‘Like a bird he looks upwards’: inarticulateness in fiction

Deposited with permission of the author. © 2010 Gabrielle LisThis Creative Writing MA has two main components: a creative work and a dissertation. Both components grapple with the problems and possibilities of inarticulateness in fiction. The creative work comprises Part One of a novel, “The Yellow Jumper”, set in contemporary Australia. “The Yellow Jumper” is a work of poetic realism that begins with, and returns to, a man sitting in the gutter in front of his terrace in Sydney‘s Surry Hills, while an un-seasonal wintertime ‘Southerly Buster’ blows. This man, Simon Leary, finds himself increasingly unable to communicate with his girlfriend, Anna, and his best friend, Muz. He is also increasingly engrossed by memories of the Murray River, near which he grew up. The inarticulateness in “The Yellow Jumper” belongs to Simon: the prose foregrounds, without mimicking, his difficulties of expression. The dissertation begins with a prologue, “Clashing in the Gap”. This prologue outlines some of the stark contrasts between “The Yellow Jumper” and American Psycho, but also emphasises how a concern with inarticulateness underlies both works. However, in Ellis’ novel, inarticulateness is deliberately formal and modal, as well as being a trait possessed by the characters. The thesis, “Tapping the Gap: American Psycho and Inarticulateness,” is informed by contemporary satiric theory and Anglo-American moral philosophy. Cora Diamond’s work furnishes me with a way of thinking about the concept “inarticulateness” - a concept that the first chapter of the thesis is concerned to define in relation to literature, especially postmodern literature. The second chapter of the thesis telescopes in on the problems and possibilities of inarticulate satire. Here, I delineate the satiric mode, and then demonstrate how American Psycho invokes and disappoints satiric conventions. Both components view inarticulateness as a tool of which creative writers may make use. The gap between experience and expression is a difficult space to inhabit; it is also, I suggest, potentially a fertile space for the creative writer