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 Open access under:
CC BY 4.0

A contribution to: Rewriting(s)

Edited by Lucy Russell and Eleanor Dobson

MHRA Working Papers in the Humanities 11

Modern Humanities Research Association

open

Abstract.  Through the role of the Alexandria Quartet’s writer-narrator, L. G. Darley, Lawrence Durrell interrogates the writing process by dem­onstrating the co-existence of multiple interpretations of place and time. Both Durrell and Darley build an evocation of Alexandria and its inhabitants using myriad textual sources, including fictional writer-characters as well as well-known authors such as E. M. Forster and Cavafy. This article examines the use of this palimpsest as a device through which Darley learns to become a novelist, by reading, rereading, and rewriting his impressions of the city. The multi-vocal nature of the Quartet — in which each of the four books effectively retells the same story — demonstrates not only the inherently intertextual and self-reflexive nature of the novel form, but also the way in which stories take shape. Darley frames and structures the narrative, propelling it forward by demonstrating his evolution as a writer throughout the four books. Durrell illustrates this both structurally and thematically, presenting Darley’s growth as a novelist through the layering of different versions of the truth, whilst suggesting that only together do these disparate readings of ‘truth’ constitute something approaching reality.

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