The
Writer’s Fugue, Australian Fugue: The Antipode Room,
and Post-Traumatic Modernism: Three New Books
by Ruth Skilbeck Available Soon on Amazon.
Australian Fugue: The Antipode Room Ruth Skilbeck's first novel will be on sale on Amazon by next week.
Ruth Skilbeck’s book The Writer’s Fugue: Musicalization, Trauma, and Subjectivity in the
Literature of Modernity will be available soon, beginning as her PhD thesis, edited and updated, discusses history (and oppression) of
freedom of expression in literary writers, and is a call for freedom of
expression, beyond the recent theory of ‘death of the author’. She said: “When I was researching the book I found
out how some of the world’s best known authors were deeply affected by trauma,
of loss of loved ones, exile, and impacts of wars and conflicts, and that these
authors used the musical fugue form as a way of structuring their art, to make
a way of writing the unspeakable, through using musicalization to express their
deep and often sublimated feelings, and to bear witness to atrocities, and to
grief, loss of self.
It was after I had finished my PhD that I
found out about exiled artists and writers in Australia; writers campaigned on
their behalf for their release.
I began to research and write about writers
in detention and interviewed a poet and journalist who had been in detention.
This is what drives me now to speak out for
the humane treatment of refugees, asylum seekers in detention camps run by
Australia, in the islands of Manus, Nauru, Christmas Island, and to see how
important the symbolic and literal political act of boycott and protest by
citizens is, in the process of change for the better of humanity. That is why
boycotted the Biennale of Sydney 2014, until the sponsorship issue was resolved
at that time, and why I wrote about it on my blog, The Daily Fugue.” She wrote about this here in 2014.
Post-Traumatic Modernism: Modernity and Literary Fugue, Ruth
Skilbeck’s second literary history and theory book expanding on The Writer’s Fugue research and themes,
and with new material, will be published by PostMistress
Press. She says: “Why I decided to make The Writer’s Fugue available, even though I am writing another book
on these themes, is that I have already referred to it by name, in several
essays I wrote that have been published by international scholarly journals (Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies;
Pacific Journalism Review; International Journal of the Arts in Society)
and in books by Routledge and Taylor and Francis (Critical Articulations: Cultural Studies of Rights, ed. John Ngyuet
Erni), over the past five years.
I
have also been approached by readers and PhD researchers, and so have decided
to release The Writer’s Fugue as a
book now, on global distribution, for the record and so that readers can access
the research I refer to in my articles, directly in the form in which I wrote
it for my PhD and which is how I was referring to it in my published essays.
If I had not already referred to this book
(my PhD thesis) in my published essays I probably would not have taken this
action, but as readers continue to approach me asking where they can access The Writer’s Fugue, I have decided to do this, even though my next book Post-Traumatic Modernism will be better, and easier to read as it
is written for the general reader as well as the musico-literary scholar, so
will be free of the “academic jargon” and PhD conventions of literature review section.
However students, and PhD scholars may find it useful to read it as an example
of a PhD thesis as well as for its content. I have edited it lightly for
publication for a wider audience, and added a new author preface, which begins
to update my research.
My first novel, Australian Fugue: The Antipode Room will also be available on
Amazon within the next week or two. Details will be posted here of all three
books when they are on the platforms."
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