A comprehensive introduction to the full variety of voices, forms and themes in fiction of the postmodern era, through resources on postmodern writers and thinkers, timelines, a glossary of terms and essay and discussion questions, this book helps guide readers through the contemporary novel from the 1960s to the present. Covering key canonical texts, The Bloomsbury Introduction to Postmodern Fiction is also the first introduction to explore how authors from a range of diverse communities from women and LGBT writers and writers of colour have engaged with postmodern forms and culture. Writers covered include: Sherman Alexie, Margaret Atwood, Paul Auster, J.G. Ballard, Octavia Butler, Angela Carter, Don DeLillo, Junot Diaz, Dave Eggers, Bret Easton Ellis, Louise Erdrich, John Fowles, Jonathan Franzen, William Gibson, Alan Hollinghurst, Maxine Hong Kingston, Ursula Le Guin, David Lodge, Ian McEwan, China Mieville, David Mitchell, Alan Moore, Toni Morrison, Vladimir Nabokov, Michael Ondaatje, Richard Powers, Thomas Pynchon, Salman Rushdie, Leslie Marmon Silko, Zadie Smith, Art Spiegelman, Kurt Vonnegut, David Foster Wallace, and Jeannette Winterson.
Author(s): T.V. Reed
Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
Year: 2021
Language: English
Pages: 256
Tags: Literary Criticism, Critical Thinking, Literary Theory, Postmodernism, Fiction
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication Page
Contents
Acknowledgments
A Note on Usage
Chapter 1: Introduction
Terminal Confusion
Postmodernist Realism
Is Postmodernism a Zombie?
How to Use This Book
Chapter 2: Postmodern Conditions and Postmodernist Styles
Postmodern Economic, Political, and Social Conditions
Postmodernist Aesthetic Approaches, Styles, and Techniques
Chapter 3: Identities: Mysteries of the Self
Deconstructing the Self: Kathy Acker’s Don Quixote (1986)
Detecting the Self: Jonathan Lethem’s Motherless Brooklyn (1999)
Hybrid Selves: Gloria Anzaldúa’s Borderlands/La Frontera (1987)
The Abstract Self: Don DeLillo’s Cosmopolis (2003)
The Terrorized Self: Mohsin Hamid’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist (2007)
Self as Community: Toni Cade Bambara’s The Salt Eaters (1980)
The Selfless Self: Ruth Ozeki’s A Tale for the Time Being (2013)
Chapter 4: Bodies: Reflective Surfaces and Fluid Borders
Scripted Sex: Jeannette Winterson’s Writing the Body (1993)
Beauty and the Beastly Gaze: Jeffrey Eugenides’s The Virgin Suicides (1993)
Winged Delights: Angela Carter’s Nights at the Circus (1984)
Life Is a Freakshow: Katherine Dunn’s Geek Love (1989)
The Cyborg Body: Shelley Jackson’s Patchwork Girl (1995)
Oedipus Trans*: Daisy Johnson’s Everything Under (2017)
Body as Multitude: Akwaeki Emezi’s Freshwater (2018)
Chapter 5: Postmodern Families: Reimagining Kinship
Consuming Families: Don DeLillo’s White Noise (1985)
Family as Talk-Story: Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman Warrior (1976)
Postmodern Matriarchy: Ana Castillo’s So Far from God (1993)
Family Curses and Geek Masculinity: Junot Diaz’s The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (2008)
Kinship and Lost Time: Jennifer Egan’s A Visit from the Good Squad (2010)
Indigenous Gothic, Sasquatch, and Community as Family: Eden Robinson’s Monkey Beach (2000)
Chapter 6: (meta)Histories: The Past as Present
Chained to History: Toni Morrison’s Beloved (1987)
Of Butterflies and Dictators: Julia Alverez’s In the Time of the Butterflies (1994)
Unstuck in Time: Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five (1969)
Neo-Hoodoo History: Ishmael Reed’s Mumbo Jumbo (1972)
Challenging Dead-eye Dog: Leslie Silko’s Almanac of the Dead (1999)
Chapter 7: Novels Rewriting Novels
Decolonizing the Literary Past: Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea (1966)
Globalizing the Past: Bharati Mukherjee’s The Holder of the World (1993)
Sacred Revisions: Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses (1988)
Re-envisioning the Postmodern University: A. S. Byatt’s Possession (1990)
Dark Hearts: Jessica Hagedorn’s Dream Jungle (2003)
Reds, Whites, and Reservation Blues: Sherman Alexie’s Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven (1993)
Chapter 8: True Lies: Nonfiction Novels and Autofictions
Empire’s Tracks: Maxine Hong Kingston’s China Men (1980)
History as a Novel, the Novel as History: Norman Mailer’s Armies of the Night (1968)
Historical Sideshow: Brian Fawcett’s Cambodia: A Book for People Who Find Television Too Slow (1986)
Graphic Trauma: Art Spiegelman’s Maus (1986)
Crude Awakenings: Olivia Laing’s Crudo (2018)
Chapter 9: Displacements: Exiles, Diasporas, and Returns
Foreigners in Their Own Land: Tommy Orange’s There There (2018)
Migrant Doors of Reception: Mohsin Hamid’s Exit West (2017)
An Epidemic of Displacements: Rabih Alamenddine’s Koolaids: The Art of War (1998)
Exiled to Home: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Americanah (2013)
Chapter 10: Futures? Digital Dangers and Climate Crises
Multi-mediated Horror: Mark Z. Danielewski’s House of Leaves (2000)
Decoding Capitalism: Scarlett Thomas’s PopCo (2014)
Engendering the Future: Jeanette Winterson’s Frankissstein (2019)
Afrojujuism: Nnedi Okorafor’s Lagoon (2014)
Postcolonial Outer Space: Rosario Sanchez and Beatrice Pita’s Lunar Braceros (2009)
Surveillance States, Biotech, and Climate Crises: Margaret Atwood’s MaddAddam Trilogy (2003, 2009, 2013)
Notes
Bibliography
Index
