Text/Countertext: Postmodern Paranoia in Samuel Beckett, Doris Lessing, and Philip Roth

Text/Countertext: Postmodern Paranoia in Samuel Beckett, Doris Lessing, and Philip Roth analyzes the psychological and structural dynamic of three postmodern novels: Samuel Beckett’s Malone Dies. Doris Lessing’s The Golden Notebook, and Philip Roth’s The Counterlife. Storytelling becomes here the dangerous activity of a guilty outsider who has come to expect hostile disapproval from all quarters. The result is a sadomasochistic confrontation between these postmodern writers and their imagined audiences: the pleasure of storytelling is linked to the pain the authors inflict upon their readers in retaliation for their anticipated disapproval. The structural consequence is serial negation - the constant agonistic oscillation between text and countertext, reflecting the authors’ determined efforts to sidestep criticism and maintain artistic control.

The Author: Marie A. Danziger is Preceptor in Public Policy Communications at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, where she is also Associate Director of the Policy Analysis Exercise Program. She received her Ph.D. in English from Boston University and has taught at the Universities of Geneva and Sydney and at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education. She has recently published articles in popular culture and public policy analysis and is co-author of ＂Communicating in Business Today.＂