• “Cre­ation Anx­i­ety in Gothic Metafic­tion: The Dark Half and Lunar Park”

    Author(s):
    Sherry Truffin (see profile)
    Date:
    2013
    Group(s):
    American Literature, Gothicists, Horror
    Subject(s):
    American literature, Arts, Gothic, Postmodernism
    Item Type:
    Book chapter
    Tag(s):
    gothic literature, Postmodern fiction, Stephen King, Gothic
    Permanent URL:
    http://dx.doi.org/10.17613/M6HJ4T
    Abstract:
    The Gothic metafiction of Stephen King and Bret Easton Ellis focuses on author-protagonists who fear what they create because their creations are re-creations, projections of their creator’s anxieties, some conventionally Gothic (the multiple/split self) and others specific to postmodern conceptions of subjectivity in general and authorship in particular. Considered in light of such conceptions and the postmodern focus on process over product, The Dark Half (1989) and Lunar Park(2005) suggest that the writing life is a Gothic trap. If the author is identified with his text, if he exists only in writing, then writer’s block is the threat of annihilation, but so is the successful completion of the text. The writer, trapped in the process of writing, must narcissistically prolong the act of creation without regard to its product. Meanwhile, his neglected product or creation becomes a miscreation who, like Frankenstein’s monster, comes back to haunt and menace him.
    Metadata:
    xml
    Published as:
    Book chapter     Show details
    Publisher:
    Blackwell
    Pub. Date:
    2013
    Book Title:
    A Companion to American Gothic
    Author/Editor:
    Charles L. Crow
    Chapter:
    5
    Page Range:
    56 - 67
    ISBN:
    9781118608395
    Status:
    Published
    Last Updated:
    6 years ago
    License:
    All Rights Reserved
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