Dr. Tom Whalen (Bamberg University): "Deviant Behavior: Reading and Writing Critical Fiction"

Monday, 08.07.2013, 4:15 - 5:45 p.m., U5/02.18

Of the various transgenres, critical fiction poses special problems for the reader and writer, among them its levels of irony and reliability. Drawing from his own critical fictions on Henry James, Joseph Conrad, Robert Walser, and the nouveau roman, Tom Whalen will address some of the deviant aspects of this hybrid form.

Dr. Tom Whalen—currently guest professor of American Studies at Bamberg University—is a novelist, short story writer, poet and critic who has written for Agni, Bookforum, Film Quarterly, The Iowa Review, The Southern Review, the Washington Post and other publications.  His work, as The Review of Contemporary Fiction has said, “is thickly lyrical and meditative, interrogating the relation of language to things, of books to life.” Whalen’s recent books include the novel The President in Her Towers (Ellipsis, 2013), The Birth of Death and Other Comedies: The Novels of Russell H. Greenan (Dalkey Archive, 2011) and Dolls: Prose Poems (Caketrain, 2007).  Hotel Ortolan, with photographs by Michel Varisco, will appear later this year from Black Scat Books.