Fictional Doubles in Henry Green's Back

Abstract

Henry Green's 1946 novel Back is effectively cut in two because at the arithmetic middle of the book, there is a translated (and quite long) passage from the purportedly eighteenth century Souvenirs of the Marquise de Crequy. While most critics have agreed upon the importance of this passage to the novel, not only structurally but thematically, none have actually looked into the original source and considered the most crucial thing about it: the original source was a forgery. When considering the forged status of this passage and its vital importance to Back, our reading of Green's novel must change drastically: no longer does the novel read as a quest for authenticity on the part of its protagonist, the disabled war veteran Charley Summers. Rather, one must consider the possibility of a true self in a world of forgery and duplicity. This also implicates our understandings of modernist intertextual practices.