Late Postmodernism: American Fiction at the Millennium

251 Pages·2005·1.128 MB·English

by  Jeremy Green (auth.)

Late Postmodernism
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Late Postmodernism
American Fiction at
the Millennium
Jeremy Green
LATEPOSTMODERNISM
©Jeremy Green,2005.
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2005 978-1-4039-6632-2
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case of briefquotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.
First published in 2005 by
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ISBN 978-1-349-52943-8 ISBN 978-1-4039-8040-3 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/9781403980403
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Green,Jeremy.
Late postmodernism :American fiction at the millennium /
Jeremy Green.
p.cm.
Includes bibliographical references (p.) and index.
1.American fiction—20th century—History and criticism.
2.American fiction—21st century—History and criticism.
3.Postmodernism (Literature)—United States.I.Title.
PS374.P64G74 2005
813(cid:1).5409113—dc22 2004059991
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Design by Newgen Imaging Systems (P) Ltd.,Chennai,India.
First edition:May 2005
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Contents
Preface and Acknowledgments vii
Introduction 1
1 Late Postmodernism and the Literary Field 19
2 The Novel and the Death of Literature 45
3 Jonathan Franzen, Oprah Winfrey, and the Future
of the Social Novel 79
4 Late Postmodernism and Cultural Memory 117
5 Pathologies of the Public Sphere 163
6 Late Postmodernism and the Utopian Imagination 185
Epilogue 211
Notes 217
Bibliography 233
Index 241
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Preface and Acknowledgments
During the 1990s, the years of the Gulf War, O.J. Simpson, Monica
Lewinsky, the dot.com boom and bust, commentary on the state of let-
ters in the United States might have given the casual reader the impres-
sion that literature had never been in a more dismal state. The culture
wars of the previous decade, with all the familiar charges of vandalism to
the canon and theory-driven destruction of the mission of the humani-
ties, continued on various fronts, while a number of critics and novelists
made lugubrious noises about the death of the novel. Arguably, the novel
has received such notices from the outset, and certainly in the twentieth
century apocalyptic pronouncements have often signaled the introduc-
tion of one aesthetic revolution or another—the (old) novel died, so that
the (new) novel might live. But the prophecies of the 1990s had a darker
cast. Now the novel is dying because literature in general is in terminal
decline. Already reading, particularly the kind of concentrated, thought-
ful reading that literature demands, is on the wane, undermined by a cul-
ture of distraction—TV, movies, videogames, the Internet. Furthermore,
the extraordinary success of the printed book, from Gutenberg to airport
paperbacks, might finally have reached its limits, as digital technology
proves a more efficient and capacious means of storing information.
Or so the prophets claimed. My reaction to this rhetoric was mixed.
The anguish seemed pointedly to ignore the diversity and richness of
contemporary fiction, which presented the best evidence that the novel
is in fact thriving. Admittedly, the old labels—realism, experimentalism,
multiculturalism—are now less useful than ever, but the 1990s saw the
emergence of a generation of novelists who took their postmodern
inheritance in new directions. However, the literary world in which
these writers have launched their careers has undoubtedly been affected
by changes in the consumption and dissemination of cultural goods.
The network of journals, popular and academic reviews, publishing
houses, and even bookstores, along with sustaining ideas about the value
and importance of literature, have changed, often in ways that have
been deleterious for innovative writing. But nostalgia for the novelist’s
viii/ preface and acknowledgments
erstwhile authority and for the old print venues is of little use, and often
takes a decidedly conservative and technophobic turn. To make sense of
fiction in the last years of the twentieth century—and the first years of
the twenty-first—entails coming to terms with these altered cultural
conditions, the challenges and opportunities they present, while also
attending to the distinctive newness of the writing at issue.
I have tried in this work to follow a piece of advice once given me
bythe late Tony Tanner: write about fiction that really iscontemporary.
This book has grown from an attempt to understand what contemporary
literature, particularly postmodern fiction, means at the millennium. It
has also been provoked by enthusiasm for the writers I address—which
should go without saying, but in these postliterary times, in the academy
at least, perhaps does not.
During the writing of this book, I have received help and support
from several people, and I would like to take this opportunity to thank
them. Several of the chapters began life as conference presentations,
and I profited greatly from questions and comments that followed,
oftenaddressed to me by people whose names I never caught. However,
Iwould like to single out Jackie Zubeck, who organized the first confer-
ence devoted to Don DeLillo; her hard work provided an exceptionally
valuable occasion for intellectual exchange. A longer version of the paper
I delivered there was subsequently published in Modern Fiction Studies;
somewhat modified, it now appears as chapter 5.
Anna Brickhouse, Jill Heydt-Stevenson, and Valerie Forman, astute
readers all, gave me invaluable help with chapter 3. Conversations with
Karen Jacobs, Joseph Conte, Kathleen Fitzpatrick, Mark Osteen, and
Marni Gauthier proved very helpful. My greatest debt, however, is to
Charlotte Sussman, who offered essential feedback and unstinting
support; her faith in the project never wavered. I dedicate the book to her.
Introduction
Late postmodernism? Isn’t such a coinage patently absurd? After all,
postmodernism is by definition a term of belatedness: whatever else it
signifies, the word refers primarily to the cultural moment or movement
that comes after modernism, either succeeding or superseding the earlier
formation. To add the modifier “late” suggests that postmodernism, which
sprang out of modernism or wiped it from the map, has now entered
aphase of decadence and decline, a state that foreshadows, in its turn, a
new condition of belatedness. What comes after postmodernism? Post-
postmodernism? At this point the preposterous and dizzying prospect of
an infinite series opens up before the theorist, and all descriptions of the
contemporary cultural moment can be considered as measures of a greater
or lesser degree of belatedness. Nonetheless, the gesture is useful if it signals
that we are no longer postmodern in quite the same way as when the
concept was first set loose. Declarations of independence from modernism
no longer seem bold or interesting, and we have surely grown entitled to
our skepticism about the concept of postmodernism, after so many years,
so much labor of definition and disavowal.
Dissatisfaction with the idea of postmodernism has been present from
its inception. The word is at once hyperbolic and conceptually fuzzy: the
“post” of postmodernism asserts an epochal change without providing
any indication of what characterizes the new era. For many, postmod-
ernism seems to be a quality—a deficiency, perhaps—that one attributes
to the other: it is that which one denounces, finds at fault, declares oneself
against.1How then can we begin to agree that existing definitions of post-
modernism are in need of modification, when the definitions are at war
with each other and might best be disavowed in the first place? As John Frow
has suggested, descriptions of postmodernism form a discursive field, a
terrain of competing positions, rather than a coherent concept.2
The bewildering variety of meanings attached to postmodernism is a
measure of the term’s success: the word has operated like a virus, crossing
disciplinary borders and infecting seemingly discrete bodies of thought.
But this is also the reason the term is such a source of frustration and