Fiction, the Pandemic, and the Rhetorical Approach to Fictionality: Roddy Doyleâs Life without Children

James Phelan

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Chapter 2 Fiction, the Pandemic, and the Rhetorical Approach to Fictionality: Roddy Doyleâs Life without Children

in Pandemic Storytelling

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James Phelan

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Art:: Kapitel

Seiten:: 37â54

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004716681_004

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This essay contends that, in Life without Children (2022), Roddy Doyle responds to the pandemic by conducting a double-layered exploration of the efficacy of fictionality itself. I define fictionality as discourse in which a rhetor intentionally and non-deceptively uses invention, projection, or some other departure from direct reference to actual states of affairs to influence an audienceâs response to or understanding of the actual. Doyle develops the first layer of his exploration through his decision to write not a novel but a short story collection. This choice increases the range of his engagement with the pandemic, allowing him to depict disparate characters who face an array of instabilities and work through those instabilities and their complications in their own distinctive ways, even as the pandemic exerts a variety of influences on that working through and its outcomes. Doyle undertakes the second layer of his exploration by frequently depicting his charactersâ uses of fictionality and tracing the consequences of those uses for their efforts to cope with the pandemic. The essay focuses on two stories, âGoneâ and âWorms,â and uses a rhetorical approach to fictionality to illuminate Doyleâs explorations even as it looks for ways in which Doyleâs stories require extensions or revisions to the approach. With âGone,â Doyle demonstrates that a traumatic event can generate a compulsion to fictionality that works much like addiction, but he also shows how the pandemic plays a role in the characterâs overcoming that compulsion. With âWorms,â Doyle shows two sides of the pandemic: it first provides the occasion for a long-estranged married couple, Joe and Thelma, to reconnect, but it then brings Thelma to the brink of death. Joe and Thelma bond over an apparently shared experience of suddenly hearing songs (worms) while going about the activities of daily life. At storyâs end, however, Joe questions whether Thelma actually heard the songs or only pretended to. Doyle does not answer Joeâs question, thus simultaneously leaving the story open and complicating rhetorical theoryâs understanding of the relationship between fictionality and lying. In both stories, Doyleâs explorations have significant effects for their affective and ethical dimensions, and these effects contribute substantially to his remarkably effective pandemic storytelling.

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Pandemic Storytelling

Reihe:Â Narratives and Mental Health, Band: 3

ISBN:: 9789004716681

Verleger:: Brill

Print-Publikationsdatum:: 18 Dec 2024

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Chapter 2 Fiction, the Pandemic, and the Rhetorical Approach to Fictionality: Roddy Doyleâs Life without Children

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Chapter 2 Fiction, the Pandemic, and the Rhetorical Approach to Fictionality: Roddy Doyleâs Life without Children