Ghost Writing in Contemporary American Fiction [Hardcover]

This book examines representations of the specter in American twentieth and twenty-first-century fiction. David Coughlans innovative structure has chapters on Paul Auster, Don DeLillo, Toni Morrison, Marilynne Robinson, and Philip Roth alternating with shorter sections detailing the significance of the ghost in the philosophy of Jacques Derrida, particularly within the context of his 1993 text, Specters of Marx. Together, these accounts of phantoms, shadows, haunts, spirit, the death sentence, and hospitality provide a compelling theoretical context in which to read contemporary US literature. Ghost Writing in Contemporary American Fiction argues at every stage that there is no self, no relation to the other, no love, no home, no mourning, no future, no trace of life without the return of the specterthat is, without ghost writing.

This fascinating new book explores the figure of the writer as ghost in contemporary American fiction, focusing on the work of five authors (Paul Auster, Don DeLillo, Toni Morrison, Marilynne Robinson and Philip Roth). Framed by the work of Jacques Derrida, Ghost Writing in Contemporary American Fiction demonstrates how the central theme of the ghost writer relates to an ethics of writing involving questions of personal and social responsibility, record and repetition, memory and forgetfulness, and faithfulness and betrayal.

This is both a crucial contribution to the 'spectral turn' in critical theory and a compelling study of some of the key figures in contemporary American fiction. Coughlan combines perceptive, detailed readings of novels by Auster, DeLillo, Roth, Morrison, and Robinson with a far-reaching and wide-ranging exploration of the hermeneutic and philosophical questions raised by the 'ghost writing' of these authors. Intellectually stimulating and a pleasure to read, this book will be invaluable to students and scholars of contemporary fiction, critlÃ#