Abstract
Layne analyses Colm Tóibín’s The Master and David Lodge’s Author, Author, two works of biofiction published near-simultaneously in 2004, the so-called year of Henry James. Both authors attempt to identify the circumstances in James’s life that gave rise to his fiction, particularly that of the Major Phase. Lodge’s crisis-and-recovery narrative situates the origins of James’s lateness in his failure in the theatre, whereupon he developed a scenic method for prose writing. The metaphor of staging aptly describes Lodge’s representation of James’s mastery in terms of recoverable, presentable incidents. For Tóibín, conversely, drowning proves a more appropriate metaphor: James’s late writing emerges from his repeated acts of affective withdrawal, self-accusation and sublimation. The contrasting metaphors indicate different stances towards James as an (ir)recoverable subjectivity.
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Layne, B. (2020). The Year of Henry James: David Lodge’s Author, Author (2004) and Colm Tóibín’s The Master (2004). In: Henry James in Contemporary Fiction. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-31650-1_2
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