Crime Scene Investigation

Ever watch CSI? I'm always amazed at the details those people uncover! The strand of hair, the microscopic fibers, the invisible traces of chemical compounds--that invariably provide the key to the case. I figured this close reading would require that kind of attention to detail, so I pulled out my magnifying glass and started dusting for prints....

From shoeprints to epithelials, the evidence all pointed in one direction: The author function had been here.

My quick take on the Mantissa case as a whole: While I can understand the "cleverness" of the concept for this story about stories, the way in which Fowles chose to make his point turned this reader off. Disregarding the gratuitous details, however, I'd like to focus this close reading on the following passage from part one of Mantissa, in which Nurse Cory brings the "newborn novel" to Miles: "It's a lovely little story. And you made it all by yourself."

In class Tuesday afternoon, we discussed the idea that Fowles is exploring the identity of the author and then related this to the concepts of writer's block and Lacan's mirror stage, in which an infant gains subjectivity through recognition by an "other." It seems curious to me that the regaining of Miles' subjectivity is equated in this first part of the book with overcoming writer's block. In other words, authorship and identity seem to be one and the same for Miles. Writing isn't something he does--it's who he is. It seems to me that in this way, Miles stands for the author in the sense of Foucault's author function.

In this first part of the book, we can see illustrated the four elements of Foucault's author function:

1. Connection to the legal system: Who has responsibility for the text (it's immediately handed over to Miles, the author).


2. The author function applies to Miles as a fiction writer, though it would not have applied in the same way if this had been a medical treatise instead.


3. This passage also raises obvious questions of attribution, since the story did not come about in isolation.


4. And finally, as we saw above, this author function doesn’t refer simply to a real individual, but refers in a sense to the "writing voice" of the author.

In saying that Miles has "made" the story all by himself--false, according to the story--the relationship of author to text is being called into question. This comment by Nurse Cory seems to be in line with the liberal humanist view of authorship, in which texts are products of authors, whose intention dictate meaning.

Another point made in class gives another insight into this passage, as well: At the same time that the liberal humanist point of view is being challenged, it also seems that the limits of critical theory are being tested. By implicitly questioning the role of the muse in the creation of this story, this passage also asks what place the creative imagination, inspiration, holds in the world of theory. Since the entire novel takes place within the mind of the author, however, we seem to be led back to the beginning. In the end, Miles never interacts with anything outside himself.