Ghost Writing in Contemporary American Fiction

This book examines representations of the specter in American twentieth and twenty-first-century fiction. David Coughlan’s 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 specter—that is, without ghost writing.

• American Literature
• Contemporary Fiction
• Twenty-first century American literature
• Literary Theory
• Hauntology
• Spectrality
• Paul Auster
• Don DeLillo

“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, critical theory, and American Studies.” (David Brauner, Professor of Contemporary Literature, University of Reading, UK)

“This book is an impressively original, provocative study of the roles and tropes of spectrality, read across a small, but significant range of North American texts. The close readings, informed by theoretical nuance and expositional savvy, are both dense yet lucid explorations of DeLillo, Auster, Roth, Robinson, and Morrison. Drawing on the significant theoretical work of Jacques Derrida, but developing his own singular insights, Coughlan’s study is an indispensible contribution to the growing field of spectral studies. Ghost Writing in Contemporary American Fiction will move the study of the modern and contemporary American novel forward significantly, and in unexpected ways. Here is a book open to what Derrida called L’avenir, that haunting from the future, to come, but wholly unpredictable.” (Julian Wolfreys, Professor of English, University of Portsmouth, UK)

• School of Culture and Communication, University of Limerick, Limerick, Ireland

  David Coughlan

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