ATCHLEY - Softcover

Green, David

Softcover

ISBN 10: 188644952X ISBN 13: 9781886449527

Publisher: Station Hill Press, 1998

Synopsis

David Green's novel furthers the contemporary dialogue between "deconstructionist" philosophy and "post-modern" fiction with an ingenious structure. It is difficult to tell whether a certain author of "Borgesian" fictions has invented the critic who writes about him, or if an ingenious critic has invented the author about whom he is a leading expert. Crisp critical prose alternates with lush narrative and descriptive rhetoric in this work of genuine inquiry into the relation between two styles of writing, two uses of mind, and two ways of being. Shades of Nabokov's Pale Fire...

About this title

About the Author

David Green is a lecturer in the CAS Writing Program at Boston University, a novelist and literary critic. His special interests include Samuel Beckett and the Irish modernist poets. Before coming to Boston University, he taught at the University of Texas at San Antonio and St. Mary’s University, also in San Antonio, as well as at universities in Spain and China. He is the recipient of the 1999 Sproat Award for the Outstanding Teacher of Writing at Boston University. His collection of short stories, The Garden of Love, was published late in 2009 by Pen & Anvil Press. His scholarly publications include studies of Samuel Beckett and the Irish poet Brian Coffey. David teaches in the CAS Core Curriculum and in the CAS Writing Program.

From the Back Cover

David Green's novel Atchley furthers the contemporary dialogue between "deconstructionist" philosophy and "postmodern" fiction with the propounding of an engaging literary enigma: Has a certain author of "Borgesian" fictions invented the critic who writes about him, or has an ingenious critic invented the author about whom he has become a leading expert? An author (named Atchley) has achieved critical acclaim by coupling an imagistically opulent narrative with a theoretical treatise on his own work. Now Atchley (this book) offers just such a narrative as well as a seemingly straightforward "deconstruction" of it. Does the book "actually" present Atchley's own auto-commentary? Is David Green Atchley? The work spins out these questions and others, only to have them dissolve, if not resolve, in the narrative itself, a work of singular lyrical intensity and haunting beauty. Taken as a whole, Atchley is a genuine inquiry into the relationship between two styles of writing, two uses of mind, and two ways of being.

Reviews

What grad student has not dreamed of turning his or her thesis into a novel? After spending weary hours explicating somebody else's texts, one longs to strike out on one's own, or even, this being the postmodernist age, to explicate a fictitious text. David Green has done just that in Atchley?demonstrating, unfortunately, why it is not always a good idea. The book begins as a thesis on the ontology of presence, retreading Derrida and his acolytes. But wait! This is a false thesis. It is centered on a man named Atchley, a philosopher and novelist. In the second section, we have an introduction, of sorts, to his novel, Landfall. One's radar blinks on when this novel is compared to Beckett's work. Then we have, in the third section, something that could be the text of Landfall. And, if you stripped Beckett of his sense of humor and his clean prose and added some rather tendentious allegorical touches, it would resemble Beckett. A nameless man wanders in a post-apocalyptic landscape among a people whose language he must guess at, and his adventures, such as they are, lapse into those of a man named David Green who uses grant money to go to Galicia, the site of Landfall, and basically mope about. The interesting thing about the book is not the conceit, qua device or metaphor, but the conceit, qua vanity, of the academic musings. The character "Green" at one point ponders ruefully that life is transitory, and that his words will outlast him. Judging from this book, he has little to worry about.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

In the tradition of Nabokov's Pale Fire, Green (English, Boston Univ.) has written a book entwining fiction and commentary. Green sees language as an endless Mobius strip, and he would like to record all the words spoken in a lifetime the way Borges wrote of tracing footsteps of a lifetime. In the critical introduction, letters, diary, and novella included here, he reworks in different styles these same metaphysical speculations. His deceptively beautiful novella, "Landfall," which he comments on elsewhere in the book, is a lushly written story of a shipwrecked man in a Spain of the imagination that fans of Dutch writer Cees Nooteboom will enjoy. Great intellectual fun; recommended for large contemporary literature collections.AGene Shaw, NYPL
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Station Hill Press
• Publication date: 1998
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 188644952X
• ISBN 13: 9781886449527
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 120