Petr Chalupský
Dodging the Literary Undertaker – Biographic Metafi ction in Hanif Kureishi’s The Last Word
Číslo: 1/2017
Periodikum: Prague Journal of English Studies
Klíčová slova: Hanif Kureishi; The Last Word; biography; biographic metafiction; historiographic metafi ction; romances of the archive
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Anotace:
Hanif Kureishi’s 2014 novel, e Last Word, involves most of the author’s idiosyncratic
themes, such as ethnicity, racism, sexual identity, examination of interpersonal
relationships and the crucial role of the creative imagination in human life. Its focal
concern, however, is to explore the process of writing a literary biography of a living
person and the character and dynamics of the relationship between the biographer
and his subject – a writer. As such, the novel can be taken as being representative of
biographic metafi ction, a subcategory of historiographic metafi ction, which, following
the postmodernist questioning of our ability to know and textually represent historical
truth, presents biographic writing critically or even mockingly, rendering its enthusiastic
practitioners’ eff orts with ironic scepticism. e aim of this article is to present e
Last Word as a particular example of biographic metafi ction that has all the crucial
features of this genre, yet which diff ers from its predecessors through the complexity and
thoroughness of its portrayal of the biographer-biographee relationship.
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themes, such as ethnicity, racism, sexual identity, examination of interpersonal
relationships and the crucial role of the creative imagination in human life. Its focal
concern, however, is to explore the process of writing a literary biography of a living
person and the character and dynamics of the relationship between the biographer
and his subject – a writer. As such, the novel can be taken as being representative of
biographic metafi ction, a subcategory of historiographic metafi ction, which, following
the postmodernist questioning of our ability to know and textually represent historical
truth, presents biographic writing critically or even mockingly, rendering its enthusiastic
practitioners’ eff orts with ironic scepticism. e aim of this article is to present e
Last Word as a particular example of biographic metafi ction that has all the crucial
features of this genre, yet which diff ers from its predecessors through the complexity and
thoroughness of its portrayal of the biographer-biographee relationship.