Andrei Codrescu’s Wakefield – The Architecture of a Soul
Andrei Codrescu’s Wakefield – The Architecture of a Soul

Summary/Abstract: In Andrei Codrescu’s Wakefield, the Devil and his client strike a Faustian pact that forces the latter to embark on a quest for authenticity in order to live one year longer. Wakefield, the eponymous protagonist, who is the Devil’s client, revisits the American society in search for “a real life.” A collector and a cartographer of lost and hidden spaces, Wakefield learns that the genuine and the authentic reside at the heart of each individual, within the architecture of the self, inside the stories of each individual. The Other functions as witness of another’s role in a society. The limits of each inner world condition the limits of outer worlds. Unexpectedly, the Devil ends up tragically, rejected by his own kin and alienated from a much younger, on-changing, nonconformist, and democratizing devils’ society.

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