Off-campus UMass Amherst users: To download campus access theses, please use the following link to log into our proxy server with your UMass Amherst user name and password.

Non-UMass Amherst users: Please talk to your librarian about requesting this thesis through interlibrary loan.

Theses that have an embargo placed on them will not be available to anyone until the embargo expires.

ORCID

https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6844-9830

Document Type

Campus Access

Degree Program

English

Degree Type

Master of Fine Arts (M.F.A.)

Year Degree Awarded

2022

Month Degree Awarded

February

Keywords

crime, fiction, bildungsroman, mystery, youth, music

DOI

https://doi.org/10.7275/27249790.0

Abstract

This project started as inspections of violence in different forms, specifically childhood violence. I created scenes of lost youth and displacement and some kind of fragmentation, or eruption of violence, that seemed to also justify the fragmented nature of the scenes, and how they may have been jaggedly connected. Then I had a strong urge to novelize the characters I had written, I wanted to tell their full story.

The narrator Christian overtakes the novel, so it could be described as an i-novel really. He isn’t always an active participant in the action of what’s happening in the scenes, but he’ll sit back as more of an observer. The narrator’s most salient feature is his need to connect, as he presents a series of failures in accessing, or being accessible to, his friends.

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.

Available for download on Monday, February 01, 2027

Share

COinS