A different kind of wilderness : decomposition and life in Jim Crace’s Being Dead

Abstract

Crace portrays diseased or decomposing human bodies as environments caught between the tended and the untameable. This chapter discusses Being Dead, Quarantine, and The Gift of Stones, to show how Crace’s narratives understand that the wilderness within humanity is always too close for comfort, both in life and in death. An interdisciplinary approach featuring perspectives from literary theory and biology informs a close reading of how decomposition is figured in Being Dead. Callus and Lanfranco situate Crace’s representations of death and decomposition against older traditions of memento mori within Western literature and culture, as well as broader discussions within posthumanist paradigms that turn on themes like morbidity, decay, regeneration, and anthropocentrism, and alongside which Being Dead offers a lyrically powerful fictive counterpart.