| Name |
Eric Madeen |
| Official Title |
Associate Professor |
| Affiliation |
Literary writing; Journalism; Modern Literature; Applied Linguistics |
| E-mail |
emadeen@tcu.ac.jp |
| Web |
- http://www.ericmadeen.com
|
| Profile |
My areas of research include literary writing in the long form, i.e., novels, and short fiction as well. I also write and publish journalistic pieces and academic articles related to literature and literary writing. I am an avid and deep reader and scholar of the works of Ernest Hemingway's short stories, and the works of Joseph Conrad, John Updike and Paul Theroux. So my interests in literature are in the areas of modern and postmodern 20th and 21st century fiction by these masters and focus deeply on the realms where are interests are shared as in being writers writing out of worlds far removed from their origins: Hemingway as member of The Lost Generation of artists working out of Paris and more largely Meditereanean Europe; Conrad as a master mariner whose early works make up the Malaya Quartet (Almayer's Folly; The Outcaste of the Islands; Lord Jim; Karain) which were inspired by an upriver settlement in Indonesian Borneo, specifically a town there on the confluence of the Kelai and Segah rivers named Berau where I visited to research the overlaps of the fictional reality with the actual reality where offspring of the sultan in Conrad's day shared vivid memories of Conrad's anti-hero Olmeijer and the Straits Arab merchant Al Jofree; I interviewed them at length about their heritage and thus allowing this Conrad scholar to strike where the metal was hot and confirm why the master mariner and novelist Joseph Conrad was purposefully vague about his actual travels there as a merchant marine aboard the Vidar out of Singapore; John Updike and Paul Theroux also transcribed prolifically about modernist "flawed" narrators in such far flung settings as equatorial Africa (Updike's The Coup) and Southeast Asia (Theroux's Saint Jack and Kowloon Tong). Being a postmodern writer, I cite these four grand masters as influences in my own writing, both fictional and journalistic, since the four of them both wrote prolifically in each realm as well. |
| Research Field(Keyword & Summary) |
- (1) Literary writing; Journalism; Modern Literature; Applied Linguistics
My research aims to elucidate comprehension of the aforementioned modernist masters so an appreciation of their work will continue to bear fruit for both readers of their work and writers looking to it for inspiration in the postmodern present and for myself as a scholar, novelist and journalist to keep the creative spirit alive and kicking in and out of class.
|
| Representative Papers |
- (1) Asian Trail Mix: True Tales from Borneo to Japan; 112 pages. March 2021
- (2) Heaven; a review of Mieko Kawakami's award winning novel; Metropolis March 2021.
- (3) Water Drumming in the Soul: A Novel of Racy Love in the Heart of Africa; 315 pp.; January 2021
- (4) The Status of Creative Writing as an Academic Discipline: Where It Thrives and Dives - with a Special Focus on Japan and Its Kataized Culture; Journal of Liberal Arts and Sciences at Tokyo City University; Vol. 12, 2019
- (5) Massage World: The Novel; 266 pp.; Anaphora Literary Press; December 2018
- (6) Eight radio interviews on American radio stations concerning Massage World; 2018-19.
|
| Award |
Japanophile Magazine for "Onbashira Groove." |
| Affiliated academic society (Membership type) |
Sociaety of Professional Journalists (SPJ); The Society for the Culture of English; Joseph Conrad Foundation; AWP |
| Education Field (Undergraduate level) |
Journalism; English; Psychology |
| Education Field (Graduate level) |
Creative Writing and Literature |
