Reimagining Literature: Artistic Ontology and the Future of Writing in Tom McCarthy's Remainder, Karl Ove Knausgaard's A Death in the Family, and Ben Lerner's 10.04

This thesis provides a reading of Tom McCarthy’s Remainder (2005), Karl Ove Knausgaard’s A Death in the Family (2013), and Ben Lerner’s 10.04 (2014) which argues that each text is centrally concerned with the problematic relationship between art and life and, further, the future of literature as it responds to changing contemporary understandings of the role of writing in shaping being. I consider the portrayal of virtuality within all three texts in the form of future projection and imagined realities, and then go on to suggest that they present the cause of this virtuality as artistic ontology – a conceptualisation of being which uses the artistic form to make sense of existence – and argue that the texts evaluate these processes, that each in its own way criticises their effectiveness in fully containing the reality of existence. The failure of artistic ontology implicates the continued value of literature, and as such I suggest that McCarthy, Knausgaard, and Lerner are concerned with considering new modes of writing in the face of what they see as its insufficiency. I consider the specific ways in which the texts rethink literature and its value, highlighting their use of post-irony and affect, and then read ‘Bad Collectivity’ as indicative of the possibilities of a new kind of affective artistic community. By considering the utility of this community to political movements which must happen off the page, this thesis positions reading as a social experience and highlights the value of reclaiming the virtual capacity of texts in allowing us to imagine the possibilities of the future.