Output details

La Rochelle

In its novelistic treatment of subjectivity, La Rochelle undertakes a phenomenological task that is theoretically underpinned by research into the later concerns of Husserl and also of Merleau-Ponty. Part of the effort in this doctor’s tale was to reclaim the life-world of fiction from the attitude to research that is evident in the contemporary British novel. The obvious comparison is with Ian McEwan’s Saturday (2005), in which a narrative saturated with technical discourse aims to meet the ideals of a ‘third culture’, while raising formal problems about the translation of professional knowledge into experience and practice at the level of character. Formally, La Rochelle takes issue with the principles of economy and efficiency that characterize contemporary Anglophone fiction, and which are frequently reinforced by creative-writing courses and by theoretical and critical research within this field. It does so on the grounds of the thesis that these principles are obedient to a culture of rationalization (for example, in the priority given to ‘narrative drive’). La Rochelle is instead inclined towards stylistic extravagance. Among the creative criteria developed as a foundation for this were ideas relating to the literary baroque, ‘superabundance’ (Nietzsche), hilaritas (Bonhoeffer) and wit. La Rochelle is also continuous, in this way, with Nath’s specific research interests in literary and philosophical modernism (notably the phenomenology of Wyndham Lewis’s fiction and criticism, as evidenced in recently-published work in The Journal of Wyndham Lewis Studies 2011). The novel was shortlisted for the 2011 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Fiction.