Scenes of Intimacy: Reading, Writing and Theorizing Contemporary Literature

231 Pages·2014·1.944 MB·English

by  Jennifer Cooke (editor)

Scenes of Intimacy
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Scenes of Intimacy
Reading, Writing and Theorizing
Contemporary Literature
Edited by Jennifer Cooke
Bloomsbury Academic
An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
50 Bedford Square 175 Fifth Avenue
London New York
WC1B 3DP NY 10010
UK USA
www.bloomsbury.com
First published 2013
© Jennifer Cooke and Contributors, 2013
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any
form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or
any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the
publishers.
Jennifer Cooke has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988,
to be identified as Author of this work.
No responsibility for loss caused to any individual or organization acting on or refraining
from action as a result of the material in this publication can be accepted by Bloomsbury or
the author.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN: 978-1-4411-8544-0
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Scenes of intimacy : reading, writing and theorizing contemporary literature / edited by
Jennifer Cooke.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 978-1-4411-0726-8 (hardcover) -- ISBN 978-1-4411-8544-0 (ebook) -- ISBN 978-1-4411-
0182-2 (ebook) 1. Intimacy (Psychology) in literature. 2. Literature, Modern--20th century--
History and criticism. 3. Literature, Modern--21st century--History and criticism. I. Cooke,
Jennifer, 1977-
PN56.I6445S34 2013
809’.93353--dc23
2012039255
Typeset by Fakenham Prepress Solutions, Fakenham, Norfolk NR21 8NN
Contents
Acknowledgments vii
Notes on Contributors ix
List of Figures xiii
Part 1: Intimate Scene-Setting 1
1 Making a Scene: Towards an Anatomy of Contemporary Literary
Intimacies
Jennifer Cooke 3
2 A New Literary Intimacy: An interview with Nicholas Royle
Nicholas Royle and Jennifer Cooke 23
Part 2: Legacies, Love, Sex and Death: Scenes of Intimate Reading
and Writing 35
3 Reading the Intimacies of Shame in Edwidge Danticat’s Breath, Eyes,
Memory
Elina Valovirta 37
4 Citation and Intimacy in Janet Frame’s Autobiography
Sylvie Gambaudo 55
5 Textual Intimacies: Letters, Journals, Poetry – Ghost Writing
Telegraph Cottage
Felicity Allen and Simon Smith 73
6 Poetry and Intimacy: The Engagements of Keston Sutherland
Aaron Deveson 95
7 Talking About Love in Raymond Carver
Catherine Humble 115
vi Contents
8 Rebecca Brown, Intimate: A Literary Response to Stereotypes about
Gender and Lesbian Sexuality
Lies Xhonneux 135
9 Impersonal Intimacies: Echoes of Bataille in Ian McEwan’s On
Chesil Beach
Jill Marsden 153
10 ‘Dear Osama’: Impersonal Intimacy and the Problem of Mothering
in Chris Cleave’s Incendiary
Reina van der Wiel 171
11 Breast Cancer Autopathography: The Laws of the Body and the
Body of the Law
Helen Thomas 191
Index 211
Acknowledgments
Grateful thanks are due to Daphne Todd for permission to reprint a photograph
of her incredible painting, Last Portrait of my Mother. Thanks are also due to
the Wellcome Library for permission to reproduce images from their library
collection. As the editor, I would like to thank my contributors for all their
work, especially those whose chapters have been through several versions in the
process of bringing this collection to publication. Sarah Dillon commented upon
an early proposal for this project and her recommendations were invaluable in
bringing the book into the shape it is now. Julian Wolfreys is due thanks for
early advice on the project. I additionally want to thank Elizabeth Brunton and
Nicholas Fitzroy-Dale for reading and commenting upon drafts of the intro-
duction. I am also grateful for the support of the Department of English and
Drama at Loughborough University, who gave me the space and administrative
support to organize a conference in September 2010 on the topic of writing
intimacy, which enabled me to meet many of the contributors to this volume.

Notes on Contributors
Felicity Allen is an artist, writer and educator. Her current work includes a
dialogic portraits series in prose and watercolour. As guest scholar at the Getty
Research Institute (2011–12) she reviewed Nahnou-Together, a social art project
with artists and young people from Amman, Damascus and London between
2004 and 2010. Two books came out in 2011: Education (MIT/Whitechapel
Documents of Contemporary Art) and Your Sketchbook Your Self (Tate). She has
been involved in gallery education for the last two decades, most recently leading
the education department at Tate Britain (2003–10). www.felicityallen.co.uk
Jennifer Cooke is Lecturer in English at Loughborough University. She is the
author of Legacies of Plague in Literature, Theory and Film (Palgrave 2009) and
has published articles on modernism, psychoanalysis, contemporary poetics,
and Hélène Cixous. She is currently writing a monograph about intimacy, affect
and innovative writing in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries and is editor
of a special issue of Textual Practice entitled Challenging Intimacies: Legacies of
Psychoanalysis (2013).
Aaron Deveson is Assistant Professor in the Department of English, National
Taiwan Normal University (NTNU). He has published articles and book
chapters on David Constantine and Hölderlin, Denise Riley, Edwin Denby,
and Frank O’Hara; two more book chapters, one on Charles Tomlinson and
the other on Peter Riley, are forthcoming. Apart from post-romantic and late
modernist poetry, his academic interests include theories of translation and
literature about time. He is currently funded by the National Science Council
of Taiwan to carry out research on the work of James Schuyler.
Sylvie Gambaudo is a lecturer in the Department of Philosophy at Durham
University. She has written on feminism, theories of subjectivity, sexual difference,
and child development and is the author of Kristeva, Psychoanalysis and Culture
(Ashgate 2007). Her current research focuses on the writings of Janet Frame, the
work of Julia Kristeva and on melancholic experience. Sylvie Gambaudo is the
Deputy Director of the Research Centre for Sex, Gender and Sexualities.