The death of the author and the defeat of the critic: an exploration of the relationship between the author, text and reader in two novels by Don DeLillo

Abstract

At the close of The Body Artist, Lauren thinks back to the events which have given shape to the novel, to Rey's death and the appearance of Mr. Tuttle. She thinks to herself that these "stories she told herself did not seems hers exactly." As Lauren reasons, "she was in them so heedlessly they seemed to come from a deeper source, whatever that might mean, a thing that was overtaking her. Where did they come from?" (115). Lauren's question highlights a central problem for the reader of both Underworld and The Body Artist: where do these stories come from? Where does one locate the origin/s of these stories? In this thesis, I have chosen to perform a series of close analyses of two novels by Don DeLillo, Underworld and The Body Artist in order to tease apart such problems. In my view, by placing models of the novel within the novel, through the relationships between the artist-figure, the works of art and the operation of viewing, the novels themselves problematise the traditional concepts of the author, the text, and the reader. The negotiation of/for meaning that occurs in and amongst these relationships invites, or rather requires, the reader to consciously think of the operations of representation, meaning-construction and interpretation. The result of this, I believe, is the creation of ever-different texts, and of a multiplicity of provisional meanings for them. Klara's art installation piece in Underworld is a vehicle for consideration of the modes of representation in the novel at large. The art work is revealed as a centre-less structure, without a founding basis upon which interpretation can rest. Klara, the artist of the work, is shown to be reluctant or unable to provide the work with a final meaning, denying the possibility for conceiving of the artist as the true origin of meaning. This denial of the origin in representation is applied to another chapter of the novel, in which Klara attends a screening of a "lost" film of Sergei Eisenstein, Unterwelt. No longer in the interviewer's chair, Klara now turns to the figure of the director in order to discover the meaning of the film she watches. Presenting two modes of reading through Klara, the artist, the novel provides significant lessons for how to conceive of meaning, representation and interpretation in relation to the novel as a whole. The Body Artist takes these concepts and extends them to their limits. This time the artist is Lauren Hartke, who is involved in performance art. The novel also displays an awareness of its own construction of meaning, exposing its systems of signification and the absence of the origin in order to show the reader how the novel works. This is achieved in two reading-models, a newspaper which Lauren reads over breakfast and Mr. Tuttle, another character in the book. Through these models, the reader is instructed that there is no novel before their reading of it, and that each moment spent inside the text produces a different reading. Lauren's performance art piece. Body Time, represents the novel within itself, exposing how the book is constructed as a depiction of the world, and the place of the reader in this fictional reality.