The corresponding life.

Abstract

The starting point for the writer not practising the traditional type of mimesis is consciousness. The fictionist concerned with internal mental life does not search for an absolute foundation for knowledge in truths that are eternal or in essential structures that would define consciousness in general. Such fiction does not deal in samples or slices of experience; it deals with concrete bits of subjectivity that cannot be reduced to a merely illustrative function. It does not "summarize" experience. This thesis is devoted to such fiction. The thesis is divided into three sections: the first one examines John Hawkes's short fiction in its ambivalent position in-between phenomenolgy and deconstruction; the second one functions as a bridge to the third section, which consists of a collection of original short fiction. The stories in the third section pose-but do not answer--disparate questions such as: what is a good month to die; what is a good object to hold onto in times of despair,boredom, or just plain curiosity;what could go wrong with a poet; what is the contemporary understanding of theft and how do we adjust ourselves to it; what do you say to an alien on the most fateful night of your life; how does one come to know oneself; where exactly is Nessebur; and, finally, how in the world do you end.