|
Writing (Against) Postmodernism: The Urban Experience in Contemporary North American Fiction- presents three main arguments. The first is that even though the term postmodernism has come under attack for being too imprecise and for being philosophically unsound, postmodern theoretical positions regarding the loss of human agency and of rationality and the difficulty to communicate in a meaningful manner can arguably describe a contemporary zeitgeist amongst the urban middle and upper classes of North America in the late 1990s and early 2000s. As Writing (Against) Postmodernism shows, the lives of characters in the texts under consideration "- The Savage Girl- (Alex Shakar, 2001),- Look At Me- (Jennifer Egan, 2001),- Noise- (Russell Smith, 1998),- Glamorama- (Bret Easton Ellis, 1998),- Ditch (Hal Niedzviecki, 2001),- Manhattan Loverboy, and- Suicide Casanova- (Arthur Nersesian, 2000, 2002) " correspond to theoretical positions advocated by contemporary theorists such as Frederic Jameson, Paul de Man, Jean Baudrillard, or Jacques Derrida. While focusing on literary production around the turn of the millennium,- Writing (Against) Postmodernism- also engages in theoretical debates, pointing out weaknesses in much postmodern theorizing and in appropriations of theoretical positions by literary scholars. The theoretical trajectory of the study is an argument in favour of modestly realist modes of writing, and it suggests not to discard easily "that extra edge of consciousness" (Raymond Williams) which might still make it possible for human beings to remain rational agents. In a further step, the present study explains how the urban novels mentioned above all express a disdain towards the postmodern lives they describe. What is more, the texts and their characters search for ways out of the postmodern impasses they initially present as realities, and they actively (try to) overcome them. In thus moving away from postmodern theoretical positions and their practical consequences, the books can be said to be part of a ...
|
