Invited to speak at this interesting conference on 5 March at the University College of London, along with the novelist Stewart Home.
http://ies.sas.ac.uk/events/conferences/2010/Nightmare/index.htm
As with the recent event in Luton, I feel on relatively safe ground (my presentation’s based on the novel). It’s still a bit daunting though. Actually, I’m starting to realise it doesn’t matter whether they cheer or boo, it still goes down on your CV. But increasingly I’m seeing these things as performances. It’s not what you say so much as how you say it.
And so the long search to become an effective public speaker continues. Part of the job. At least I’m getting a fair bit of practice.
Here’s the proposal:
‘Losing the Body’: De Quincey, Confessions and The Knocking at the Gate
When is a dream not a dream? How will we know when it ends? When, as in De Quincey’s essay, comes a knocking at the gate? What if no knocking comes?
This paper will examine the concept of waking nightmare, the reality of a man unable to stop committing evil deeds in real life because of the dream-like quality of his existence, as depicted in a novel written for a PhD. Lost Bodies was submitted to the University of Strathclyde in 2006 and was awarded the doctorate at the Viva without any changes – the first full-length novel to be awarded the qualification in Scotland. A confession of a sort, as in a soul whispering to itself, it follows in the tradition of dark tales of living hells told by spirits unable to comprehend or control their lives, because of their failure to acknowledge the existence of others: confessions of justified sinners, of trainspotters, of opium eaters. And yet, though he lives in an isolated, impenetrable world, he seeks reality, and deals in flesh and blood. Only through the body can he understand; only through the body can he make sense of what he searches for. Sounds, images, symbols, smells and tactile impressions mix and merge in a tale of synesthetic horror.
The paper will range across classical and contemporary criticism and include extracts from the book.
David Manderson is a novelist and academic. He lectures in Creative Writing & Screenwriting at the University of the West of Scotland. He has published short stories in magazines and anthologies in Scotland and the USA. His novel Lost Bodies will be published by Cargo Publishing in 2010. He runs the Tchai Ovna readings in Glasgow’s West End.