Abstract

When I crash my car, it may be an accident, but when Daisy Buchanan crashes hers, it is something else. The distinction has nothing to do with our varying intentions; it is simply that her accident occurs within the carefully-designed world of narrative. Working with car crashes, stray shootings, and train wrecks, I show how difficult it is to find genuine accidents in literature and how that bare fact limits the insight of historical criticism.

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