The Real McCloy: Fiction, History, and the Real in Zoë Wicomb’s “The One That Got Away”

This article examines the intertextual connections between Zoë Wicomb’s 2008 short story, “The One That Got Away,” and Helen McCloy’s 1945 novel, The One That Got Away, a piece of detective fiction used by Wicomb’s main character as the basis for a work of contemporary art. Drawing concepts from Wicomb’s 2005 essay on setting and intertextuality, I argue that Wicomb creatively interacts with McCloy’s novel to explore issues of authorial ethics, historical representation, and ideological critique. At the heart of both works is a series of triangular relationships between readers, texts, and their corporeal authors that foreground acts of resistant reading and creative reframing. Familiarity with McCloy’s novel reveals new forms of reference and commentary at work in Wicomb’s story.