Issue Details: First known date: 2005... 2005 Monstrosity, Fakery and Authorship in My Life as a Fake
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AbstractHistoryArchive Description

My Life as a Fake, despite the fact that it presents a departure in terms of setting and theme, still feels familiar, not least because, as Robert Macfarlane explains, there is a good deal of "epistemological blurriness" in the novel regarding notions of authorship and originality. In this respect, Macfarlane argues, "My Life as a Fake represents the climax of a conceit with which Carey has long been fascinated: that lies, hoaxes, and fakes are, at their most successful, deeply creative forms of expression." My Life as a Feake, the critic points out, thus not only sums up some of Carey's writerly preoccupations. Its literary-philosphical thesis - that "under careful scrutiny the apparent opposition between 'making' and 'faking' collapses into nea-identity, that fakery of some sort is a normative and necessary condition of literary creation, and that repetition is the first making and plagiarism the unoriginal sin" - is also at the heart of a "mini-tradition of recent anglophone fiction".' (Introduction to Fabulating Beauty xxxiii)

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    y separately published work icon Fabulating Beauty : Perspectives on the Fiction of Peter Carey Andreas Gaile (editor), Amsterdam New York (City) : Rodopi , 2005 Z1228080 2005 anthology criticism

    'Peter Carey is one of Australia’s finest creative writers, much admired by both literary critics and a worldwide reading public. While academia has been quick to see his fictions as exemplars of postcolonial and postmodern writing strategies, his general readership has been captivated by his deadpan sense of humour, his quirky characters, the outlandish settings and the grotesqueries of his intricate plots. After three decades of prolific writing and multiple award-winning, Carey stands out in the world of Australian letters as designated heir to Patrick White. Fabulating Beauty pays tribute to Carey’s literary achievement. It brings together the voices of many of the most renowned Carey critics in twenty essays(sixteen commissioned especially for this volume), an interview with the author, as well as the most extensive bibliography of Carey criticism to date. The studies represent a wide range of current perspectives on the writer’s fictions. Contributors focus on issues as diverse as the writer’s biography; his use of architectural metaphors; his interrogation of narrative structures such as myths and cultural master-plots; intertextual strategies; concepts of sacredness and references to the Christian tradition; and his strategies of rewriting history. Amidst predictions of the imminent death of ‘postist’ theory, the essays all attest to the ongoing relevance of the critical parameters framed by postmodernism and postcolonialism.'   (Publication summary)

    Amsterdam New York (City) : Rodopi , 2005
    pg. 335-348
Last amended 8 Dec 2005 12:38:21
335-348 Monstrosity, Fakery and Authorship in My Life as a Fakesmall AustLit logo
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