Acknowledgments. Ed -- Beauty milk -- Sister -- Healers -- Eight phrases -- Who is Mary Sue? -- The engine -- Untitled -- Before -- As bread is the body of Christ so is glass the very flesh of the Devil -- The palace of culture and science -- Poor Clare -- A course in miracles -- The saints -- Death pact -- Ed -- Bunny -- Autobiography -- The engine continued -- Anna Karenina -- a whistle in the gloom -- A.S. -- Ed -- Postface -- Note on fan fiction -- Other notes -- Acknowledgments.
Summary:
In the language of fan fiction, a 'Mary Sue' is an idealised and implausibly flawless character: a female archetype that can infuriate audiences for its perceived narcissism. Such is the setting for this brilliant and important debut by Sophie Collins. In a series of verse and prose collages, 'Who Is Mary Sue?' exposes the presumptive politics behind writing and readership: the idea that men invent while women reflect; that a man writes of the world outside while a woman will turn to the interior. Part poetry and part reportage, at once playful and sincere, these fictive-factive miniatures deploy original writing and extant quotation in a mode of pure invention.
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