The Late-Career Novelist Career Construction Theory, Authors and Autofiction

by Dix, Hywel

• ISBN13: 9781350030060
• ISBN10: 1350030066
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2017-08-10
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic

Summary

The first scholarly study of the phenomenon of the 'late-career novel', this book explores the ways in which bestselling contemporary novelists look back and respond to their earlier successes in their subsequent writings. Exploring the work of major novelists such as Angela Carter, V.S. Naipaul, Salman Rushdie, Ian McEwan, Julian Barnes, A.S. Byatt and Graham Swift, The Late Career Novelist draws for the first time on social psychology and career construction theory to examine how the dynamics of a literary career play out in the fictional worlds of our best-known novelists. From here, Hywel Dix develops and argues for a new mode of reading contemporary writing on the contexts of current literary culture.

Author Biography

Hywel Dix is Principal Lecturer in English and Communication at Bournemouth University, UK. His previous books include Postmodern Fiction and the Break-Up of Britain (Bloomsbury, 2010).

Table of Contents

1. Introduction: From the Late to the Retrospective
2. Life Themes and Life Stories: Career Construction and the Re-writing of the Authorial Self
3. Imaginary Authors of Real Books
4. Intimate Paratexts
5. Cultural Narratives and The Collective Library
6. Feeding Fiction Forward: Anxieties of Influence
7. Autofiction in Theory and Practice
8. Conclusion: Advancing the Occupational Plot
Bibliography
Index