INGERSOLL, Earl G(eorge) 1938-

PERSONAL: Born May 6, 1938, in Spencerport, NY; son of Earl D. (a carpenter) and Rose (a homemaker; maiden name, Neth) Ingersoll; married Mary Cosgrove (a teacher), June 17, 1960; children: Jeffrey, Timothy. Education: University of Rochester, B.A., 1960; Syracuse University, M.A., 1963; University of Wisconsin—Madison, Ph.D., 1971. Hobbies and other interests: Gardening.

ADDRESSES: Home—173 Dewey St., Churchville, NY 14428. Office—c/o State University of New York College at Brockport, Brockport, NY 14420; fax: 716-395-2391. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER: State University of New York College at Brockport, instructor, 1964-71, assistant professor, 1971-87, associate professor, 1987-91, professor, 1991-96, distinguished teaching professor of English, 1996-2002.

MEMBER: International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts, D. H. Lawrence Society of North America (member of executive council, 1994-96; president, 1998-2000), Modern Language Association of America, College English Association, Doris Lessing Society, Margaret Atwood Society, Lawrence Durrell Society, Canadian Association of Irish Studies, New York College English Association (president, 1994-96), Irish-American Cultural Institute.

WRITINGS:

Representations of Science and Technology in British Literature since 1880, Peter Lang Publishing (New York, NY), 1992.

Engendered Trope in Joyce's "Dubliners," Southern Illinois University Press (Carbondale, IL), 1996.

D. H. Lawrence, Desire, and Narrative, University Press of Florida (Gainesville, FL), 2001.

Contributor of more than fifty articles to language and literature journals, including Conradiana, College Language Association Journal, Journal of Men's Studies, Midwest Quarterly, Studies in the Novel, Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts, and Doris Lessing Newsletter.

EDITOR

(With Judith Kitchen and Stan Sanvel Rubin) The Post-Confessionals: Conversations with American Poets of the Eighties, Fairleigh Dickinson University Press (Madison, NJ), 1989.

Margaret Atwood: Conversations, Ontario Review Press (Princeton, NJ), 1990, revised edition, Virago Press (London, England), 1992.

Conversations with May Sarton, University Press of Mississippi (Jackson, MS), 1991.

Doris Lessing: Conversations, Ontario Review Press (Princeton, NJ), 1994, published as Putting the Question Differently, HarperCollins (London, England), 1996.

Lawrence Durrell: Conversations, Associated University Presses (Madison, NJ), 1998.

Conversations with Rita Dove, University Press of Mississippi (Oxford, MS), 2003.

(With Keith Cushman) D. H. Lawrence: New Worlds, Fairleigh Dickinson University Press (Madison, NJ), 2003.

SIDELIGHTS: Earl G. Ingersoll once told CA: "As a reader of literary criticism, I have often been attracted to the connections writers make between contemporary theory and literary works that I may have read many times in preparation for the classroom. Often, if the theorizing is especially provocative, it stimulates me to see ways in which theory can open other texts. When I write, I would like to create a little of that excitement as I work at opening a text, so that readers can participate in the process and go on to do their own. What I write is an effort toward repaying the debt I owe to the dozens of critics and theorists who have opened familiar texts for me.

"I like to think that my book Engendered Trope in Joyce's 'Dubliners' is a case in point. I first read Joyce as a college student some forty years ago, and I have discussed at least some of these stories with students almost every year since. The Dubliners study grew out of a half-dozen essays that I wrote on individual stories after reading material by several readers of Jacques Lacan. Of these, Barbara Johnson, Jane Gallop, and Jerry Aline Flieger helped me to read Joyce's stories in the context of the gender associations implicit in Lacan's two key tropes of metonymy and metaphor. I hope to be carrying forward what I have called a New Psychoanalytic Criticism. Following in the footsteps of Peter Brooks, I want to redirect attention away from psychoanalyzing authors or fictional characters toward looking at the text as a structure of conflicting desires.

"I would like also to put in a word for the impact of technology. Virtually all of my professional writing and editing dates from my discovery of word processing. There is just no way to exaggerate how much I have benefited from being freed of the drudgery involved in transforming handwritten manuscripts into work that can be sent out for evaluation. Also, I was never one of those who could compose at a typewriter because I was inhibited by the continual appearance of typographical errors. Now I find myself writing very little by hand. I have been fascinated by this 'interface' with the computer monitor with its pulsating prompt signal, encouraging me to make words appear. I am struck by the tropes we use in word processing, such as 'memory.' In my less rational moments I can almost convince myself that, if the machine has memory, perhaps it has stored away somewhere all the brilliant and eloquent writing I think I have done—that is, until I go back later to revise it and discover it has vanished."