Cardiff School of English Communication and Philosophy

My research covers late-modernist to contemporary literature, with a focus on British and Irish fiction, but also including contemporary American fiction. My monograph, published in 2010, considers the relationship between chance and narrative in the post-war British and Irish novel, and recent, forthcoming, and submitted work includes articles on Samuel Beckett, Thomas Pynchon, B.S. Johnson and Iris Murdoch. I’m currently working on the idea of errancy and narrative, using the Lucretian idea of the clinamen as a way of thinking about character and autonomy. My second monograph will trace these ideas in the novel of the mid- to late-twentieth century, from Beckett to Pynchon.

Another important strand of my research continues to build on my interest in the work of B.S. Johnson. I am currently co-editing a special issue of Critical Engagements on his work, while also co-editing a major edition of Johnson’s previously uncollected and unpublished writings with his biographer Jonathan Coe and Professor Phillip Tew, tentatively entitled Well Done God! The Uncollected B.S. Johnson. Other recent forthcoming and submitted work includes an article on Iris Murdoch’s engagement with materiality, and an essay on the figure of the autostereogram in the work of Thomas Pynchon.