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"Deception Fiction"
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Reply all : stories
\"Reply All, the third collection of award-winning and widely anthologized short stories by Robin Hemley, takes a humorous, edgy, and frank look at the human art of deception and self-deception. A father accepts, without question, the many duplicate saint relics that appear in front of his cave everyday; a translator tricks Magellan by falsely translating a local chief's words of welcome; an apple salesman a long way from home thinks he's fallen in love; a search committee believes in its own nobility by hiring a minority writer; a cheating couple broadcast their affair to an entire listserv; a talk show host interviews the dead and hopes to learn their secrets. The ways in which humans fool themselves are infinite, and while these stories illustrate this sad fact in sometimes excruciating detail, the aim is not to skewer the misdirected, but to commiserate with them and blush in recognition.\"--P. [4] of cover.
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Truth and Wonder in Richard Head’s Geographical Fictions
In line with the method prescribed by members of the Royal Society for natural history and travel writing, Richard Head explored the limits of verisimilitude associated with geographical discourse in his three fictions The Floating Island (1673), The Western Wonder (1674) and O-Brazile (1675). In them he argues in favor of the existence of the mysterious Brazile island and uses the factual discourse of the travel diarist to present a semi-mythical place whose very notion stretches the limits of believability. In line with recent critical interpretations of late seventeenth-century fiction as deceptive, and setting the reading of Head’s narrations in connection with other types of travel writing, I argue that Head’s fictions are a means of testing the readers’ gullibility at a time when the status of prose, both fictional and non-fictional, is subject to debate.
Journal Article
Never have I ever : a novel
\"Amy Whey is proud of her ordinary life and the simple pleasures that come with it--teaching diving lessons, baking cookies for new neighbors, helping her best friend, Charlotte, run their local book club. Her greatest joy is her family: her devoted professor husband, her spirited fifteen-year-old stepdaughter, her adorable infant son. And, of course, the steadfast and supportive Charlotte. But Amy's sweet, uncomplicated life begins to unravel when the mysterious and alluring Angelica Roux arrives on her doorstep one book club night.\"-- Provided by publisher.
Book
Detection, Deception, and Interpretation: Umberto Eco's Numero Zero
In Numero Zero, Umberto Eco employs the tropes of the postmodernist detective novel to investigate interpretation, textual disorientation, and the problematic influence of the news industry. The message seems to be that we need to all become better detectives regarding language interpretation and manipulation.
Journal Article
The Middle-(Un)man of Desire
The French polymath René Girard presents a compelling argument that all desire is mimetic. According to Girard, we don’t actually know what we want; instead, we imitate the desires of others. These models of desire act as mediators, indicating what objects or ways of being are worth pursuing. For Girard, desire exists in this middle place between a subject, a model, and an object. He famously argues that all great literature leverages an awareness of mimetic dynamics; the greater the work, the more mimetically perspicacious the author.
Given Girard’s theory, we would expect the greatest fantasy authors to erect their sub-creative world with an intimate awareness of mimetic desire. When we turn to Lewis, this is exactly what we find. Lewis repeatedly explores this middle place of desire with mimetic characters like Edmund Pevensie, Orual, and the inner-circle-hungry Studdocks. But perhaps Lewis’s most insightful exploration of this middle place of desire comes in the middle book of his Ransom trilogy. Perelandra presents a supposal of what might have happened in the garden of Eden when Satan tempted Eve, and Lewis envisions this event as inexorably mimetic. On unfallen Perelandra, the Unman takes up the mantle of the pander or go-between (the most powerful kind of mimetic model) to entice the green woman to break God’s one command. I argue that the Unman’s entire strategy rests on leveraging the power of mimetic desire and explore how Girard’s insights reveal Lewis’s take on Satanic deception. Therefore, a Girardian reading of Perelandra offers fruitful insight into Lewis’s take on Satanic deception.
Journal Article
Rebecca Rush's Kelroy and the Demise of Republican Idealism
In reaction to the nation's ever-increasing commercialization, the fiction of the time demonstrates a widespread fear that the Republic was in grave danger of losing its Revolutionary virtue: on the one hand, the ideal Republican citizen was to be enterprising, advancing the economy being essential to its welfare; on the other hand, that same citizen was to be unflinchingly willing to place society before self and family. For the supporters of Republican ideology, there was no contradiction, for that ideal society would balance the egoistic and the altruistic, the private and the public, because the public would always take precedence, even while the private would always work for the public good. But that virtue appeared more threatened than ever, such that novelists had to work harder to assure that virtue prevailed.
Journal Article
The truth and other lies
From the outside, Henry Hayden has a perfect life: he's a famous novelist with more money than he can spend, a grand house, a smart, loyal wife. But Henry has a dark side. If only the readers and critics who worship his every word knew that his success depends on a carefully maintained lie. One that he will stop at nothing to protect. Then in thrall to paranoia and self-interest, Henry makes a fatal error that swiftly causes the whole dream to unravel, as lie is heaped upon lie, menace upon menace. And it turns out that those around him have their secrets to ...
Book
The End of the Affair: Goethe’s Gretchen “Roman”
This article addresses the “truth” versus the “poetry” of the Gretchen episode of books 5 and 6 of Dichtung und Wahrheit (Poetry and Truth ). In this account of an amorous affair with a young woman of that name, Goethe was 14 years old and still living at his parents’ home. The time in question is 1763 to 1764, and the romance culminates on the eve of the imperial election and coronation in Frankfurt. The Gretchen episode is examined here as a fictionalization of Goethe’s relationship with Käthgen Schönkopf from 1767 to 1768 when he was a student in Leipzig, of which his autobiography offers only a superficial notion. By setting the Gretchen episode in his adolescence, Goethe underlines the immaturity of the poetry prompted by the “affair” with Käthgen, namely, anacreontic poetry, a style he would abandon, especially the “Lüsternheit” (lasciviousness) represented by the poems in the “Annette” collection. Two other surviving works from this period— Die Laune des Verliebten ( The Lover’s Caprice ; dramatizing Goethe’s jealousy of rivals for Käthgen’s affection) and Die Mitschuldigen ( The Accomplices ; portraying the inn-like setting of the Schönkopf household)—are also literary recreations of the affair. In addition, books 5 and 6, replete with texts ranging from fabricated love poems to legal documents and the diaries of earlier coronations, shed light on Goethe’s narrative method and on the autobiography as an assemblage of texts.
Journal Article