Nicol Bran. The Cambridge Introduction to Postmodern Fiction

Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2009. — 240 p. — (Cambridge introductions to literature) — ISBN-10: 0521679575; ISBN-13: 978-0521679572.Postmodern fiction presents a challenge to the reader: instead of enjoying it passively, the reader has to work to understand its meanings, to think about what fiction is, and to question their own responses. Yet this very challenge makes postmodern writing so much fun to read and rewarding to study. Unlike most introductions to postmodernism and fiction, this book places the emphasis on literature rather than theory. It introduces the most prominent British and American novelists associated with postmodernism, from the 'pioneers', Beckett, Borges and Burroughs, to important post-war writers such as Pynchon, Carter, Atwood, Morrison, Gibson, Auster, DeLillo, and Ellis. Designed for students and clearly written, this Introduction explains the preoccupations, styles and techniques that unite postmodern authors. Their work is characterized by a self-reflexive acknowledgement of its status as fiction, and by the various ways in which it challenges readers to question common-sense and commonplace assumptions about literature.Preface: reading postmodern fictionIntroduction: postmodernism and postmodernityPostmodernity and ‘late capitalism’
Baudrillard and simulation
Poststructuralism, postmodernism, and ‘the real’
Sociology and the construction of reality
Jameson and the crisis in historicity
Lyotard and the decline of the metanarrative
Irony and ‘double-coding’Postmodern fiction: theory and practiceAn incredulity towards realism
What postmodern fiction does
How to read postmodern fiction
Chapter 2 Early postmodern fiction: Beckett, Borges, and Burroughs
Samuel Beckett
Jorge Luis Borges
William BurroughsUS metafiction: Coover, Barth, Nabokov, Vonnegut, PynchonBarth’s Funhouse and Coover’s Descants
Vladimir Nabokov, Pale Fire 8
Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five
Thomas PynchonThe postmodern historical novel: Fowles, Barnes, SwiftHistoriographic metafiction
British historiographic metafiction
John Fowles, The French Lieutenant’s Woman
Graham Swift, Waterland
Julian Barnes, Flaubert’s Parrot
Chapter 5 Postmodern-postcolonial fiction
Salman Rushdie, Midnight’s Children
Toni Morrison, Beloved
Ishmael Reed, Mumbo JumboPostmodern fiction by women: Carter, Atwood, AckerAngela Carter
Margaret Atwood
Kathy AckerTwo postmodern genres: cyberpunk and ‘metaphysical’ detective fictionSci-fi and cyberpunk
William Gibson, Neuromancer
Detective fiction
Jorge Luis Borges, ‘Death and the Compass’
Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose
Paul Auster, City of GlassFiction of the ‘postmodern condition’: Ballard, DeLillo, EllisConclusion: ‘ficto-criticism’
J. G. Ballard, Crash
Don DeLillo, White Noise and Libra
Bret Easton Ellis, American Psycho