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Access Type

Campus Access

Document Type

thesis

Degree Program

English

Degree Type

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

Year Degree Awarded

2010

Month Degree Awarded

May

Keywords

temporality, out, way, Beckett, non-gender, degree-zero

Abstract

These stories are markers of temporal planes, the physical and the emotional, the swift and the fell. They operate at two ends; they are written and so are finitely formed and they are read indefinitely and yet only exist when they are read again. As a writer, this is my means of extension, waiving at the future with my ghost in the voices of my characters. They are also my archive, preserving instances of personal observation in the description of the body, still and living, moving in scene. For accuracy, I've done my best to emulate their movement. The analogy might be of a puppeteer pretending she has strings or better, the sand castles she's made are first only etchings at the shore; their formations quickly washed away and begun again then built better inland. To push metaphor: the description of body and movement within these stories are one kind of mirror and the author is another. The simultaneity of the reader lies between both. Perhaps this is paradoxical: these stories are archival and yet emulate timeless human occasion. I've desired to push metaphor and yet keep clear. My place between clarity and complexity is yet to melt-down from its oasis and gather into something drinkable.

DOI

https://doi.org/10.7275/1274303

First Advisor

Christopher Bachelder

COinS