Tough shit Erich Auerbach

contingency and estrangement in david peace's occupied city and kate Summerscale's the suspicions of mr Whicher

Phil Redpath

pp. 34-48

in: Siân Adiseshiah, Rupert Hildyard (eds), Twenty-first century fiction, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2013

Abstract

It may be gleaned from its less than reverent title that this chapter intends to explore the always-with-us problem of realism. It will do that by looking at David Peace's Occupied City (2009), which recounts an actual crime committed in Tokyo on 30 June 1948 and Kate Summerscale's The Suspicions of Mr Whicher (2009), which investigates an actual crime committed in England on 30 June 1860. This chapter will argue that, far from being a fish dead in the water, realism in fiction is assuming entirely new shapes and forms to "fit" the shape of contemporary reality. "Fit", of course, is a term from Wittgenstein applied to the way language and the world lock together like a jigsaw puzzle, and I"ll come back to Wittgenstein later.

Cited authors

Wittgenstein Ludwig

Auerbach Erich