"The day of the great writer is gone for ever": Author surrogacy in Martin Amis’s Money and J.M. Coetzee’s Summertime.
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2016-07-01
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en
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Abstract
This study focuses on the use of author surrogacy in the novels Money: A Suicide Note by Martin Amis and Summertime: Scenes from Provincial Life by J.M. Coetzee. It addresses the connection between their use of author surrogacy and their comments on what scholars classify as the postmodern cultural condition. Both authors have written themselves into their novels with a different purpose but both used strikingly similar themes to incorporate this purpose, although the stress on these themes varies. Authorial power, the distinction between the real and the imagined, and the fading line between high- and lowbrow culture are examples of the topics discussed in this study with regards to author surrogacy and the postmodern cultural condition. This study concludes that, through their use of author surrogacy, J.M. Coetzee mainly aims to critique, while Martin Amis satirises postmodern culture.
Keywords: Amis, author surrogacy, authorial power, Coetzee, fact-fiction distinction, high- and lowbrow culture, postmodern cultural condition.
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Faculteit der Letteren