ABSTRACT

Patti Smith’s failure to perform her cover of Dylan’s ‘A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall’ flawlessly at the Nobel ceremony in 2016 provides an unexpected insight into the complex dynamics that shape contemporary literary culture. Both the consistency of Smith’s poetics and the importance of failure in her work reinforce an aura of authenticity and individuality that has given a new lease on her status as ‘icon’. Zooming in on the practice of ‘covering’ that runs through Smith's work, I want to uncover a new literary voice that gradually emerges alongside Smith's longstanding devotion to high literature and her ‘masculine’ artist ethos, an authorial position that is both untimely and very much in tune with a dominant trends of contemporary literature, i.e. the writing memoir. In her writing memoir M Train (2015), Smith creates a portrait of a female artist later in life, living alone, for whom writing and reading is a life-style in the fullest sense of the word. Trying to appropriate the posture of the Great Author, Smith continually ‘fails’ in her desire to be one. Yet in assuming her failure she cannily claims and queers her position as a contemporary American Author.

摘要

帕蒂·史密斯未能在 2016 年的诺贝尔颁奖典礼上完美翻唱迪伦的《大雨将至》，这让她对塑造当代文学文化的复杂动态提供了意想不到的洞察力。史密斯诗学的一贯性和她作品中失败的重要性都强化了一种真实性和个性的光环，使她的“偶像”地位有了新的契机。放大贯穿史密斯作品的“覆盖”实践，我想发现一种新的文学声音，这种新的文学声音随着史密斯对高级文学的长期奉献和她的“男性化”艺术家精神而逐渐出现，这种作者立场既不合时宜又非常与当代文学的主要趋势非常吻合，即写作回忆录。在她的写作回忆录 M Train (2015) 中，史密斯创作了一位女性艺术家晚年独居的肖像，对她来说，写作和阅读是最完整意义上的生活方式。为了适应这位伟大作家的姿态，史密斯不断地“失败”在她想要成为一位作家的愿望上。然而，在假设她失败时，她巧妙地宣称并质疑她作为当代美国作家的地位。