The joys, costs, and consequences of discovery

Before writing my last post I spent a few minutes Googling Possession-related content, and I came across this absolute gem: Romances of the Archive in Contemporary British Fiction. It’s the work of academic Suzanne Keen.

An ‘archival romance’, in case you were wondering, is a plot which relies on a portrayal of an archive (e.g. a library of books) and / or archival research (e.g. looking through books to try to discover something). If, like me, you like books about people studying books, then this extract from the Romances of the Archive blurb is guaranteed to excite you:

Using the work of Peter Ackroyd, Julian Barnes, Lindsay Clarke, Stevie Davies, Peter Dickinson, Alan Hollinghurst, P.D. James, Graham Swift, and others, Keen shows how archival romances insist that there is a truth and that it can be found. By characterizing the researcher who investigates, then learns the joys, costs, and consequences of discovery, Romances of the Archive persistently questions the purposes of historical knowledge and the kind of reading that directs the imagination to conceive the past.

BetterWorldBooks in the US is currently selling secondhand copies for £4 inc. postage; here’s the link. I don’t think I’ve ever been this excited (or excited full stop) to get my hands on a work of literary criticism.

There is a truth and it can be found…