Noon in Paris, Eight in Chicago
- Submitting institution
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Royal Holloway and Bedford New College
- Unit of assessment
- 27 - English Language and Literature
- Output identifier
- 30288626
- Type
- A - Authored book
- DOI
-
-
- Publisher
- Myriad Editions
- ISBN
- 9780956559975
- Open access status
- -
- Month of publication
- May
- Year of publication
- 2016
- URL
-
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- Supplementary information
-
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- Request cross-referral to
- -
- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
- -
- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
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0
- Research group(s)
-
-
- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- This novel was published in the UK and internationally from 2015. It reimagines the turbulent 18-year relationship between French philosopher and writer Simone de Beauvoir and American writer Nelson Algren. In addition to publication, the novel has been presented and discussed on three occasions alongside a feature-length documentary about Nelson Algren (The End Is Nothing, The Road Is All), including internationally at the Amerikazentrum in Hamburg, Germany, and featured in discussions at literary festivals and events in the United Kingdom and abroad, including the Nelson Algren Museum in Miller Beach, Indiana, USA.
It asks how one can create a literary story with themes that resonante beyond the interest in the protagonists’ real-life counterparts, while at the same time engaging dynamically with the interplay between biography and fiction.
The process of the novel involved researching the lives and work of both protagonists: published biographies, autobiographical writing, fiction and letters of both individuals, and other materials, literary and otherwise. Available facts, information, and interpretations do not constitute a complete picture; the novel uses these as an organizational structure for imagining the shape of two decades of love and loneliness. The key innovations of this work are twofold. First, it represents the only book-length engagement with this particular relationship, while also complementing existing factual, autobiographical, biographical, and interpretative material about the lives and work of Simone de Beauvoir and Nelson Algren, both of whom were (and to varying extents remain) important figures in twentieth century literature and thought. Second, the novel employs innovative formal approaches to point of view in particular as a means of imaginative storytelling. These formal approaches both engage with and challenge de Beauvoir’s and Algren’s own self-construction, and attempt to challenge the roles of gender authority in those constructions, self- and otherwise
- Author contribution statement
- -
- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
- -