author', and the apparently supreme importance of the role and biography of authors in the scandals that accompany revelations of deception

Contents:

Introduction : between text and author

Fiction and memory in misery memoirs

Gender hoaxing : Rahila Khan, Anthony Godby Johnson and J.T. LeRoy

Indigenous envy : Wanda Koolmatrie and Nasdijj

'Falsifying downward' : Margaret B. Jones and James Frey

self-advertising hoaxes : Araki Yasusada and Jiri Kajanë

False and embellished Holocaust testimony.

Notes:

Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 08 Aug 2016).

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

1-4744-0634-3

0-7486-7556-6

OCLC:

1312726367