Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Chevrette, Eric

Titel

From Self-fictionalization to Self-(dis)engagement: Autofiction in Frédéric Beigbeder’s Windows on the World

Ist Teil von

• English studies in Canada, 2019-03, Vol.45 (1), p.61-83

Ort / Verlag

Edmonton: Association of Canadian College and University Teachers of English

Erscheinungsjahr

2019

Quelle

Literature Online (LION)

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• Shortly thereafter, he was dismissed from his job at the Y&R advertising agency for "serious misconduct" although unofficially, his book might have been deemed too disruptive for his employer.1 This novel contributed to his image as a cocaine-snorting, binge-drinking party boy (as did his 2008 arrest for sniffing the white substance off the hood of a car in Paris). In the odd-numbered chapters (all labeled in relation to their time on that day), we follow a divorced father, Carthew Yorston, who, the morning of the attacks, has breakfast with his two young sons at Windows on the World, the restaurant atop the North Tower of the World Trade Center (hence the title of the book, identical in French). [...]I will show how the problem created by this entanglement of appropriation and acknowledgement is unsolvable and is recognized as such by the author. Lightning Rods: "A novelist who does not write realist novels understands nothing of the world in which we live" Tom Wolfe "The function of the artist is to plunge into the depths of hell" Marilyn Manson For the Anglo-Saxon reader, the juxtaposition of the words of a flag-bearer of New Journalism6 and the opinions of a major figure of alt-metal create a disruptive effect, employing a postmodern approach by using "the invasive culture industry to challenge its own commodification processes from within" (Hutcheon, "A Poetics of Postmodernism" 20).