The Death of the Author

I read this book a while ago, but it’s high time I got to talking about it, because it’s one of my favourites and I should really read it again sometime soon.

So I bought this book on a whim in first year at University, after hearing about the Roland Barthes theory with the same name. I’m fascinated by Barthes and thought this would be a book that looks at that theory from a literary point of view. I read the blurb, realized it was better than that, and bought it. In third year at University, I was given the opportunity to write an assignment about the book (and several other books too) for a class about Contemporary British Fiction. Naturally, being the kind of person that I am, I jumped at the chance.

Have you heard of Paul de show more Man? He was a literary scholar in the United States who, after his death, was found to be an anti-Semitic Nazi sympathizer in his youth, and had published various popular articles about his views under a pseudonym. This caused a huge outrage in the scholarly community at the time.

This book takes inspiration from the real life events surrounding de Man’s death, and the author – speaking in first person the entire way through – is going through a similar situation. When he was younger, living in France during World War II and the Nazi occupation of Paris, the young aspiring writer was approached by the Nazis to use his skill with a pen to write articles for their newspapers. He did not necessarily believe most of what he was writing, but he reasoned that he could either do that, or get himself punished for not obeying orders from the people in charge at the time. In order to save his own skin, the author writes the articles. Years later, when he has finally moved to America and become a literary scholar of his own regard, the author finds that his past has come back to haunt him in the form of a student of his and her aggressive boyfriend.

This novel is absolutely wonderful and a brisk short read. It has a brilliant amount of drama in it that isn’t too much, and really keeps the story going all the way through. It also gives you insight into the possible situation in the de Man scandal. Because his articles were discovered after his death, nobody can ever confirm that he ever really was a Nazi sympathizer. Through this novel, Adair gives us the chance to explore the perspective that maybe he wasn’t a terrible person; just somebody who wanted to save himself from one of the worst situations he could have been in.

Final rating: 4/5. I just wish this book had been longer, but it’s length is also a part of this charm. show less

Hopefully the title doesn't scare away the anti-post-modernist faction, because this novella is a terrific satire of Paul De Man's life and his theories. The Nabokov comparisons that have been used to describe this book are well deserved - the irony and wit of the narrator are simply perfect.