14. ‘Indolence, interruption, business, and pleasure’

This chapter is a genetic narratological evaluation of Helen DeWitt’s The Last Samurai (2000), utilising earlier versions of the text saved across fifty-two floppy discs. Focusing on DeWitt’s later additions of a ‘post-postmodernist’ breakage in form, including erratic capitalisation, numerals, and paragraph breaks, the author considers such interruption on the level of narrative and the broader conditions of cultural production. Comprised of two sections, this chapter begins with an assessment of aesthetic and paternal rupture in a draft titled ‘1LIBERAC,’ reflecting on Ludo’s quest to find his father. The second section, referencing the drafts ‘7S3.2’ (in 09-07-96), ‘7S3.2’ (in Backup Liberace) ‘7S3.2c’, ‘7S3.2e’, ‘7S3.3’, and ‘7S3.4’, contends with interruption as transmedial, examining DeWitt’s use of scenes from Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai (1954) as interjection.