From Heideggerian Dasein to Melvillean Masquerade: Historiology and Imaginative Excursion in Philip Roth's The Facts

Abstract

Abstract:Is there a convergence of Philip Roth's The Facts and "the facts," as contextualized historically, in Martin Heidegger's Being and Time? And to the extent The Facts may reconfigure Sartrean flight and Heideggerian regard for resolute consciousness and historicity, how does such transformation relate to Roth's implied musings in The Facts on Herman Melville's The Confidence-Man: His Masquerade? Roth channels irresolute facts not toward the somber absence of consciousness implied by Heideggerian resoluteness and "historicality" but toward the supremacy of Dasein inherent in enduring literary excursion charted by the Sartrean-inspired masquerade of Dasein's being what one is and is not.