James Clements

University of Southern California, Writing Program, Faculty Member

Followers

Following

Co-author

Public Views

Dr. James Clements lectures in the Writing Program at the University of Southern California. His areas of interest include post-1945 fiction, ethics, and theology. His book Mysticism and the Mid-Century Novel was published by Palgrave Macmillan in Fall 2011. Recent articles include "‘The Thing in the Box’: William Golding’s ‘Miss Pulkinhorn’ as Apophatic Literature" in The Journal of Religion and Literature and "Trust Your Makers Of Things!: The Metafictional Pact in Dave Eggers’ You Shall Know Our Velocity" in Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction." He is currently working on a book that explores experiments with literary realism in the postwar British novel, and is writing a chapter on Iris Murdoch for an upcoming publication from Cambridge University Press.

Dr. Clements completed his Bachelor's Degree at the University of Toronto before relocating to the United Kingdom. He undertook his Master's degree at University College, London, before moving to the University of Cambridge, where he completed his Ph.D.

Dr. Clements has also released three albums: Kill Devil Hills (2004), When The Saints Go (2008), and The Road to Anhedonia (2011). He has also published academic articles on popular music, with recent pieces on Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen.

less

Joseph Carroll

University of Missouri - St. Louis

James Elkins

School of the Art Institute of Chicago

Scott R. Stroud

The University of Texas at Austin

Cristiana Facchini

Università di Bologna

micaela latini

University of Ferrara

Remo Caponi

University of Cologne

Beverly Haviland

Brown University

Manfred Malzahn

United Arab Emirates University

Tim Youngs

Nottingham Trent University

Karl Baier

University of Vienna

InterestsView All (14)

Uploads

Books by James Clements

Mysticism and the Mid-Century Novel

The mid-century novelist has often been regarded as occupying an ambiguous intermediary period, l... more The mid-century novelist has often been regarded as occupying an ambiguous intermediary period, lost somewhere in the no-man's-land between modernism and postmodernism. This book challenges this view by proposing that many of the period's most significant writers – Iris Murdoch, William Golding, Patrick White, and Saul Bellow – were united by a distinct and common concern: to return the increasingly interior novel to the world, and, by extension, to ethical engagement. They did this not by reviving the now-antiquated nineteenth-century realist novel, but by devising a new type of novel, one concerned with unveiling a transcendent Good that exists outside of the spheres of society, politics, and the individual will. To do this, without ignoring the philosophical ideas that had led to the novel's apparent impoverishment – the opacity of language, and the loss of stable external sources of meaning – they drew upon techniques and concepts from the canon of mystical literature: a body of writing that had long been devising methods of approaching the ineffable through literary means.

Download

Papers by James Clements

"The Thing In The Box": William Golding's "Miss Pulkinhorn" As Apophatic Literature

Golding's early short story "Miss Pulkinhorn" has received little critical attention, despite the... more Golding's early short story "Miss Pulkinhorn" has received little critical attention, despite the fact that it serves as an illuminating distillation of Golding's understanding of religious and literary symbolism as it manifested in his early writing, as well as the paradox at its heart. "Miss Pulkinhorn," like much of Golding's work, is most often understood as a complex literary puzzle that calls upon readers to hunt for subtle clues to uncover its meaning. This article challenges this interpretation by suggesting that searching for a solution to the apparent puzzle is a snipe hunt, as it can only be solved by refusing to play. Throughout his early work, Golding suggests that one must accept the limitations of knowledge, and that this acceptance will lead, not lead to nihilism, but to a mystical epiphany. By drawing connections between the mock puzzle-box structure of "Miss Pulkinhorn" and his similarly designed novels of the same period most notably Pincher Martin, Free Fall, and The Spire this article contends that Golding often educated his readers about his theory of void not didactically, but by leading them through a literary via negativa of sorts. By luring the reader into a puzzle hunt and then refusing a solution, Golding shifts our attention from surfaces in order to reveal what lies beneath. To make this argument, this article focuses on the mysterious tabernacle of Miss Pulkinhorn's cathedral that may or may not contain an impossible physical representation of the divine, and, as such, serves as both symbol and anti-symbol. By drawing connections between the unrevealed host and Ludwig Wittgenstein's "beetle in the box," the article contends that, in Golding's work, symbols often function apophatically. By refusing to negate the possibility of ineffable truth, while denying any possibility of approaching it through language, Golding pushes the reader beyond the language-game towards the unrepresentable God.

Download

Trust Your Makers of Things!: The Metafictional Pact in Dave Eggers’s You Shall Know Our Velocity

Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction, Mar 2015

This article argues that Dave Eggers’s You Shall Know Our Velocity invites the reader, via variou... more This article argues that Dave Eggers’s You Shall Know Our Velocity invites the reader, via various textual markers, to enter into a “metafictional pact” with the author, through which the reader
agrees to view the text as a writerly act, rather than as an object or event; through this pact, a new moral significance is granted to the text and to the relationship formed between author and
reader.

Download

‘“Verbal Sludge”: Mud and Malleability in the Novels of Patrick White.’

Download

Bottomless Surfaces: Saul Bellow's "Refreshed Phrenology"

In Saul Bellow's 1970 novel Mr. Sammler's Planet, the eponymous narrator states that society shou... more In Saul Bellow's 1970 novel Mr. Sammler's Planet, the eponymous narrator states that society should resist its temptation to "explain," and should instead concentrate on "distinguishing"; the goal, he suggests, is to attain a level of perception in which meaning is found within the world, rather than imposed upon it. This idea runs to the core of Bellow's work, which often suggests that there are some intangible truths — morality, for instance — that are not merely human constructions, but have an objective ontological presence. These truths, Bellow's work playfully suggests, can be discovered if one attempts to collapse the false divide between subject and object. Once one accepts the troublesome idea of "truth in subjectivity," one can begin to "distinguish" between self-imposed concepts and "natural knowledge." This article traces this concept in Bellow's mid-period work in relation to his ethical theory, and argues that it has its roots in the writing of two key influences, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and his follower Rudolf Steiner.

Download

The Marvel of Islam: Reconciling Muslim Epistemologies through a New Islamic Origin Sage in Naif al-Mutawa's The 99

by James Clements and Richard Gauvain

The Journal of Religion and Popular Culture, Apr 2014

Since its inception in 2006, Islam’s most popular comic strip, The 99, and its creator, Naif al-M... more Since its inception in 2006, Islam’s most popular comic strip, The 99, and its creator, Naif al-Mutawa, have both been the subject of much media scrutiny. Despite eschewing references to the most significant texts, figures, and symbols of Islam—readers of the comic find no mention of the Qur’an or the Prophet—neither its fiercest critics nor its most fervent supporters doubt the essentially Islamic nature of The 99. Drawing on the responses of students at the American University in Dubai (AUD), this paper explores how and why, within this modern Gulf setting, The 99 resonates as a profoundly Islamic publication.
Attention is paid, first, to The 99’s origin saga, through which Muslim history is smoothed over, then re-spun in ways familiar to our students; and, second, to a number of special editions of The 99, through which al-Mutawa offers a new understanding of Islam’s
role—with remarkable implications for political leadership—in contemporary society, both Muslim and non-Muslim.

Download