Federman's Fictions

Description

This collection of essays offers an authoritative examination and appraisal of the French-American novelist Raymond Federman's many contributions to humanities scholarship, including Holocaust studies, Beckett studies, translation studies, experimental fiction, postmodernism, and autobiography. Although known primarily as a novelist, Federman (1928–2009) is also the author of numerous books of poetry, essays, translations, and criticism. After emigrating to the United States in 1942 and receiving a Ph.D. in comparative literature at UCLA in 1957, he held professorships in the University at Buffalo's departments of French and English from 1964 to 1999. Together with Steve Katz and Ronald Sukenick, he was one of the original founders of the Fiction Collective, a nonprofit publishing house dedicated to avant garde, experimental prose. Far too many accounts treat Federman as merely a member of a small group of writers who pioneered "metafictional" or "postmodern" American literature. Federman's Fiction will introduce (or, for some, reintroduce) to the broader scholarly community a creative and daring thinker whose work is significant not just to considerations of the development of innovative fiction, but to a number of other distinct disciplines and emerging critical discourses.
Preface
Some Answers for Raymond Federman
Charles Bernstein

Acknowledgments
Introduction
Other Voices: The Fiction of Raymond Federman
Jeffrey R. Di Leo

Part I. A Life in the Text

1. Beckett and Beyond: Federman the Scholar
Jerome Klinkowitz

2. How, and How Not, to Be a Published Novelist: The Case of Raymond Federman
Ted Pelton

3. Samuel Beckett and Raymond Federman: A Bilingual Companionship
Daniela Hurezanu

4. Filling in the Blanks: Raymond Federman, Self-Translator
Alyson Waters

5. Re-Double or Nothing: Federman, Autobiography, and Creative Literary Criticism
Larry McCaffery

Part II. Philosophy of Literature

6. A Narrative Poetics of Raymond Federman
Brian McHale

7. Surfiction, Not Sure Fiction: Raymond Federman's Second-Degree Textual Manipulations
Davis Schneiderman

8. Raymond Federman, the Ultimate Metafictioneer
Eckhard Gerdes

9. Formulating Yet Another Paradox: Raymond Federman's Real Fictitious Discourses
Thomas Hartl

10. The Agony of Unrecognition: Raymond Federman and Postmodern Theory
Eric Dean Rasmussen

11. Raymond Federman and Critical Theory
Jan Baetens

Part III. Laughter, History, and the Holocaust

12. Surviving in the Corridors of History or, History as Double or Nothing
Dan Stone

13. When Postmodern Play Meets Survivor Testimony: Federman and Holocaust Literature
Susan Rubin Suleiman

14. “In Black Inkblood”: Agonistic and Cooperative Authorship in the (Re)Writing of History
Marcel Cornis-Pope

15. Cosmobabble or, Federman’s Return
Christian Moraru

16. Featherman’s Body Literature or, the Unbearable Lightness of Being
Michael Wutz

17. Federman’s Laughterature
Menachem Feuer

Afterword
Critifictional Reflections on the Novel Today
Raymond Federman

About the Contributors
Index

Sujets

• USA
• United States of America
• Literary theory
• États-Unis
• France

Informations

• Publié par: State University of New York Press
• Date de parution: 02 janvier 2012
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781438433837
• Langue: English

Extrait

FEDERMAN'S FICTIONS
Innovation, Theory, and the Holocaust
Edited and with an introduction by
JEFFREY R. DI LEO
S TATE U NIVERSITY OF N EW Y ORK P RESS

Published by S TATE U NIVERSITY OF N EW Y ORK P RESS , A LBANY
© 2011 State University of New York
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.
For information, contact State University of New York Press, Albany, NY www.sunypress.edu
Production, Laurie Searl Marketing, Anne M. Valentine
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Federman's fictions : innovation, theory, and the Holocaust / edited by Jeffrey R. Di Leo.
      p. cm.
  Includes bibliographical references and index.
  ISBN 978-1-4384-3381-3 (hardcover : alk. paper)
  1. Federman, Raymond—Criticism and interpretation. 2. Federman, Raymond— Knowledge—Literature. 3. Experimental fiction, American—History and criticism. 4. Postmodernism (Literature)—United States. 5. Narration (Rhetoric)—History—20th century. 6. Criticism—United States—History—20th century. I. Di Leo, Jeffrey R.
  PS3556.E25Z65 2010
  813'.54—dc22                                                                                              2010016000
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

In memory of
Raymond Federman
(1928–2009)

Language is the sum total of myself.
—Charles Peirce, “Some Consequences of Four Incapacities”
I speak therefore I am.
—Raymond Federman, My Body in Nine Parts

PREFACE
Some Answers for Raymond Federman

Charles Bernstein
For Raymond Federman fiction is useless.
Fiction is a delusion we use to screen ourselves from reality and reality is largely, though not entirely, delusional. This is why Federman is a storyteller and not a novelist. And assuredly not a writer of fiction.
And if he tells the same stories over and again it is because the story is never the same in any telling because, if it were, that would be fiction. And Federman writes nonfiction. Historical nonfiction.
Or else what he writes is a bed of lies. (A hole inside a gap.)
And anyway it is never the same story and Federman tells it over and again because what he has to tell, like history, cannot be told once and for all.
Like the same dream you keep having only it's not the same and this time you can't wake up.
Federman wakes us up.
Federman is a spelunker of either historical memory or collective forgetting, depending on the reader. He is not interested in the well-lit paths through the cave nor even the once-marked offroads. What's a cave to him or he to a cave that we should weep so? Memory has become a way of forgetting, the recovered forgetting of the professional memoirist. Federman prefers the musings of Stan and Oliver, or Vladimir and Estragon. He speaks of his life like a defrocked poet at a coroner's inquest.
O, inconstant heart!
Digression is as much a foil as progression. Federman's digressions are as direct as “an arrow from the Almighty's bow.” They pierce but don't wound. The wound is the condition, the voice in the closet that comes out, like Tinker Bell, only if you say you believe it. And you believe it only at your peril. (Pauline will fend for herself.)
The elementary error of the literature of self-help and affirmation, the preferred fiction of the mediocracy, is that trauma is overcome, that you get better, that there is healing. That there can be understanding. Federman neither dwells on the abyss, nor theatricalizes it, nor explains it, nor looks away.
The Dark is the ground of his being and his becoming.
Go nameless so that the name you are called by becomes you.
Federman is an improper noun full of signs and stories signifying (precisely) nothing. Federman names that which is (k)not here .
He is our American Jabès, only the rabbis have been subsumed into the bouillabaisse and the ladder loaned to the roofer.
And from that roof, we shout to the crowd assembling below: Break it up! Go back to where you came from, if you can find it! There is nothing to see here .
The truth you seek is not on this earth nor in Heaven either.
Then, Federman begins again.
One more time.
The words, at least the words, are indelible, even if we are not.
Or so the story goes …

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

My primary debt of gratitude goes out to the contributors to this volume for sharing their thoughts on Raymond Federman. It is my hope that collectively their contributions will open up new lines of conversation about his work, and further establish appreciation for and understanding of it within the scholarly community at large.
In addition, it should be noted that this book would not have been possible without the support and encouragement of Raymond Federman. He was more than generous with his time, and this volume has benefited greatly from his guidance.
I would also like to single out David Felts of the American Book Review for his assistance in the production of this volume. His timely support was instrumental in bringing this volume to publication. Special thanks also go out to Sunitha Subbaiah for her efforts at securing permissions, to Brenna McErlean for her assistance with the page proofs, and to Andi Olsen for providing Federman photos for the cover.
Finally, I would like to thank my wife Nina for her unfailing encouragement, support, and patience.
INTRODUCTION
OTHER VOICES

The Fiction of Raymond Federman
Jeffrey R. Di Leo

BEFORE—AND AFTER—THEORY
Over the past thirty or so years, the fiction of Raymond Federman has been the subject of a good deal of scholarship in multiple languages. Numerous critical studies of his work have been published. 1 Also, doctoral dissertations 2 have been written about him, and several volumes celebrating his achievements 3 have come out. This is in addition to the many articles and book chapters devoted his work. However, in spite of this wealth of attention, the full range of Federman's achievements have yet to be fully recognized by the academic community.
One of the reasons for this lack of recognition stems from the ways in which Federman's novels have been categorized. In the United States, Federman's work has most commonly been connected with a group of writers that brought new “life” to American fiction in the wake of pronouncements of the death of the novel in the late 1960s. 4 As such, his revitalizing, innovative peers include Donald Barthelme, Robert Coover, Steve Katz, Clarence Major, Ishmael Reed, Gilbert Sorrentino, and Ronald Sukenick. While the identification of Federman with this group of writers is accurate, important, and not without its merits, in the long run, it has served to exclude or marginalize his work from other—and arguably even more significant—contexts.
Far too many accounts treat Federman as merely a member of a small group of writers that created through narrative experimentation a pioneering body of “metafiction” or “postmodern” American literature. Though relevant to those interested in tracing the development of American letters, such accounts neglect the range of his contributions to both the contemporary critical and world literature canons—contributions that scholars are only just beginning to recognize and explore in detail.
The aim of this volume is to introduce (or, for some, to reintroduce) to the broader scholarly community an amazingly creative and daring thinker whose work is significant to not just considerations of the development of innovative fiction in America, but potentially to a number of distinct disciplines, and established and emerging critical discourses. These critical discourses include translation studies, Jewish studies, Holocaust studies, bilingual studies, Beckett studies, cultural studies, philosophy of language, postmodern theory, body criticism, critical theory, identity studies, narrative theory, trauma studies, philosophy of literature, and autobiography theory, among others. It should be noted that the disciplines represented here are far wider than just English, the standard province of Federman scholarship. They include philosophy, comparative literature, foreign languages, history, linguistics, and sociology.
The contributors to this volume place Federman's work, either through his narrative practice or critical contributions, as an important figure in many areas of contemporary critical concern. They reveal his work to be a rich source for those invested in contemporary cultural studies and literary theory, and show it as contributing to some of the most fascinating and challeng