83 research outputs found
Author Spotlight on: Garrard Conley
No full textCelebrate the publication achievements of this KSU faculty member! He will discuss his first novel, Boy Erased, and touch on the editing process for his upcoming second novel. This spotlight is the first in a series of events celebrating Fair Use Week 2021 with the KSU libraries
From hindsight to insight: retrospective analysis of language written by a renowned Alzheimer's patient
No full textAmong the early symptoms of Alzheimer's disease is a gradual decline of language skills. Longitudinal studies are a useful way to study the development of linguistic abilities in the course of a person's lifetime; subjects producing sufficient language output to allow a study spanning decades are rare but can provide valuable information. In this study, we analysed lexical diversity in three books by Gerard Reve (1923-2006), an acclaimed Dutch literary author who wrote his last novel not long before diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease. The data show a clear-cut decline in lexical diversity, coinciding with a reported 'forgetfulness' starting halfway during the creative process of writing this last novel. The findings match those of Garrard et al. (2005) in their study of Iris Murdoch
"Speak Your Mind and Speak it Clearly" : Discourse and the Importance of Voices in Boy Erased, Garrard Conley
No full textThe voices of the autodiegetic narrator and its character counterpart in Boy Erased: A Memoir by Garrard Conley enter the debate around the ontology of voice in literary texts. Using this debate, I will provide an analysis of the voices in this memoir in order to prove the importance of assuming a voice for the narrator, to compensate for speech silenced through discourses and social contexts. The social contexts and discourses that surround the main character silence his speech, to the point that it can be actively used to control even the private self, as gay conversion therapy tries to do. This dangerous silence leads to a need to finally be heard, which is provided through the ontologically silent voice of the narrator. This evolvement of the character to the narrator is the reason why voice and the way it allows for heard speech is essential
The effects of very early Alzheimer's disease on the characteristics of writing by a renowned author
No full textIris Murdoch (I.M.) was among the most celebrated British writers of the post-war era. Her final novel, however, received a less than enthusiastic critical response on its publication in 1995. Not long afterwards, I.M. began to show signs of insidious cognitive decline, and received a diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease, which was confirmed histologically after her death in 1999. Anecdotal evidence, as well as the natural history of the condition, would suggest that the changes of Alzheimer's disease were already established in I.M. while she was writing her final work. The end product was unlikely, however, to have been influenced by the compensatory use of dictionaries or thesauri, let alone by later editorial interference. These facts present a unique opportunity to examine the effects of the early stages of Alzheimer's disease on spontaneous written output from an individual with exceptional expertise in this area. Techniques of automated textual analysis were used to obtain detailed comparisons among three of her novels: her first published work, a work written during the prime of her creative life and the final novel. Whilst there were few disparities at the levels of overall structure and syntax, measures of lexical diversity and the lexical characteristics of these three texts varied markedly and in a consistent fashion. This unique set of findings is discussed in the context of the debate as to whether syntax and semantics decline separately or in parallel in patients with Alzheimer's disease
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Our Day Will Come
No full textOur Day Will Come is a novel that centers around two stories set one hundred years apart in Dublin, Ireland. Kath McDermott is a budding paper conservator tasked with restoring the journal of a relatively unknown IRA rebel and Squad member, Darcy McNamara, who vanishes after his final mission on Bloody Sunday, 1920. Kath engages Teagan, a self-exiled Traveller, to help translate Darcy’s journal from Irish and the Cant into English. When Kath is nearly killed in a pre-mediated car bombing perpetrated by the political extremist group, Saoradh, it becomes clear that discovering Darcy’s full history has more implications for her own life than she could have ever imagined. While drawing connections between the IRA and Saoradh, Kath, in recovering the transformation of Darcy’s sexuality, also comes to recognize and accept her own queer identity. Our Day Will Come is a contemplation on the dualities of past and present that aims to complicate black-and-white perceptions of war, morality, faith, and heteronormativity. As an Irish-American woman of queer-identification, my passion runs deep for portraying the nuance of Irish history and developing conversations about the erasure of non-normative sexualities from stories of the past. The thesis comprises of the first seven chapters of Our Day Will Come
Our Day Will Come
No full textOur Day Will Come is a novel that centers around two stories set one hundred years apart in Dublin, Ireland. Kath McDermott is a budding paper conservator tasked with restoring the journal of a relatively unknown IRA rebel and Squad member, Darcy McNamara, who vanishes after his final mission on Bloody Sunday, 1920. Kath engages Teagan, a self-exiled Traveller, to help translate Darcy’s journal from Irish and the Cant into English. When Kath is nearly killed in a pre-mediated car bombing perpetrated by the political extremist group, Saoradh, it becomes clear that discovering Darcy’s full history has more implications for her own life than she could have ever imagined. While drawing connections between the IRA and Saoradh, Kath, in recovering the transformation of Darcy’s sexuality, also comes to recognize and accept her own queer identity. Our Day Will Come is a contemplation on the dualities of past and present that aims to complicate black-and-white perceptions of war, morality, faith, and heteronormativity. As an Irish-American woman of queer-identification, my passion runs deep for portraying the nuance of Irish history and developing conversations about the erasure of non-normative sexualities from stories of the past. The thesis comprises of the first seven chapters of Our Day Will Come
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The Sun’s Circuit
No full textThe Sun’s Circuit follows a temporarily unnamed young man as he tries to navigate the worlds of drug addiction, incarceration, institutionalization, and homelessness. It is written, mostly, in the first person, save for the first section, which dips into a sort of second (which is still kind of first). The primary tension of the text is epistemological. This tension is between a solipsistic, static searching for self-knowledge (as exemplified through scientific and pseudo-scientific understandings of addiction and mental illness) vs. a more outward facing, social, and totalized movement through life (developed through relationships, nature, and art). Time serves as a method of control for the narrator. By freezing memories and isolating incidents, he is able to put his life under a microscope, so to speak, but this method doesn’t ever satisfy him or teach him much about himself, and he is not very good at it. Divorcing these memories and phenomena from context and progressive narrative (as he, himself, is isolated and stuck in a cycle) causes him to “miss the forest for the trees.” Most of his relationships throughout the text are vertical. Therapists, institutions, and authority figures deliver competing methods of self-understanding to him. This gets intentionally muddled, confusing, and often humorous, as he tries to find a thread. The Sun’s Circuit is, at its core, about a consciousness understanding itself
Le scandale du gaz à Salford en 1887
No full textJohn GARRARD, The Salford gas scandal of 1887. This article recounts what was basically a very simple event. At the end of the 19th century, the director of the Salford gasworks, judging himself the victim of libel, brought suit against a coal manufacturer, who in turn accused him of taking bribes. The affair ricocheted several times, and revealed corrupt practices not only for the city of Salford, but for the entire gas industry and in numerous other economic activities, and in the end extended to a national level. In order to understand this event, the author provides the following explanations: 1) the increasing importance of urban technical networks; were made clear by the affair; 2) labor relations in local administrations functioned primarily in terms of individual principles; 3) the affair was not limited to the gas industry, and perhaps only reflected standard business practices of the times; 4) the whole thing was made possible in the first place because the distinction between speculative industrial activities and service activities - in particular public service - had not yet been clearly defined.John GARRARD, Le scandale du gaz à Salford en 1887. L'histoire est en elle même simple. A la fin du XIXe siècle, le directeur de l'entreprise du gaz de Salford, s'estimant diffamé, attaque en justice un industriel du charbon qui l'accuse de corruption. L'affaire va rebondir de multiples fois et faire apparaître des pratiques de corruption à Salford bien sûr, mais aussi dans toute l'industrie gazière et dans de nombreux secteurs économiques. L'affaire prend une dimension nationale. Pour en apprécier la portée, l'auteur propose quatre explications : 1) cette affaire témoigne de l'importance croissante des réseaux techniques urbains ; 2) elle s'explique parce que les relations de travail dans les collectivités locales fonctionnent avant tout sur des principes individuels ; 3) cette affaire n'est pas propre aux entreprises gazières; l'auteur considère même qu'elle ne fait que refléter les pratiques commerciales d'alors ; 4) cela est possible parce que la distinction entre les activités industrielles spéculatives et les activités de services, en particulier les services publics, n'était pas établie.Garrard John, Monnier Pascale. Le scandale du gaz à Salford en 1887. In: Flux, n°10, 1992. pp. 8-24
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