Abstract

This article suggests that recent novels by Sebastian Faulks, Amanda Craig and Jim Crace offer a different kind of satire. Craig's Hearts and Minds and Faulks's Week in December satirize the celebrity culture of contemporary London, a city mired in economic recession and post-9/11 suspicion. Craig does so by locating her protagonist within a publishing house and Faulks does so through the eyes of several different characters who comment on their favourite websites, television programmes and even art galleries. The article argues that such a satire is entirely dependent on an interaction between the novels in question and a range of other 'new' media narratives on television and the internet where these 'celebrities' are represented. The reader's imagination provides a nexus or focal point for such interaction to occur. At another level, however, the novels in question satirize not only this or that individual celebrity, but also the whole culture of representing celebrities through different media narratives. In other words, what is satirized is the practice of satire itself: satire upon satire.

Keywords

Jim Crace, Amanda Craig, Sebastian Faulks, literary criticism, metafiction, satire, Raymond Williams

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