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Thanatopsis: Writing and Witnessing in the Age of AIDS

2002; Johns Hopkins University Press; Volume: 48; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/mfs.2002.0069

1080-658X

Lawrence R. Schehr,

Contemporary Literature and Criticism

In AIDS narratives, Ross Chambers tells us in his poignant and powerful analysis, the "whole crux" (2) of the narrative is that "I am dying" eventually, really, truly means "I am dead." The tell-tale text religiously and inexorably beats a tattoo—adumbrated by Donne, Hemingway, and Derrida—as we know that the author is, or is about to be dead. Any reader of an AIDS narrative might well ask if this will be the last chapter of the narrative? Will there be another? We are invariably, in such narratives, always on the penultimate page, a page that gets its narrative authority from the truth and sincerity of the situation, but also, and more radically, from "the actual death of an actual author—an event on which the transformation of 'I am dying' into "'I" is dead' hinges" (4). Indeed, authority cannot be challenged in such cases as AIDS narratives are like "last 'wills' and 'testaments'" (4) or the famous deathbed confessions on which so many lesser narratives often hinge. [End Page 746]