Literature after Postmodernism: Reconstructive Fantasies

© Irmtraud Huber 2014

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vii

Acknowledgements viii

List of Abbreviations x

Introduction: Epitaph on a Ghost, or the Impossible End of Postmodernism 1

Part I Tracing Shifts

1 Post-post, Beyond and Back: Literature in the Wake of Postmodernism 21

2 Pragmatic Fantasies: From Subversion to Reconstruction 51

Part II Reconstructive Readings

3 Leaving the Postmodernist Labyrinth: Mark Z. Danielewski’s House of Leaves 79

4 The Quest for Narrative Reconstruction: Jonathan Safran Foer’s Everything is Illuminated 113

5 Escaping Towards History: Michael Chabon’s The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay 148

6 Dreaming of Reconstruction: David Mitchell’s number9dream 181

Conclusion: The Coming of Age of Reconstruction 215

Notes 255

Works Cited 267

Index 277

Contents



1

Introduction: Epitaph on a Ghost, or the Impossible End of Postmodernism

On 24 September, 2011, the Victoria and Albert Museum in London opened their exhibition “Postmodernism – Style and Subversion 1970–1990,” which with those innocent-looking four numbers after the dash, declared an end to something that had claimed to be endless. Postmodernism, which proposed the end of history, has apparently become dated. Its style, its subversion, it seems, has petered out and lost its force sometime around the beginning of the last decade of the old century. In spite of its antagonism to stable structures, it has become institutionalised. Its interest in the margins nowadays paradoxically occupies the centre. In contrast to its emphasis on the indetermina-ble and on absence, it has gradually come to signify a specific set of philosophical ideas, thematic foci and aesthetic devices. These are very present today, indeed, not only in academia but also in popular culture. Postmodernism, so one could surmise, has been too successful for its own agenda.1

The assessment of the curators of the V&A exhibition is shared by an increasing number of recent scholarly publications, also and perhaps particularly in the field of literary studies, which assert to different degrees of vehemence that postmodernism is (probably) over.2 This, of course, is not at all a new claim. The death-knells of postmodernist literature have notoriously been rung continuously ever since its birth. In fact, considering John Barth’s early manifesto “The Literature of Exhaustion,” literary postmodernism could be said to have been born a ghost. And, just like a ghost, it has proven exceedingly difficult to bury. As Ihab Hassan evocatively stated in 2001, looking back on the thirty years of his engagement with postmodernism: ‘I believe it is a revenant, the return of the irrepressible; every time we are rid of it, its ghost rises back. Like a ghost, it eludes definition. Certainly, I know less



2 Literature after Postmodernism

about postmodernism today than I did thirty years ago, when I began to write about it’ (“Postmodernity” 1). Few are as confident in their death-declarations as Linda Hutcheon, who concludes her epilogue to the second edition of The Politics of Postmodernism with the assertion that ‘the postmodern moment has passed’ (181), or as Robert McLaughlin, who diagnoses ‘an aesthetic sea change in literature, particularly fiction’ (“Post-Postmodern Discontent” 55). Nevertheless, the feeling that there has been a significant shift in literature published in the 1990s and the first decade of the twenty-first century seems to be pervasive. Over the course of the last two decades, scholarly interest has increasingly turned towards the question of whether literature (or art in general for that matter) has moved beyond the postmodernist, how to best describe the e mergent trend, and ultimately, whether such a move is conceivable at all.

But if postmodernism has really come to an end, what will come next? Such an inquiry faces serious difficulties. As already indicated by Hassan’s perplexity, a major problem is posed by the contested defini-tions of postmodernism itself. Linda Hutcheon’s complaint that ‘[o]f all the terms bandied about in both current cultural theory and contem-porary writings on the arts, postmodernism must be the most over- and under-defined’ (Poetics 3), is still as true as it was in 1988. A number of studies have since taken pains to review the usage and meanings of the term and struggled to find adequate definitions, only to reiterate its slipperiness. ‘Postmodernism,’ so they agree, has become ‘a kind of data-cloud, a fog of discourse, that showed up on the radar even more conspicuously than what it was supposed to be about’ (Connor 4). Thus, paradoxically, it still remains difficult to reconcile various understand-ings of postmodernism, even as a widely emerging consensus suggests that we are currently in the process of leaving postmodernism behind us. The picture becomes no clearer if one narrows the focus from a larger cultural situation to the specifics of what might constitute the aesthetics, ethics and politics of postmodernist literature in particular. The plethora of definitions, core texts and approaches that the term e ncompasses belie positivistic attempts to definitively circumscribe its canon.

To declare an end to something as diffuse as postmodernism can therefore never be more than a rhetorical move which constructs its point of departure just as much as the new beginning it seeks to estab-lish. Any attempt to move beyond postmodernism inevitably leads to a reduction of the complexity and instability of the term. Ultimately, every endeavour to make sense of larger tendencies in culture depends on such simplification. The attempt to avoid it, so Fredric Jameson reminds us, would risk to ‘fall back into a view of present history as



Introduction: Epitaph on a Ghost 3

sheer heterogeneity, random difference, a coexistence of a host of dis-tinct forces whose effectivity is undecidable’ (Postmodernism 6). Indeed, in the process of periodisation, the definite shape of any period is deter-mined to a large degree by the one it is succeeded by. Just as modernism has partly come to be defined retrospectively by ‘post’-modernist revi-sions and deviations, the aesthetic shift to be perceived in the present moment will contribute to how future generations will think about postmodernism.

Meanwhile, any claim for a move beyond postmodernism is predi-cated on two conditions. First, if authors and critics now strive to move beyond established paradigms, this impetus takes the form of an attempt to transcend institutionalised ideas of what postmodernist fiction is, means and does. The rapid institutionalisation of postmod-ernism, which has gained a firm foothold in most Western university curricula over the last decades, has contributed significantly to the gradual emergence of a general consensus of some kind on what post-modernist literature is all about. While definitions continue to be slip-pery, postmodernism has stratified sufficiently to be coherently taught and talked about, and perhaps in spite of itself, it has come to be iden-tified with a distinct set of aesthetic strategies and philosophical ideas. Thus, the best evidence for postmodernism’s demise can perhaps be found in the fact that Bran Nicol, in the recent Cambridge Introduction to Postmodern Fiction, confidently presents its object to his student reader-ship as ‘something effectively in the past, like modernism, something we can treat as a more or less “complete” historical movement with its own set of core texts’ (xv). Due to its success postmodernist writing has become ‘the victim of a self-created paradox,’ as Richard Bradford puts it: ‘it has become what its practitioners sought and seek to avoid, a classifiable field and subgenre of literary writing’ (70).

The second condition emerges directly from this internal contradic-tion. Postmodernism’s conundrum is increasingly felt to lie in the very nature of its incessantly oppositional stance. It derives its main incen-tive from a critique of established structures and forms; it is funda-mentally antagonistic, ‘a rejection of many, if not most, of the cultural certainties on which life in the West has been structured over the past couple of centuries’ (Sim, “Preface” vii). Ihab Hassan provides as good a characterisation as any when he highlights postmodernism’s main tune: ‘such terms of unmaking (antipoesis) as deconstruction, decenter-ing, dissemination, disruption, displacement, difference, discontinu-ity, demystification, delegitimisation, disappearance became as rife as rock songs’ (“Beyond Postmodernism?” 128–9). Debunking the grand




narratives of progress and historical teleology, postmodernism is rooted in the idea of the end of history. As a system which exposes the absence at the core of all systems and questions the finality of all boundaries, postmodernism incorporates its own change and endless revision and thereby pre-empts any possibility of its own transcendence, always returning as the trace of what has supposedly been superseded. To move beyond postmodernism might thus be, strictly speaking, impossible, since the postmodernist project of questioning is endless and no longer allows for a succession of states that evolve out of one another.

At the same time, however, postmodernism, as its name indicates, continues to define itself by the modernism it has overcome, exposing its myths, unsettling its structures, exploding its certainties. Indeed, Nicolas Bourriaud suggests that postmodernism is eternally determined by its various antagonists. It is ‘an interminable “afterwards”; after the myth of progress, after the revolutionary utopia, after the retreat of colonialism, after the battles for political, social and sexual emancipa-tion’ (5).3 Even while questioning teleology and progress, postmodern-ism understands itself as a process of overcoming and supersession and thus can hardly avoid evoking the very narrative of progression it hopes to abolish. Paradoxically, despite its professed endlessness, it may from today’s perspective appear as ‘a period of pause and levelling, brief as befits a historical moment entirely determined by the one before – a marshy delta on the river of time’ (Bourriaud 5).

So one may ask, what happens to postmodernism’s oppositional stance, what happens to subversion, this central postmodernist attitude, when it has become the topic of a V&A exhibition and thus entered the rooms of national institutions of royal tradition? When irony and self-reflexivity, those other two hallmarks of postmodernism, have become pervasive in everyday discourse and have been adopted and commodi-fied in popular culture? Or, as David Foster Wallace puts the question in his much-cited essay on the interrelation between television and recent fiction “E Unibus Pluram”: ‘What do you do when postmodern rebellion becomes a pop-cultural institution?’ (68).

Wallace’s spirited essay is an important reference in this connection, as he suggests that the increasing desire to escape from postmodernist subversion and rebellion may be more than merely the oedipal ennui of ‘artists [who] have become tired of recycling increasingly predictable postmodernist devices’ (Eshelman, Performatism 32) in an incessant consumerist desire for something new. Rather, postmodernist scepti-cism and irony, which has for the longest time been claiming to serve a liberating purpose, has seen increasing commercialisation and has




gradually come to look like the paint with which we adorn the walls of our prison. Postmodernism relies upon the effectiveness of scepticism and self-reflexive irony as its prime means for questioning the beliefs of society and for providing new perspectives on accepted truisms. But scepticism and irony have become so pervasive in popular consumer-ist culture that art might now be called upon to provide a counter-balance, a respite from the irony haunting Western cultural expression (cf. Donovan 9; Maltby 29). After all, as Wallace impatiently declares: ‘irony’s singularly unuseful when it comes to constructing anything to replace the hypocrisies it debunks’ (“E Unibus” 67).

Jonathan Franzen makes a similar point, complaining with character-istic gloom that

when the avant-garde is all that remains – when the rebels who kept the establishment honest are themselves enshrined as the establish-ment – we’re left without an opposition. I see academy (and foresee a national literature, produced by academics) lost in fantasies of trans-gression and subversion that are likely only to confirm for young people, who have a keen sense of bullshit, the complete irrelevance of literature. (“More of the Same” 36)

The question here takes the guise of a dramatic showdown: Post-modernism against Literature, and one of the two has to die. But even without such polemical verve, one may point, as Siân Adiseshiah and Rupert Hildyard do, to the change in the political climate after the end of the Cold War, to the rise of fundamentalism, to 9/11 and its aftermath, to the technical advances and the life-changing influences of globalisation, to a neo-liberal hypercapitalism gone rampant and the dissolution of economic optimism in the course of global financial crisis, to the spreading of the awareness of the finiteness of resources and the global challenge of climate change, and surmise that the cir-cumstances under which postmodernism arose have seen quite radical change (cf. 1). Is it not to be expected that literature, too, would change, or rather that it had better change if it wants to remain relevant?

Franzen’s own case exemplifies well how the rhetoric of a new depar-ture is predicated on a limited view of postmodernism, referring to the latter mainly in its institutionalised form as a discourse of alterity and scepticism that defines itself first and foremost as subversive. After having written two novels in the postmodernist vein, Franzen programmatically returned to social realism in his third (and first successful) novel, The Corrections (2001). He reflected on this decision in a by now notorious




essay published in Harpers Magazine, in which he casts this return as no less than a declaration of war on postmodernism (cf. “Perchance to Dream”). Still, his oppositional stance notwithstanding, Franzen’s real-ism is deeply informed by, and indeed based on, postmodernist insights (cf. Burn 51 and passim). The new kind of realism does not revoke post-modernist claims about the power of discourse and the inaccessibility of the real, about the fragmentation of the subject and the impossibility of truth. Instead, it acknowledges them even while it asserts itself in spite of them. After postmodernism, we may find the ‘both/and’ (which post-modernism, thus a large critical consensus, has generally favoured over the modernist ‘either/or’) replaced by wilful aesthetics of the ‘in spite of,’ or as Geoffrey Holsclaw suggests, an attitude of ‘true/but still.’

Franzen’s case seems to exemplify a more general mood swing. There is a noticeable attempt in recent theory and literary practice to escape from this state of persistent belatedness and spectral form, which exists only by reference to what it no longer embodies. As Nicoline Timmer puts it:

the ‘tactic’ of deconstructing is always parasitical on existing sys-tems, structures and ideas. But now, the call for an alternative vision is heard more loudly. Quite simply put it is not unthinkable that after endless proposals for deconstructions, a desire to construct will break through. (21; original emphasis)

Among scholars who are currently trying to chart the contemporary (possibly) transitional moment in literature, this diagnosis seems to find almost unanimous consent.

Meanwhile, opinions on what precisely will eventually be remembered as the dominant factor in the current literary shift vary widely. Never-theless, realism, sincerity and authenticity make their appearance with a striking frequency: ‘Neo-Realism’ (Rebein, Dirty Realist), ‘Speculative Realism’ (Saldívar), ‘New Sincerity’ (Kelly), ‘Aesthetics of Authenticity’ (Funk) or ‘Aesthetic of Trust’ (Hassan). All these suggestions stress some sort of a return to the real not only in their labels. But there also seems to be a general agreement that this development does not constitute as radical a break as Franzen purports it to be. Quite the contrary, another point of general agreement is that these labels describe a shift of inter-est, rather than a rupture, that the literature they are concerned with holds on to much of what was postmodernist but looks beyond post-modernism’s constant endeavours to disrupt, to alienate and to sub-vert. It attempts to bridge the rupture (not to cover it), to be accessible




(though not transparent), to create (but not to posit). After and because of deconstruction, it seeks to reconstruct.

Fantasy: of literature beyond subversion

Let’s assume the curators of the V&A exhibition have got a point. Let’s say subversion’s dominance ended in 1990 and we have entered a phase of reorientation and reconstruction. Would the widely asserted return to realism follow as an inevitable consequence? What would such an aesthetic shift entail for the anti-realist, the marvellous or the fantastic, which has been hailed as The Literature of Subversion ever since Rosemary Jackson published her seminal study by that title in the 1980s? After all, a well-established consensus has it that the primary function and main ethical potential of the fantastic mode lies in its ability to ‘erode the pillars of society by un-doing categorical structures’ (Jackson 176). So what will happen to a literary mode that has seen a considerable rise in academic status within the context of postmodernism, precisely because it succeeded in presenting itself as inherently subversive? Will the literature of the fantastic subside again into the scholarly obscurity from which it had just struggled to escape?

These questions serve as the starting point of my investigation. Thus, this book will offer no overview of the vast variety of aesthetic means and topics to be found in recent literature as others have attempted (cf. Bradford; Head; Boxall; Tolan). Neither do I aim for a comprehen-sive analysis of the state of the fantastic in contemporary literature in general. Rather, I shall focus on a small number of novels, all of which employ versions of the fantastic mode in a similar way, and I ask how these texts relate to the characteristics of the present aesthetic shift as it is currently being described by an increasing number of scholars. Since the novels do not simply adhere to the proclaimed return to realism, the question arises of how they use fantastic elements in response to and negotiation with their postmodernist predecessors. Focusing thus on one specific strategy to respond to and escape from postmodernism which has so far largely escaped critical notice, my readings can enter into a productive and mutually illuminating dialogue with the main critical claims about the present literary moment.4

The four novels at the heart of my argument, all of which were published at the beginning of the millennium, around the same time as Franzen’s The Corrections, show a striking similarity in the way they employ the fantastic: they include fantastic narratives as fictions within fictions, safely embedded in a (in the widest sense) realist frame story.




Mark Danielewski’s House of Leaves (2000) poses as an academic treatise discussing a gothic horror film, reminiscent of The Blair Witch Project in its documentary style, but clearly states in its diegetic frame that the film is not only fictional, but is, indeed, itself a fiction: it never existed within the fictional reality the novel establishes in the first place. Jonathan Safran Foer’s Everything is Illuminated (2002) combines the story of a heritage trip to the Ukraine with the fabulous novel one of the protagonists writes about the shtetl of his ancestors. Michael Chabon’s The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay (2000) pays loving tribute to the early comic book and includes some of the superhero stories the novel’s protagonists invent. Finally, David Mitchell’s number9dream (2001) presents its readers with a whole line-up of fantasies ranging from daydreams and nightmares to video games and marvellous chil-dren’s stories, all embedded in a fairly straightforward, though rather unconventional, coming-of-age story.

In order to address the basic commonalities shared by a variety of significantly diverse genres extending from horror and magic realism to video games and fables, my definition of the fantastic is fairly broad. Nevertheless, I do not simply juxtapose it to realism.5 Instead, the cen-tral characteristic of the fantastic in my understanding of the mode is that it variously contrasts two essentially different literary stances, the mimetic and the marvellous. It is thus situated in the middle position on what may be envisioned as a continuum of possible interactions between the two stances (I will clarify my use of ‘stance,’ ‘mode’ and ‘genre’ shortly).

At the mimetic end of such a continuum one finds literary texts which aim to stay as close to extratextual reality as possible, such as non-fiction novels, new journalism, autobiography, documentaries or travelogues.6 On the other end, that of the marvellous, one might situ-ate texts that depict imaginary realms and other worlds, like fairy tales, some science fiction, or what Brian Attebery calls ‘formula fantasy’ (3). Every literary text could be positioned somewhere along the continuum that spans between these two poles, leaning towards one or the other, either ‘mimetically dominated’ or ‘fantasy [I would say ‘marvellous’] dominated’ (Cornwell 39). To call a text mimetic in this sense would thus not necessarily mean that it reproduces conventions of nine-teenth-century realism, but that it lays claim to a certain authenticity and referential accuracy of representation, that it endeavours to hold up a mirror to either an objective or a subjective reality. The mimetic stance thus pays tribute to that artistic ideal of correspondence to real-ity, which is symbolised by the grapes of Zeuxis, an ideal that is deeply




ingrained in Western culture.7 My use of the term ‘mimesis’ has to be understood as strictly limited to its association with this ideal, not in its wider Aristotelian sense of general narrative verisimilitude or in its rhetorical signification as imitatio. Moreover, what I call a mimetic stance is not dependent on a specific style or set of conventions. I thus understand the mimetic in the wide sense Andrzej Gasiorek gives real-ism, ‘not so much a set of textual characteristics as a general cognitive stance vis-à-vis the world, which finds different expression at different historical moments, manifesting itself in a wide range of fictional forms’ (14).8 It refers to the relation the text is understood to establish with the extratextual world, the intentionality it develops towards it, and not to specific means by which a text strives to establish that relation nor to the respective success of such means.

Conversely, the marvellous stance involves a deliberate departure from perceivable reality and thus a willing suspension of the claim to reflect the extratextual world, as in Stendhal’s famous mirror. In purely marvellous texts the supernatural, the magical and the bizarre are usu-ally taken for granted, and the text-world explicitly does not coincide with the extratextual world. Thus accurate depiction and approxi-mation of reality in representation no longer serve as the yardsticks of artistic achievement, even though verisimilitude, in the sense of coherence and narrative congruity, certainly remains important. Just as strategies of the mimetic stance are not restricted to the code conven-tions of nineteenth-century realism, the marvellous is not necessarily dependent on the supernatural.

The two stances also raise different reader expectations and demand different reading strategies and ways of interpretation. In that sense, mimesis and the marvellous are as much stances of reading as they are stances of production. A marvellous text implies a reader who accepts that it does not mirror reality and who realises that it imagines a dif-ferent, marvellous world – a reader who does not read the fairy tale for its historical accuracy or the fable for its precise depiction of animal behaviour. A mimetic text, by contrast, implies a reader who acknowl-edges its attempts to depict reality and does not take it for pure fanciful invention.

The differences between the stances in such clear cases remain latent, inconspicuous and unproblematic. Only when they enter into some sort of contradiction within the text, when it becomes difficult to dis-tinguish and keep them apart, only then do differences in form, func-tion and interpretation become salient, taking a prominent position in a text’s creation of meaning. It is precisely such kind of uncertainty




arising from the combination of the two stances that characterises the fantastic mode. Whereas the stances describe different attitudes literary texts take towards reality, the fantastic mode, as I propose to understand the term here, refuses to be entirely annexed to either of the stances. As Lance Olsen puts it, the fantastic ‘[h]over[s] between the marvelous and the mimetic modes [I would say ‘stances’] on our continuum.’ It is ‘a mode that confounds and confuses the marvelous and the mimetic [, that] plays one mode off the other, creating a dialectic which refuses synthesis’ (Ellipse 19). While the fantastic mode often leans towards one or the other stance, it derives its main effect and pleasure from an exploitation of their basic irreconcilability.

I therefore use ‘stance’ to describe two basic ‘impulses’ (Hume 20) of literature, in preference to talking of juxtaposed codes as others have done (cf. Chanady; Kluwick),9 while I reserve the term ‘mode’ to des-ignate the fantastic as a conspicuous combination of the two stances. While the fantastic itself is not a stance, since it is not of the same nature and generality as the two basic impulses or poles of the mimetic and the marvellous which it combines and juxtaposes, I also prefer not to speak of it as a genre. Itself a highly contested term, genre would seem to be of more use to describe historically and formally more clearly determined literary forms. In contrast to that, the fantastic mode, as I use the term here, can manifest itself in various ways. The classical gothic fantastic and magic realism, for example, would be two prominent exponents of the mode, which differ not in their basic fantastic nature but primarily in the specific ways in which they combine the two stances.10

The combination, juxtaposition and interplay of the two basic stances are central to the aesthetic project of all the novels which I discuss in more detail in the following pages. Nevertheless, none of them is straightforwardly fantastic. Instead, it is essential that, in all of them, fantastic narratives are inserted as embedded stories and are marked as fictions within fictions in the course of the frame tale. What these novels do therewith, one could argue, is to contain the fantastic safely within the bounds of fiction. Whereas the claims for a subversive potential of the fantastic that have largely dominated the discussion of the mode over the last decades were based on the supposed rupture of the discourse of the real by the intrusion of the supernatural, in the case of the framed fantastic tales encountered in these texts, reality is never under any lasting strain. After all, the fantastic elements are explicitly exposed as fictional within the reality of the text-world that the frame tale establishes. There is therefore, for the most part, little ontological claim to the fantastic occurrences narrated in these texts.




They do not disturb a sense of verisimilitude and the possible because they are revealed to be mere products of the characters’ imaginations. The fantastic refrains from asserting its own reality and thus no longer induces readers to question their ontological convictions in order to acknowledge its existence. But can this simply be subsumed to the widely proclaimed return to realism after postmodernism’s anti-realist agenda? If so, why draw on the fantastic mode at all? What function does it fulfil within the texts, in particular with regard to their endeav-our to go beyond postmodernism? I propose that a closer consideration of these questions can do much to contribute to a better understanding of the ways in which my literary examples position themselves with regard to postmodernist discourse, and therewith helps to gain further insight into the qualities and characteristics of the wider aesthetic shift in recent literature.

From postmodernism to reconstruction: a chapter overview

Part I of this study provides the discursive and theoretical context in which these questions arise. Chapter 1 is dedicated to an overview of the current debate about a movement beyond postmodernism.11 I delin-eate how my own findings relate to a current critical discourse about a moment of transition, whose incipient influence seems to register in various ways on the contemporary Western literary scene. While this debate is currently gaining momentum, it is still in its initial stages and quite heterogeneous. I compare and juxtapose different critical assess-ments of literature after postmodernism in order to identify common basic features pervading the discussion. Following from this characteri-sation, I argue for the usefulness of the term ‘reconstruction’ to describe recent aesthetic developments.12

After such a characterisation of the larger academic and literary con-text in which the debate is situated, Chapter 2 will focus more specifi-cally on the question of what role the fantastic may play within this emergent change. Taking into account the specific narrative structure of the novels discussed, I set out to rethink common assumptions about the mode and suggest an alternative approach. Based on my under-standing of the fantastic mode as a hesitation between two stances, I suggest that within these novels the epistemological and ontological questions that have long been at the centre of the fantastic are gradually being displaced by what I would call pragmatic considerations. I thus propose to add a third, mediating term to the ‘methodological double standard’ between semantic and syntactic approaches to definitions of




the fantastic which Fredric Jameson described and lamented in a chap-ter of The Political Unconscious (95). Semantic approaches, according to Jameson, ‘aim to describe the essence or meaning of a given genre by way of the reconstruction of an imaginary entity [ . . . ] which is some-thing like the generalized existential experience behind the individual texts’ (94). Syntactic approaches, in contrast, try to define a genre by laying down its structural and formal rules, ‘where genre is apprehended in terms of a series of determinate functions, or what we will call a struc-ture or a fixed form’ (94).13 I would argue that what is missing both from Jameson’s list and from most of the discussion about the mode is an explicitly pragmatic focus: A pragmatic approach would foreground the role genre (or mode, for that matter) plays in structuring reader expecta-tion and response, a process that has to be understood as reciprocal, as a position or perspective that is negotiated between textual clues and reader reception. While the semantic perspective, according to Jameson, ‘asks the text what it means’ and syntactic analyses ‘ask how it works’ (184, original emphasis), a pragmatic approach would ask for its effect.

From this perspective it becomes possible to see the definition of the fantastic as continually under contestation on all three of these levels, with different theories emphasising different aspects according to their respective selection of literary texts and influenced by their historical and ideological biases. My own understanding, as it arises from the reconstructive tendencies in the contemporary novels I discuss, by no means claims to be an exception. While taking various semantic and syntactic approaches into account, the thoughts on the fantastic that I will develop in Chapter 2 are clearly biased towards the pragmatic, thus mirroring the increasing focus on the conditions of communica-tion and the functions of the fictive that can be found in recent authors’ engagements with the mode.

My usage of ‘pragmatic’ in this context is not exclusively derived from the philosophical school of thought which has adopted its name and which is currently seeing a decided revival, not only in form of Rortian neo-pragmatism, but also in a rediscovery and revaluation of earlier work by William James, Charles Sanders Peirce and John Dewey. Instead, I understand the term more generally as a useful nexus of inter-secting concerns that lie at the core of the specific use of the fantastic I am interested in. As a general philosophical term, a ‘pragmatic’ per-spective complements ontological and epistemological considerations by foregrounding ethical and intersubjective tensions and problems. As a more specific philosophical programme, pragmatism emphasises the basis of truth and knowledge in communicative agreement. In the area




of linguistic research, a pragmatic approach explores the conditions and contexts of communication. Finally, in common usage, it may refer to a turn from theory to an engagement with the practicalities of day-to-day life. All these various aspects, I would argue, can be seen to converge to some extent in the specific use my literary examples make of the fantastic, as they use the mode to explore the pragmatic aspects of fictions.

Drawing on Wolfgang Iser’s theory of the fictive, I argue that what my literary examples essentially do is to give prominence to an aspect of the fantastic that has previously remained mostly tacit: the fact that the fantastic, more than other genres or modes, is based on an exposure of the processes constituting the fictive. In order to clarify this claim, in the course of Chapter 2 I will discuss Wolfgang Iser’s theory of the fictive in some detail, as he developed it in his late work The Fictive and the Imaginary. To sum it up briefly at this point, he posits that the tra-ditional juxtaposition of reality and fiction is misleading. Instead, the fictive has to be understood as a dynamic process of fictionalising acts which negotiate between the real and the imaginary. In the fictive, the determinacy of the real is opened up towards a multiplicity of meaning by the imaginary, while the indeterminate and shapeless imaginary can only take shape (in the sense of Gestalt) by drawing on the real. Iser’s concept of the fictive, I argue, mirrors the structure of the fantastic mode. Thus, the fantastic lends itself well to metafictional considera-tions that highlight the specific nature and workings of the fictive, since its essential effect is based precisely on exposing the constituting inter-action between the real and the imaginary to view. As Tzvetan Todorov proposed, the fantastic can be said to ‘represent [ . . . ] the quintessence of literature, insofar as the questioning of the limit between real and unreal, proper to all literature, is its explicit center’ (168). Whereas the mimetic stance tends to hide the influence of the imaginary and the marvellous tends to hide its reliance on the real, the fantastic mode fore-grounds their mutual presence, be it in form of an antagonistic clash, as in the gothic fantastic, or in form of an ambiguous coexistence, as in the case of magic realism.

A brief discussion of Yann Martel’s Life of Pi at this point allows me to illustrate my argument that an inclusion of fantastic stories as fictional artefacts, which are produced and consumed within the bounds of the frame narrative, may serve as a double focus on the nature and the functions of the fictive. All the novels I discuss include fictions within fictions and are concerned with the ways in which both the produc-tion and consumption of narrative fictions influence and shape their




protagonists. They draw on the fantastic as paradigmatically fictive in order to emphasise that such questions are not sufficiently answered by considering a text’s degree of referentiality and claim to mimetic fealty, but that the contribution of the imaginary needs to be taken into account. These novels are thus truly metafictional, not in the postmod-ernist sense of illusion-breaking self-reflection, but in different senses: they are metafictional in that they foreground the interplay of the real and the imaginary in the fictive, and in that they raise pragmatic ques-tions about its uses and consequences. They employ the fantastic not to question and subvert our sense of reality but to explore the creative potential of fictions.

After this introduction into the theoretical and methodological prem-ises that inform my perspective, Part II turns to detailed readings of the four contemporary novels mentioned above, chiselling out their respec-tive reconstructive substrata. In their own ways, each of these texts could be described as ‘novels after theory,’ a phrase Judith Ryan uses for the ‘remarkable number of novels [that] is substantially informed by theory’ (1) in the literary production of the last forty years.14 Their awareness of theoretical discourses deeply informs the responses to the challenges of postmodernism these contemporary authors develop. As the following chapters will show, House of Leaves makes its debt, not only to the ideas, but also to the very discourse of literary theory quite explicit (engaging in particular with poststructuralism and deconstruc-tion à la Derrida). Everything is Illuminated and The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay both enter into a creative dialogue with postmodernist concerns about historical narrative, truth in representation and theo-ries of trauma, while number9dream is concerned with the simulation and simulacra of capitalist consumer culture and the fragmentation of identity.

Each of the novels thus constructs the particular version of post-modernism it reacts to, a construction that is necessarily limited and reductive, broken down to a handful of specific aspects. In this, vari-ous strands of postmodernist theory serve as an implicit counterpoint, a tacit backdrop against which the novels’ creative innovations can be delineated and situated. Nevertheless, the fact that they single out particular (and often simplified) theoretical positions from among those that are associated with postmodernism does not derogate their responses. Although their engagement with and eventual departure from postmodernism may be, to a considerable extent, a rhetorical move, their constructions of both themselves and of their postmodern-ist predecessors does not render their reconstructive objective invalid




and meaningless. After all, all literary history is based on constructions. ‘“[P]ostmodernism,”’ writes Brian McHale, ‘is one of them. So, too, for that matter is “literature” itself’ (Constructing 2).

My observations about such individual endeavours gain a broader relevance in their focus on the similarity of the parameters informing these reconstructive attempts to move beyond the postmodernist. Even while the postmodernisms they construct, each in their turn, are highly divergent, their central concerns are closely related. All of them shift their focus from ontological and epistemological questions to pragmatic ones in an attempt to reclaim fiction as a form of communication that actually manages to convey meaning, however unstable and compro-mised it may be. In face of the postmodernist tenets of the inaccessibil-ity of the real, the indeterminacy of meaning and the impossibility of truth, they explore the ways in which we nonetheless understand real-ity, construct meanings and communicate with each other. In face of the omnipresence of fiction, they ask for our agency in its production and to assume responsibility for the fictions we tell.

Tracing these concerns in their various manifestations and contexts in the four novels, I will begin by discussing a work which, for all appearances, very much still adheres to postmodernism, both in form and in content: Mark Z. Danielewski’s House of Leaves. While a postmod-ernist interpretative approach offers much insight into this text (as has frequently been demonstrated), I single out those aspects that escape such a perspective. Looking in detail at the use of fantastic elements in conjunction with the text’s highly complex narrative structure, I argue that the novel eventually turns away from its postmodernist ontologi-cal and epistemological scepticisms and commits itself to a narrative of intersubjective responsibility and the possible contribution of fictions to a story of maturation.

Whereas in Danielewski such a reconstructive project is still highly dubitable and tentative, Foer’s novel Everything is Illuminated is much more confident in celebrating fiction’s ethical and creative potential. With deliberate, paradoxically self-conscious naïveté, it asserts the value of the fictive both as marvellous and as mimetic, juxtaposing the possibilities and limits of the two stances in a representation of the absent that pitches its loving tribute against the inaccessibility of the real. If one finds the ‘true/but still,’ the ‘in spite of’ that seems to mark the move beyond the postmodernist precariously established after a long existential struggle at the end of House of Leaves, for Everything is Illuminated it both constitutes the novel’s central thematic tension and serves as the very premise for the narrative. In Foer’s novel, one finds




humour in spite of horror, representation in spite of absence, truth in spite of unreliability and scepticism, love in spite of the impossibility of love. Meanwhile, it is precisely the exposure of the workings of the fictive in the fantastic that allows for the realisation of such an ‘in spite of.’ On this basis, the novel celebrates the role of fictional creation for an engagement with the past and the present whose ethical value lies in a process of intersubjective communication and an awareness of narrative responsibility.

By comparison, in Chabon’s novel The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay the attitude of ‘in spite of’ has truly come into its own. Its implica-tions, possibilities and ethical consequences are never similarly pon-dered and agonised over as they are in the previous two novels. Instead, they are tacitly taken for granted and serve as the basis for the novel’s focus on the other extreme of the pendulum’s amplitude: If Danielewski’s and Foer’s novels were centrally concerned with the possibility and impossibility of fiction’s representation of reality and truth, both generally and in their use of the fantastic mode specifically, Chabon’s novel turns towards an exploration of the benefits and prob-lems of escapism. In this, the novel not only commends the ability of fiction to offer an escape to the realm of the imaginary, but also points to the importance of a reconnection to reality. It thus stresses the inter-action of both aspects of the fictive negotiations as defined by Iser, the imaginary and the real. While the celebration of the fictive in Everything is Illuminated tends to foreground the imaginary, Kavalier & Clay, for all its praise of escapism, eventually insists on the complementary impor-tance of the determining function of the real as the basis for maturity and responsibility.

By bringing the novels into this order, my discussion thus suggests the possibility of reading them as successive steps in a reconstructive move beyond postmodernism, a progression that will further figure cen-trally in the reading of my last literary example, David Mitchell’s novel number9dream. House of Leaves is doubtlessly still deeply entrenched in postmodernism, both formally and thematically, and is centrally con-cerned with many of its main philosophical and aesthetic quandaries. While full of postmodernist playfulness on the surface, Everything is Illuminated turns its back on postmodernism in its deliberately naïve belief in the power of love and fiction. Drawing extensively on aesthetic devices that have long been associated with postmodernism, Foer’s novel never does so to the same anti-illusionist and subversive effect. Kavalier & Clay, then, largely leaves postmodernism’s aesthetic strate-gies behind, turning instead to the conventions of the social historical




novel. Nevertheless, it remains informed by postmodernist insights. Postmodernism is not simply rejected or ignored but made productive for a reconsideration of the possibilities, functions and responsibilities of fiction. While House of Leaves engages with postmodernism very explicitly and centrally, in Kavalier & Clay such an engagement has receded to an underlying premise, a foundation on which the novel develops its own aesthetics.

Strikingly, the increasing distance to postmodernism that can be traced in the successive novels is accompanied by a change in their choice of fantastic genre. In House of Leaves, readers encounter a classi-cal fantastic scenario of fear, uncertainty and struggle, closely associated with the early exponents of the mode in nineteenth-century gothic fiction. The supernatural is experienced as a threatening intrusion rupturing the surface of everyday reality. Everything is Illuminated, in contrast, recalls a somewhat more recent manifestation of the fantastic mode, the genre of magic realism. In the fantastic narrative strand of the novel, the supernatural elements are seamlessly integrated into the narrative reality, and accepted as natural by the characters without caus-ing anxiety or fear. Finally, in the fantastic narrative strands of Kavalier & Clay, which turns to superhero narratives, the supernatural itself is the focus, its embedding within reality is secondary. This effectively amounts to an ever-stronger imbalance towards the marvellous stance in the forms of the fantastic modes employed by the novels. But this apparent shift of sympathy towards the marvellous at the same time comes with an increasingly clear demarcation of ontological bounda-ries. The precise relation to reality of the fantastic story at the heart of House of Leaves remains somewhat uncertain throughout the novel, and fantastic narration in Everything is Illuminated does arise from and refer to real circumstances. In contrast, Kavalier & Clay insistently reasserts genre boundaries, despite admitting freely to the fictionality of its own framing mimetic narrative strand. An increasing investment in genre distinctions, which strives not so much to (re-)establish ontological boundaries but rather insists on the basic difference between the two stances, marvellous and mimetic, while emphasising their equal and complementary validity, thus seems to be part and parcel of the move beyond postmodernism these novels effect.

In order to recapitulate and draw these aspects together, I finally turn to David Mitchell’s novel number9dream, as a last case study. Because it includes several different kinds of inserted narratives and fantastic genres, the discussion of this novel allows me to effectively retrace the steps from the existential struggles with ontological uncertainty




in House of Leaves, via the quandaries of representation in Everything is Illuminated, to Kavalier & Clay’s concerns with escapism. At the same time, number9dream initially repeats the aforementioned trend towards an increasingly clearer differentiation between the two stances. However, just like this trend never quite leads to an unreservedly committed return to realism, not even in the case of Kavalier & Clay, number9dream eventually swings back into the fantastic mode in its last chapter. Once again, the fantastic mode is employed as a stand-in for the fictive itself, which the novel eventually invokes for its creative potential to form and transform both self and world.

But Mitchell’s novel also brings an aspect to the fore that is implicitly evoked, not only in all of the novels, but also in the very trajectory of my argument throughout Part II: all of them present us, to various degrees, with Bildungsroman narratives.15 In my concluding chapter, I turn my attention to the various Bildungsroman trajectories the novels describe and ask for their possible relevance for and connection to contemporary literary attempts to leave postmodernism behind. While such a revival of the Bildungsroman narrative is striking in itself in view of a widespread scepticism towards the genre in modernism and post-modernism, I will ask for the common characteristics of the contempo-rary evocations. Paying particular attention to the role of father figures in these texts, I argue that the decidedly conciliatory nature of the pro-tagonists’ struggle to come into their own reflects the relation between postmodernism and its reconstructive successor. Since the traditional Bildungsroman trajectory is a specifically male one, I will juxtapose this discussion to some observations on the reconstructive traits of three novels by female authors, Margaret Atwood’s The Blind Assassin (2000), A. S. Byatt’s The Biographer’s Tale (2000) and Nicole Krauss’ The History of Love (2005). Finally, I offer some concluding thoughts about possible connections of the perceived reconstructive aesthetic shift to a larger cultural change, to ask whether they might indeed herald the passing not only of postmodernism, but even of postmodernity.



277

Index

Major entries are in bold.

9/11 5

Abel, Elizabeth 240Abrams, Meyer Howard 211absence 63–4, 80, 82, 85, 86, 87, 89,

95, 105–8, 110, 116, 118, 126–31, 135–6, 138, 143, 146, 152, 168, 212, 216, 234, 261

of fathers 216, 224–33, 252postmodernist emphasis on 1, 4,

64, 83–4, 93, 112of the real 63, 64, 65, 126, 183and representation 15, 16, 69–70,

86, 93, 145Adams, Jenni 262Adams, Marie Ann 237 Adiseshiah, Siân 5, 47, 255adolescence 165–6, 172, 190–1,

250see also coming of age; youth

Adorno, Theodor 143Aeneas 104aesthetics 45, 63, 73, 75, 95, 114,

151, 155, 162, 182, 198, 255aesthetic education 241, 245aesthetic illusion 26, 153, 156–60,

165comic-book see comic booksmagic realist see magic realismmodernist see modernismpostmodernist see postmodernismrealist see realism reconstructive 2–3, 6–7, 10, 11,

17, 18, 23, 28–44, 46, 47, 83, 116, 187, 233, 256, 258

affect 33, 38, 45, 51, 59, 108, 123, 125, 143, 248

agency 15, 48, 49, 64–5, 74, 96, 104, 146, 165, 172, 183, 190–1, 196, 210, 212, 213, 221, 248

allegory 56, 58, 59, 62–3, 121, 133–4, 152, 170, 234, 236, 242, 250, 253, 260, 263

Allison, Dorothy 27alterity 5, 52, 54, 82, 87, 151, 223

see also other, theAmerica 21, 23, 24, 121, 138, 150,

152, 163, 164–5, 172, 173, 174, 176, 192, 206, 227, 252, 256, 257, 258, 262, 268

American Dream 148, 163, 168Amian, Katrin 117, 120, 131, 140anachronism 23–4, 74, 104, 139, 183Anderson, Paul Thomas 29Anderson, Perry 256Anderson, Wes 29Andrews, Bruce 36anti-illusionism 14, 16, 26, 29, 30,

33, 42, 109, 136, 156–7, 165, 170, 179, 187, 193–4, 206, 211, 213, 220–1, 239, 241

compare disillusionanti-realism 7, 11, 32, 41, 44, 48,

54, 257anti-rebels 23anxiety 17, 44, 139, 183, 186

of influence 224Arabian Nights 259architecture 80, 258Ariadne 100Armitt, Lucie 52, 53, 260art 2, 5, 9, 25, 33, 53, 114, 143, 150,

153–4, 164, 165, 166–7, 173, 174, 176, 213, 237, 245–6, 252, 256, 262

Arthurian sagas 259Attebery, Brian 8, 52Atwood, Margaret

The Blind Assassin 18, 233, 235–7, 240



278 Index

Auerbach, Erich 44, 160Auschwitz 143Auster, Paul 258, 259

Man in the Dark 21–2, 48, 185, 264authenticity 6, 8, 26–8, 30, 33–4,

42–3, 45, 47, 48, 71, 85, 86, 92, 95, 116, 156, 158, 160, 181, 204, 257, 260

authorial involvement 26authorship 27, 36, 38, 42, 71, 102,

105, 116, 140, 142, 184, 203, 208, 216, 224, 233, 239, 244

autobiography 8, 61, 116, 165, 235, 238–9

avant-garde 5, 30, 47, 164, 224

Baker, Nicholson 29Bakhtin, Michail M. 254Barnacle, Hugo 115, 201Barth, John 1, 52

Giles Goat-Boy 242Barthes, Roland 27

effet de réel 157Baudrillard, Jean 183, 196, 265Baumbach, Noah 29beauty 63–4, 90–1, 95, 98, 125, 134,

140, 173, 190, 239Beddow, Michael 241Begley, Adam 116Behlman, Lee 126, 133, 138, 149,

152, 153, 154–7, 162, 164, 175–6, 179, 263

belief 5, 16, 22, 33, 36, 38–9, 41, 43, 45, 47, 49, 51, 56–7, 58, 63–4, 84, 98, 101, 110, 135, 160, 167, 169, 183, 187, 193–4, 196, 210, 235

see also credibility; faith; disbeliefBelletto, Steven 261Bemong, Nele 261Benfer, Amy 155, 174Benton, Michael 49, 75, 248Berlatsky, Eric L. 158, 168Bertens, Han 256biblical 44, 121, 164, 259Bildung 241–2, 244, 245Bildungsroman 18, 97, 102, 154, 168,

181–2, 188, 196, 206, 211–14, 215–16, 223, 226, 232, 240–54, 257, 264, 265, 266

binaries 37, 251Blair Witch Project, The 8Bloom, Harold 80, 224, 225Boes, Tobias 241, 257, 266book 102, 104, 107–8, 111, 131–3,

136, 138, 143, 175, 201–2, 208–9, 234, 262

Borges, Jorge Luis 184Boulter, Jonathan 189, 204, 206,

207, 264Bourdieu, Pierre 223Bourriaud, Nicolas 4, 257, 259Bowers, Maggie Ann 119, 261Boxall, Peter 7, 40, 120Boym, Svetlana 170Bradford, Richard 3, 7, 40, 264Brick, Martin 87Brooke-Rose, Christine 60, 259, 260Bruno, Giordano 21Buchanan, Ian 225Buckley, Jerome Hamilton 223Burn, Stephen J. 6, 25, 232, 258Byatt, A. S. 240

The Biographer’s Tale 18, 233, 237–40

capitalism 14, 155, 176, 183, 192, 210, 212, 225, 236, 245, 249–51, 264, 266

see also consumerism; hypercapitalism

Carver, Raymond 24, 257 Castells, Manuel 258, 264–5Castle, Gregory 240, 241, 242, 245catatonia 225centre 1, 3, 31, 37, 54, 64, 80–4,

101, 110–11, 126, 169, 183, 226, 251

Cervantes, Miguel Don Quixote 188, 191

Chabon, Michael The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier

and Clay 8, 14, 16–18, 148–80, 181–3, 215, 217, 218, 222, 227–8, 243, 252, 265

Maps and Legends 160–1, 178, 263Chabot, C. Barry 47Chanady, Amaryll Beatrice 10, 256Chen, Fanfan 255



Index 279

children’s stories 8, 43–4, 201, 259Childs, Peter 183, 192, 193, 202,

209, 213, 252Chinese-box structure 48, 184, 235

see also embedded narratives; mise en abyme

Chodorow, Nancy 240Chute, Hillary 153, 164, 175–6, 179,

263cinema 87, 93, 186

see also filmCitizen Kane 156Claviez, Thomas 24–5Clayton, David 60climate change 5closure 37, 63, 67, 71, 72, 206, 249Cold War, The 5, 255Collado-Rodríguez, Francisco 262colonialism 4, 250–1comic book 8, 54, 148, 150–6, 159,

161, 165, 171–3, 175–6, 179, 195, 227

aesthetics of 151, 153, 162–4, 166–8, 173, 176

coming of age 188, 204, 212, 215, 222, 242, 253, 265

hero 212narrative 8, 187, 188, 226, 242,

243, 251novels 243see also adolescence; Bildungsroman;

maturationcommercialisation 4, 150, 195, 200 commitment 15, 24, 30, 88, 91, 113,

174, 178–9, 182, 186, 218, 231, 240

to communication 36, 42, 48, 113to realism 18, 22, 40, 132, 216,

236, 238communication 22, 24, 31, 32–44,

48–9, 58, 60, 64, 72, 79, 82, 86, 88, 91, 93, 94–5, 97, 101, 109, 146, 178, 216, 223, 230, 232, 235, 244, 246, 247–8, 252, 254, 258

conditions of 12–13, 40fiction as 15–16, 26, 27, 36, 74,

110, 113, 118, 138, 150, 159, 160, 177, 182, 210, 217–18, 221–2, 224, 261

(im)possibility of 15, 28, 31, 36, 38–9, 48, 65, 85, 116, 151, 221

community 28, 31, 33, 37, 49, 79, 88, 94, 101 106, 108, 109, 112, 113, 131, 138, 141, 144, 222, 238, 246, 248

Connor, Steven 2conservatism 23, 70, 226, 249conspiracy theories 184consumerism 4, 5, 14, 43, 47, 160,

183, 191–2, 199, 250, 266contingency 25–6, 27, 28, 46, 52,

75, 175, 213, 223conventions (literary) 28, 69–70, 73,

164–5, 171, 219, 256, 263of Bildungsroman 188, 212criticism of 26, 110, 182, 187, 217,

219–20of gothic horror 86–7, 88of magic realism 120of realism 8–9, 16, 25–6, 40, 148,

154, 163, 206of superhero stories 151, 153

Cooper, Brenda 260cooperation 42Coppola, Sophia 29Cornell, Joseph 155Cornwell, Neil 8, 52Cottingley fairies 92counter-discourse 53creation

collaboration in 146, 149, 153, 162

creative process 34, 55, 66, 75, 83, 85, 89–91, 94–5, 97, 100, 108–11, 118–20, 127, 135–6, 139, 140, 143, 145, 150, 154, 161, 166, 175–8, 208–10, 213, 218, 220, 224–5, 238, 243–6, 252–3

of meaning see meaning, creation ofsee also fiction, creative potential of

credulity 23, 43, 194see also belief; faith

culture 2, 14, 18, 23, 36, 38, 41, 50, 82, 87, 114–15, 117, 120, 121, 136, 138, 152, 156, 184, 195, 196, 214, 215, 216, 225, 231, 241, 245–6, 249–50, 252–3, 255, 256, 258, 259, 261, 266



280 Index

culture – continuedcultural context 241, 248, 256,

259cultural discourse 38, 47, 255 cultural dominant 61, 260cultural paradigm 41cultural pessimism 36, 41, 44popular culture 1, 4–5, 163, 166,

196, 199–200, 265Western culture 3, 5, 9, 47, 176

cummings, e. e. 224cyberpunk 190, 192–4, 205, 265

Dada 164Daedalus 262Dalí, Salvador 155–6Danielewski, Mark Z. 29, 105, 224

House of Leaves 8, 14–18, 31, 79–112, 113–14, 118, 126, 146, 148–9, 151–2, 153, 157–8, 161, 180–3, 215, 217, 220–1, 222, 224, 228–30, 237–8, 244

darkness 86, 88–9, 90–1, 93, 95, 98, 100–2, 103, 105, 106, 107, 111–12, 127, 133, 142, 143, 145, 222

death 64, 88, 89, 103, 118, 122–5, 127–30, 136, 137, 139, 142–3, 145, 152, 191, 191, 197, 200, 205, 209, 212, 218, 229, 234–5, 237

of the author 27by drowning 122, 124–5, 129,

132–3, 135, 188, 193–4, 208, 265of the fantastic 57of the novel 258of postmodernism 1–2, 113of the subject 242

deconstruction 3, 6–7, 14, 35, 39, 47–8, 53, 74, 79, 80–5, 94, 105, 110, 114, 118, 149, 160, 170, 221–2, 224, 226, 233, 236, 247, 252, 253, 257, 266

Defoe, DanielRobinson Crusoe 155, 163

Deleuze, Gilles 225DeLillo, Don 24, 25, 259 Dell, Kerstin 232Derrida, Jacques 14, 30, 49, 80–1,

83–4, 111, 183, 266

différance 81, 100, 221Specters of Marx 255

desiring production 225Dewey, John 12digimodernism 41–3, 45digression 54, 85, 92, 96, 96, 161,

188–9, 201, 203, 264Dillon, Sarah 187, 264disbelief 5, 58, 62, 92, 103, 160, 199

suspension of 33, 39, 55, 73, 220–1

discourse 2, 4, 5–6, 10–11, 14, 31, 38, 47, 51, 53–4, 58, 60, 64, 66, 75, 80, 108, 110, 114, 116, 117, 120, 151, 159, 160–3, 171, 182, 218–9, 239, 241, 244, 245, 250, 255, 258, 260, 263, 265

see also cultural discoursedisillusion 28, 135, 165, 168, 170,

179, 211, 241, 245compare anti-illusionism

Doctorow, E. L. 258documentary 8, 86, 91–2, 95, 100,

238 Dogme 95 25Doherty, Brian 153Donovan, Christopher 5, 30double framing 38–9, 72

see also framedreams 49, 66, 124–5, 128, 132, 136,

137, 150, 152, 159, 164, 166–7, 170–1, 178, 182, 187, 188, 198–9, 204–5, 207–13, 217, 218, 222, 231, 238, 244

daydreams 8, 190–3, 199, 205nightmares 8, 86, 96, 188,

197–200, 264Duncan, Rebecca 63Durst, Uwe 60, 255Dutta, Shomit 188, 264

earnestness 42–4Easton Ellis, Bret 24Egan, Jennifer 233Eggers, Dave 29, 38, 42

A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius 31, 33–4

embedded narratives 7–8, 10, 13, 17, 48–9, 54–5, 65, 72–5, 86, 91, 93,



Index 281

95, 134, 142, 150–1, 153–4, 156, 162, 188–9, 196–7, 202–3, 205, 217, 218, 232, 234–6

see also frame; Chinese-box structure; mise en abyme

emotion 22, 23, 88, 122–3, 124, 196, 234

empathy 32–3, 35, 38, 125, 143–4, 213

Empire State Building, the 156, 163, 165, 175, 179

Enlightenment 44, 210, 241–2entertainment 55, 74, 105, 118,

160–1, 178, 183, 186, 194–56, 210, 236

epiphany 27, 101, 211, 213, 239, 242

epistemological concerns 11–12, 40, 49, 55, 57–61,

63, 79, 87, 92–3, 102, 126, 181–2, 219, 247

questions 11, 15, 40, 49, 59, 74, 93, 97, 105, 119, 149, 180, 181–2, 199, 215, 234

shift 45–6, 49 erasure 80–1, 85, 89–91, 106, 108–9,

151, 185, 192, 212, 229escapism 16, 18, 52, 65, 66, 135,

145, 151–4, 165, 171–7, 179, 181, 201, 218–19

Escher, M. C. 84Eshelman, Raoul 4, 37–9, 43, 45,

63–4, 72, 258Esty, Joshua 240, 250–1ethics 117–20, 139–40, 145–6, 149,

152, 180, 183, 187, 230, 245, 265and genre 7, 55, 65, 92postmodernist 2, 181 reconstructive emphasis on 12,

15–16, 30, 31, 33, 40, 49, 75, 113, 127, 160, 184, 218–19, 221–3, 247, 253, 255

Eugenides, Jeffrey 258Europe 22, 115, 149, 152, 164, 241,

248, 250, 262, 265Eve, Martin 35, 259everyday life 49, 86, 91, 247–8experimentalism 21, 25, 28, 40, 182,

218, 224, 256, 257, 264

fable 8, 9, 62, 181, 200–3fabulation 24, 126, 158–9fairy tale 8–9, 198, 259faith 28–30, 31, 33, 35, 43, 87, 145,

149, 151, 159, 167, 224, 229, 235, 264

see also belief; credulityfallibilism 158family 22, 86, 95, 119, 121, 174,

252, 264, 265absence of 85, 88, 150, 152, 169,

226–8, 231, 246reunion with 22, 28, 79, 88–9, 91,

211–12, 215, 222, 230, 232, 242romance 225, 231see also father; grandfather;

grandmother; mother; sonfantastic, the 7–11, 13–18, 39, 40,

43–4, 48, 51–75, 79, 82, 86–8, 91–3, 95, 97, 102, 105–6, 109–10, 113, 116–18, 125–8, 135–6, 138, 145–6, 148–54, 159, 161–2, 167, 171–2, 176–80, 182, 187, 191–4, 194, 199–200, 205, 207, 215, 217–18, 232–5, 255, 256, 257, 260–2

classical gothic 10, 17, 58, 61, 87–8, 171–2

fantastic hesitation 11, 55–60, 63, 65, 68, 71–2, 74, 86, 92–3, 102, 106, 148–9, 186, 190, 194, 199–200, 203, 234–5, 260

fantastic intrusion 10, 17, 55, 59, 60, 82, 86, 88, 103, 172, 179

paradigmatic fictionality of 14, 55, 65, 66–75, 118, 215, 221, 232, 238–9

and postmodernism 22, 24, 48, 51–4, 58, 184–7

pure 56, 59, 68, 92fantasy 7, 52–3, 72, 82, 156, 175–6,

179, 180, 189, 194, 196, 200, 204, 222, 255, 260, 261, 265

formula fantasy 8, 53, 260father 18, 37, 89, 97–8, 103–4, 134,

174, 175, 181, 186, 188, 190, 193, 195–7, 199, 203, 205–6, 211–12, 214, 215–16, 224–31, 233, 234–5, 258, 262



282 Index

father – continuedrevolt against 46, 146, 223–5,

242 compare family; grandfather;

grandmother; mother; sonfear 17, 24, 35, 55, 87–8, 98, 106,

172Fellini, Federico 102Feuer, Menachem 262fiction 2, 9, 13, 16, 22, 26, 48, 63–4,

66, 71–5, 93–4, 97, 109, 117–20, 125–6, 135–6, 145–6, 150, 157, 160, 166–8, 177, 181–3, 188–90, 192, 201–2, 208, 213, 216, 218–23, 232, 235, 238–9, 243–4, 259, 261

creative potential of 14–16, 102, 126, 145, 190

and postmodernism 3, 52, 58, 73, 94, 157, 177, 179–80, 181, 183, 184, 217–21

pragmatic aspects of 13–15, 17, 33, 36, 38–40, 49, 74–5, 91, 102, 105, 110, 113, 117, 159, 184, 219–21, 231, 234, 246, 252–4

within fictions see embedded narratives

see also fictive, thefictionalising acts

combination 69–70, 72, 109, 157, 165, 201

selection 69–70, 72, 109, 157, 158, 165, 201

self-disclosure 69, 71, 73, 159–61, 201, 223

fictive, the 13–14, 16, 18, 55, 66–8, 69–70, 72, 74, 102, 109–10, 112, 117–19, 165, 175, 177, 181–2, 187, 189, 205, 207, 210, 213, 218–19, 238, 245, 261

functions of 12, 39–40, 65, 67–8, 70, 106, 152–3, 158–9, 167, 169, 171, 177, 179–80, 184, 221–2, 225, 254

value of 15, 48, 154, 160, 169, 177, 182, 224

see also fiction; fictionalising actsFielding, Henry

Joseph Andrews 189

film 54, 86, 87, 89–93, 95, 107, 163, 186, 192, 195, 197–8, 200, 213

see also cinemafinancial crisis 5First World War 235, 266Fluck, Winfried 27, 257Foer, Jonathan Safran

Everything is Illuminated 8, 14–18, 113–47, 148–52, 154, 157–9, 161, 181–3, 215, 217–18, 222, 224, 226, 230–1, 233, 252, 262, 263

folk-tales 65, 115, 119footnotes 66, 80, 81, 83–4, 89,

94, 96, 98–9, 102, 110, 156–7, 229–30, 243

forgiveness 104, 140, 143–4, 178Foucault, Michel 241fragmentation 6, 14, 27, 31, 33, 35,

52, 96–7, 103–4, 130, 131, 133, 184, 213, 220, 237, 239, 242, 245, 251

frame 32, 48, 63, 73, 90, 216, 218, 251–3

narrative 7, 8, 10, 13, 38–9, 54, 73–4, 79, 86, 96–7, 99, 105, 119, 134, 142, 156, 161–3, 168, 186, 188, 201–2, 217, 234–5, 260

see also double framingcompare embedded narrative

Franzen, Jonathan 5–7, 24, 29, 224The Corrections 5, 7, 258

freedom 107, 173, 178–9, 186, 215, 225, 231–2, 241, 242, 246–7, 249, 263

imaginative 22, 73, 151, 201, 235French Revolution 248Freud, Sigmund 223, 225, 231Friedlander, Saul 118fundamentalism 5Funk, Wolfgang 6, 30, 33–4, 42, 45,

255

Gannon, Todd 45, 258–9Gans, Eric 39Gasiorek, Andrzej 9, 40, 256, 257gender 37, 53, 87, 233, 240, 258Genette, Gérard 55genre 8, 10, 12–13, 44, 48, 60, 65,

114, 153–4, 159, 160, 162, 181–2,



Index 283

190, 192, 221, 233, 238, 244, 255, 256, 257

conventions 26, 40, 52, 73, 87–8, 157, 217, 263

distinctions 17, 44, 48, 161, 165, 182, 217–19

see also under individual genresGermany 122–3, 149, 150, 173, 241Gessen, Keith 262ghost 1, 48, 56–7, 59, 92, 94, 98–9,

193–4, 255ghost story 56globalisation 5, 192, 247, 249–51Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von 245Goldsmith, Kenneth 36golem 156, 164, 175–6, 177–9gothic 8, 10, 13, 17, 87–8, 91, 95,

148grandfather 114–15, 116, 119, 121,

124, 126, 131–2, 137, 138–42, 144–7, 175, 204, 230–1, 244

compare family; father; grandmother; mother; son

grandmother 127, 144, 147, 188, 209, 212, 230, 233

compare family; father; grandfather; mother; son

Grass, GüntherTin Drum 242, 254

gravity 83–4, 185Gray, Alastair

Lanark 221Greaney, Michael 256Green, James 183, 192–3, 202, 209,

213, 252Green, Jeremy 36, 45, 255Gregory, Sinda 88, 109, 224, 261Groß, Florian 153Guattari, Félix 225

Habermas, Jürgen 30, 248Hansen, Mark B. N. 110, 183happiness 103, 134–5, 206, 227,

246–8happy ending 88, 91, 112, 140, 146,

212, 236, 242–3Hardt, Michael 251–3Harper’s Magazine 6Harpham, Geoffrey Galt 211

Hassan, Ihab Habib 1–2, 3, 6, 35, 43, 54

Hawthorne, Nathanial 175Hayles, N. Katherine 45, 87, 258–9Head, Dominic 7Heckman, Davin 47Hegerfeldt, Anne C. 260Hess, Jared 29Hildyard, Rupert 5, 47, 255Hirsch, Marianne 240historical fiction 59, 120, 149,

153–6, 158, 160–1, 164, 167–8, 171, 177, 235

history 2, 22, 117–18, 121, 123, 125, 134, 150–60, 167–8, 181, 183, 185, 203–5, 221, 222, 231, 243, 246, 250, 253–4, 263

historical accuracy 9, 115, 119–20, 126–7, 131, 139–40, 158–9, 203, 236, 237

postmodernist critique of 1, 3–4, 14, 114, 120, 183

Hitchcock, Alfred 224Hoffmann, Gerhard 52, 60, 73Hollander, John 224Hollywood 43, 164, 221Holocaust 117, 138, 143, 149, 152,

233, 262, 265Holsclaw, Geoffrey 6home 79, 83, 85, 86, 91, 103, 104,

108, 169, 175, 179, 188, 211–12, 215, 230–1, 262, 263, 264

Homer 44, 259homosexuality 53, 171, 174, 227Hong Kingston, Maxine 29horror 8, 16, 64, 65, 82, 85, 86, 95,

116, 120, 122–5, 135, 139, 143–5, 200

Horstkotte, Martin 54, 70, 184Houdini, Harry 159, 172Huber, Irmtraud 117, 130, 257,

263Huggan, Graham 257humanism 49, 75, 83, 90, 170, 187,

259Hume, Kathryn 10, 255Hutcheon, Linda 2, 44, 114, 120,

158, 168, 218, 220, 262hyperbole 61, 157, 207



284 Index

hypercapitalism 5, 183, 246, 247, 248, 253

hypermodernity 194, 266hyperreality 181, 183, 196–7,

212–13, 265hypostasis 166–7, 263

Icarus 262identity 14, 102, 114, 186, 211–13,

225–6, 228, 231, 239, 242, 245, 249, 250–2, 258

construction of 31, 130–1, 190, 195–6, 204–6, 213, 237, 240, 244

illumination 93, 136–7, 140, 143, 147, 163, 230

illusion 56–7, 159–60, 165, 167, 169–70, 191, 197–8, 204, 206, 211, 221

imaginary, the 66, 132–3, 159, 167, 171, 172, 206, 207, 210, 223

and the real 13–14, 16, 55, 66–8, 69–72, 102, 109–10, 117, 119, 165, 175, 177, 180, 183–4, 189, 190–1, 194, 201, 207, 218–19, 261, 265

imitatio 9India 61, 260, 263individuality 27, 30, 43, 49, 97, 107,

192, 195–6, 206, 221–2, 231–2, 240–51, 253–4, 257, 258

infantilism 42–4, 52innocence 23, 25, 114, 120, 135,

154, 168, 170–1intention 69, 177, 227, 239intentionality 9, 68, 69–70interaction 8, 13, 16, 42, 108–9, 118,

180, 256, 262intermediality 107internet 41, 108interpretation 9, 45, 47, 56–8, 62–3,

65, 67, 70, 72, 74, 82, 84, 87–91, 93, 94–5, 97, 102, 105, 107–9, 117, 220

intertextuality 107, 184intrusion see fantastic intrusionirony 4–5, 23–4, 28–30, 32, 35, 38,

42–3, 45, 46, 54, 88, 116, 122, 123, 124–5, 127, 137, 140, 151, 152, 163, 168, 187, 217, 258

irrationality 53, 174Iser, Wolfgang 13, 16, 55, 66–72, 73,

109–10, 159, 165, 177–80, 207, 219, 221, 223

isolation 49, 98–100, 108, 125, 138, 172, 174–5, 178, 211–12, 218, 222, 234, 238, 240, 249

Jackson, Rosemary 7, 52, 53, 60, 68, 82, 87, 167, 168

James, HenryThe Turn of the Screw 56, 59

James, William 12Jameson, Fredric 2, 12, 168, 183,

200, 217, 242, 245–6, 256, 259, 260, 264

Japan 62, 192, 203, 204–5, 208, 265Jeffers, Thomas L. 254, 264Johnson, B. S. 224Johnson, Denis 25 journey 99, 115–16, 136, 142, 181,

215, 262

Kafka, Franz 57–9, 185“Metamorphosis” 58

Kahn, E. J. 156Kant, Immanuel 241Kelly, Adam 6, 34–5, 45, 46, 258Kirby, Alan 25, 38, 41–4, 45, 259Klepper, Martin 259Kluwick, Ursula 10Krauss, Nicole 18, 237, 240

The History of Love 18, 233–5Kreuzer, Stefanie 51Kubrick, Stanley 224Künstlerroman 245

labyrinth 28, 79–80, 86, 88, 93, 100, 106–7, 111–12, 220, 261, 262

Lacan, Jacques 49, 63, 169, 183Langland, Elizabeth 240language 23, 25, 26, 28, 50, 51,

80–1, 83–5, 106, 122, 133, 137, 166–7, 185, 187, 191, 200–2, 248

language games 25, 200, 202Lanzmann, Claude 144, 146Lappin, Tom 115Latin America 121, 263law 24, 49, 57



Index 285

Lee, Stan 155legends 111, 115, 156, 164Lévinas, Emmanuel 223Lewis, C. S.

The Chronicles of Narnia 43Leyner, Mark

The Tetherballs of Bougainville 29Leypoldt, Günter 29light 82, 86, 88–90, 91, 93, 95, 106,

112, 137, 230 linguistics 13, 70

see also languageLipovetsky, Gilles 255, 266Lissitzky, El 84literary field 1, 35, 52–3, 223–4,

260London 1, 28loneliness 36, 97, 98, 105, 160, 174,

195, 233–4, 237López, José 255loss 22, 63, 65, 97–8, 105, 116, 118,

127, 129, 134–9, 150, 152, 154, 168–9, 175, 178, 185, 193–4, 195, 205, 208, 222, 226, 228, 233, 234, 244, 262

love 16, 35, 49, 64, 86, 88–91, 95, 98, 100, 104, 118, 124–5, 127, 133–9, 145–7, 178–9, 185, 210, 215, 229–31, 234, 238, 248, 253

Lukács, György 164Lynch, David 29Lyotard, Jean-François 114

MacCarthy, Desmond F. 232magic 9, 53, 150, 160, 169, 178, 179,

193, 206, 238magic realism 8, 10, 13, 17, 59, 61,

115–26, 127, 130, 145, 148, 182, 194, 261, 262, 263, 265

Mallarmé, Stéphane 224Maltby, Paul 5Mantel, Hilary 233marginality 1, 28, 52–4, 84, 107,

110, 119, 149, 251, 257, 260Márquez, Gabriel García

One Hundred Years of Solitude 118, 120–6, 262, 263

Martel, Yann Life of Pi 13, 61–5, 153, 261

marvellous, the 7, 8, 17, 40, 52–4, 62, 92, 148–9, 151–3, 156, 158, 161–2, 169, 172, 175, 178–9, 200, 207, 234, 235–6, 238, 260

and the mimetic 8–10, 13, 15, 17, 51–2, 56, 59–60, 62–3, 66, 68–74, 102, 113, 115, 119, 145, 151, 166, 168, 179–80, 187, 200, 202–7, 217–18, 256, 259, 260, 261

and the uncanny 56–8, 199Mason, Fran 184materiality 68, 80–1, 83, 85, 93, 96,

105, 108, 130–4, 200, 202Matrix, The 221maturation 15–6, 43–4, 97, 102, 146,

172, 183, 186, 204, 206, 211, 213, 225–8, 230–2, 240, 241–4, 246–7, 249–50, 252, 257

see also coming of ageMcCaffery, Larry 88, 109, 224, 261McCarthy, Tom

Remainder 257McGurl, Mark 258McHale, Brian 15, 52, 57–61, 73,

156–7, 184–5, 260McLaughlin, Robert L. 2, 26, 30,

46, 50meaning 27, 80–3, 86, 101, 105,

132, 150, 186, 189, 194, 203–6, 210–11, 215, 228, 229, 246–9, 253

communication of 15, 28, 36–7, 43, 48, 65, 79, 94, 101, 116, 218, 247–8

creation of 9, 15, 26, 49, 84–5, 89–91, 93–8, 100, 102, 106, 108, 110–11, 114, 132, 134, 146, 151, 213, 216, 221–3, 226–8, 232, 239, 243–4

deferral of 51, 65, 79–81, 88, 99, 107, 110, 140, 166, 169, 183, 192, 212–14, 220, 223, 257

derestriction of 13, 15, 51, 67–72, 140

media 33, 36, 41–2, 94, 153, 162, 165, 167–8, 190, 192, 194–5, 258–9

Melley, Timothey 184Melville, Herman

Moby Dick 154, 263



286 Index

memory 122, 127, 130–3, 139, 169, 188, 193–4, 215, 229, 232

metadiegesis see embedded narrativemetafiction 13–14, 26, 30, 33–4,

101, 106, 109–10, 125, 136, 139, 162, 184, 187, 197, 202, 207, 209, 213, 219–21, 234, 242, 262

historiographic metafiction 114–15, 120, 158–9, 184

metalepsis 21–2, 33, 65, 91, 107, 142, 184, 217, 234

metamorphosis 59, 246metaphor 52, 61, 81, 89, 166, 174,

200, 201, 255metonymy 166MFA programmes 258Millard, Kenneth 215, 243millennium 7, 233, 237, 256mimesis 8–9, 13, 14, 17, 22–3, 25–7,

29–30, 37, 43–4, 47–8, 51, 54–5, 58, 62–3, 67, 73–4, 110, 113, 115–16, 145, 148–52, 155–63, 165–6, 177, 179–80, 182, 189, 192, 198–200, 202, 203–7, 213, 216–19, 234–5, 238, 258, 260

mimetic illusion 156, 165, 194mimetic referentiality 40, 116,

132, 156, 198, 217, 219, 260and the marvellous see marvellous,

theMinden, Michael 223Minos 229Minotaur 8, 228, 261, 262miracle 88, 105, 111, 119, 122, 125,

130, 133, 136, 171, 178–9, 194mise en abyme 68, 72, 91, 106, 131,

138, 159, 181, 182, 184, 218, 244see also Chinese-box structure;

embedded narrativeMitchell, David 224

Cloud Atlas 210number9dream 8, 14, 16–18,

181–214, 215, 217–18, 222, 228, 232, 243–4, 265

modernism 3–4, 6, 18, 27, 30, 45, 47, 51, 54, 176, 221, 224, 241–2, 245–6, 250–1, 259, 265–6

modernity 30, 224, 246–7, 249–50Moore, Lorrie 29

morality 44, 64, 118, 139, 171, 173, 198, 225

Moretti, Franco 240–1, 246–50, 265–6

Morrison, Toni 29, 257mother 97–9, 101, 104–5, 125, 130,

152, 175, 188, 194, 202, 214, 228, 229, 230, 232–3, 234, 240, 242, 264

compare father; family; grandfather; grandmother; son

multiplicity 13, 22, 39, 69, 74, 79, 107, 109, 127, 141, 184, 221, 230, 234, 235, 238, 242, 261

Myers, Brian 113–4Myers, D. G. 152myths 4, 83, 104, 111, 119, 121–2,

127, 193–4, 205, 208, 228, 262, 265, 266

mythopoeic 44, 127, 225

Nabokov, VladimirPale Fire 217

naïveté 15–6, 23–5, 33, 35, 38, 42–3, 74, 117, 135, 142, 149, 159, 168–70, 194

narrative authority 79, 107, 141conventions 26, 110levels 21, 39, 55, 71, 74, 79, 86,

91–5, 98, 100, 102, 106–9, 118, 142, 156, 161–2, 184, 187, 230, 235, 238

master narrative 46, 114, 170, 251perspective 104, 116, 124–5, 150,

161, 186, 200, 203, 205, 261, 265structure 11, 15, 54, 61, 79, 102–3,

105, 115–16, 118, 142, 163, 184, 217

tone 61, 101, 119–20, 123–4, 127, 154

voice 26–27, 34, 61, 101–6, 107, 116, 122–5, 139, 141, 148, 150, 154, 159, 191–3, 203, 213, 238, 244

frame see frameresponsibility see responsibility

nation 4, 5, 250–3, 257, 263nationalism 170



Index 287

Nealon, Jeffrey T. 36, 266Negri, Antonio 251–3, 266neoliberalism 5, 221, 248neo-pragmatism 12neo-realism 6, 24–31, 36, 42–3, 45,

53–4, 214, 257–8network 223, 232, 240, 251–2, 258,

259new journalism 8new media 41, 258New Puritans 25New York City 148, 150, 152, 154,

164, 165, 173, 175Nicol, Bran 3nihilism 23, 47–8, 79–94, 100–1,

105–6, 108, 110–11, 113, 151, 158, 183, 186, 187, 229, 261

non-fiction 8, 182Norberg-Schulz, Christian 83–4, 111nostalgia 121, 148, 150, 152, 154–5,

166–71, 176, 225–6, 227–8, 252, 257, 263

O’Neill, Joseph 257Netherland 28

objectivity 8, 14, 27, 83, 92, 94, 159, 236

Oedipus complex 4, 46, 223–5Okri, Ben

The Famished Road 253Olsen, Lance 10, 29, 52, 53–4, 60,

74, 125, 261omniscient 27, 119, 150, 157ontological

boundaries 17, 21, 73–4, 114, 156–7, 186–7, 189, 234, 235

claims 10, 39, 48, 54, 208, 243, 247

concerns 11–12, 33, 55, 61, 79, 91, 102, 185, 213, 218–19, 252, 265

indifference 110, 182, 184, 186questions 11, 15, 17, 40, 49, 56,

58–9, 65, 74, 93, 97, 105, 119, 149, 158, 180, 181–2, 184, 186–7, 190–1, 194, 199, 215, 234

structure 58–61, 149, 162, 199optimism 5, 24, 33, 36, 38, 44,

64, 85, 111, 113, 116, 118, 137, 146–7, 150, 210, 216, 222, 236

origin 28–9, 49, 82, 111, 101, 118, 127–8, 136, 161–2, 196, 204, 208, 209, 216, 242, 243, 257

orphan 129–30, 196, 210, 226other, the 28, 34–5, 52–4, 67, 72,

89–90, 100, 102, 106, 107, 109, 125, 151, 223

fantastic 87see also alterity

Palmeri, Frank 183panfictionalisation 183, 217paranoia 24, 49, 97, 181, 183–5,

213, 264paranormal 57–9, 260paratextuality 55, 71, 104parody 23, 182, 188, 217–8, 238,

242past, the 16, 79, 98–9, 102, 114–21,

126–7, 131–3, 139, 143–6, 150, 155, 158, 168, 170, 193–4, 204, 205, 230–1, 242, 244, 249, 252, 263, 264, 266

pastiche 182, 190, 217Patai, Raphael 164Pearl Harbor 156Peirce, Charles Sanders 12performatism 37–9, 45, 258performativity 63, 212–13 periodisation 3, 44personification 129, 171, 224,

263pessimism 36, 41, 65, 81, 85–6, 99,

113, 133, 183, 196, 262Petrie, Windy Counsell 149, 154,

157, 159, 166–7philosophy 1, 3, 12, 16, 21, 26, 65,

80, 82, 84–5, 91, 114, 167, 169, 225, 235, 242, 255, 263

photography 86, 89–91, 94, 106, 111–12, 126, 202, 229, 231

Picone, Jason 191place 27–9, 80, 82, 90, 122, 126,

170, 185, 252playfulness 16, 29, 30, 115–16,

127, 141, 151, 162, 182, 184, 200–3

pleasure 10, 36, 52, 160–1, 176, 178, 185, 201



288 Index

plot 37, 49, 54, 63, 85, 86–8, 91, 92–3, 108, 118, 130, 148, 151, 156, 158, 161, 163–4, 186, 189–90, 195, 199, 206, 210, 211, 216, 223, 232, 234, 248–50, 252, 264

politics 2, 4, 5, 25, 32, 53, 67, 72, 115, 120, 149, 152, 164, 174, 187, 218, 225, 236, 245, 247, 252–3, 255, 258, 264

Poole, Steve 195, 201Portugal 261Posadas, Baryon Tensor 192, 265possible worlds 22postcolonialism 53, 119, 251, 257,

263, 266postmodernism 15–17, 21, 58,

63–5, 73, 75, 79–89, 91–4, 96–7, 99–101, 109–10, 112, 113–17, 120, 127, 140, 148–9, 157–60, 168–70, 177, 181–7, 211–14, 215–26, 233–9, 241–3, 245, 247–8, 251–3, 255, 256, 257, 258, 259, 262, 264, 266

definitions of 2, 14–15 end of 1–7, 11, 18, 21–50 institutionalisation of 3, 5oppositional stance of 3–4and metafiction see metafictionand nihilism see nihilismand scepticism see scepticismand subversion see subversion

postmodernity 18, 187, 255post-postmodernism 2, 21, 26, 31–3,

36, 45–6, 50, 258poststructuralism 14, 80–6, 99–100,

232, 237Potolsky, Matthew 256Potter, Garry 255Powers, Richard 29pragmatic

aspects 11–13, 33, 37–9, 49, 55–6, 58–61, 65, 74, 82, 91, 93, 95, 97, 102, 106, 110, 112, 149, 152, 182, 189, 219, 221, 223, 232, 247–8, 252–4

questions 14–15, 40, 59, 74, 79, 93, 139, 166, 184, 215, 234, 238

Prague 150, 152, 156, 172, 179

presence 1, 13, 15, 32, 56, 57, 58, 64, 65, 69–70, 86–7, 91, 99, 103, 110, 129, 136, 142, 145, 152, 192, 196, 203, 204, 219, 226, 227–8, 230, 231, 258, 260

present, the 16, 132–3, 143–4, 146, 150, 161, 183, 191, 194, 202, 205–6, 221, 225, 231, 242–3, 263

prison narratives 27progress 4, 91, 250–1 Proulx, E. Annie 24Punday, Daniel 153, 155, 168, 263Pynchon, Thomas 117, 259

quest 65, 113, 181, 189, 201, 203, 206, 211–12, 215, 226, 228, 244, 264

Rabkin, Eric S. 60, 70rationality 49, 53, 56–7, 95, 120,

174, 248reader 8, 11, 17, 25, 32–3, 34–5,

36, 39, 40–3, 46, 55–9, 63–4, 67, 71–2, 74, 98–9, 102, 103, 105–8, 111, 120, 125, 137–8, 140, 144–5, 147, 150, 157, 160, 176, 184, 186–7, 191–3, 201–3, 207–10, 220–2, 244, 260

reader expectation 9, 12, 21, 199, 218

reading 9, 34, 42, 55–9, 64–5, 67, 85, 100–1, 105–8, 115, 137–8, 146, 175–6, 185, 192, 200–4, 208, 220–1, 244, 259, 260, 261, 264

real, the 10, 52, 66, 110, 176, 204–5, 225, 265

‘apparently real’ 42–3inaccessibility of 6, 15, 63–5, 126,

168, 179, 183, 222return to 6, 28, 32, 105, 190, 196,

214, 216–8and the imaginary see imaginary

realism 8–9, 47, 51–2, 54–5, 65, 86, 105, 148–9, 153–71, 176–7, 206–7, 218, 250, 256, 257, 258, 259, 260, 263

anti-realism see anti-realism‘lyrical realism’ 28, 257magic realism see magic realism



Index 289

neo-realism see neo-realismreturn to 5–7, 11, 18, 22–40, 41–2,

44, 47–8, 51, 54, 155, 166, 170, 179, 182, 216–17

‘white trash’ realism 27compare real, return to

Rebein, Robert 6, 23, 24–30, 32, 45, 166, 255, 258

reconciliation 2, 10, 30, 69, 82, 98–101, 105, 108, 111, 115, 131, 134, 143, 154, 155, 187, 188, 206, 225–30, 232–3, 236, 242, 248, 253, 256, 262

reconstruction 7, 11, 14–16, 18, 24, 34, 47–50, 65, 72–5, 79, 83, 85–6, 89, 91, 96–7, 101, 106, 110–12, 113–16, 118, 146–7, 158, 181, 184, 187–8, 211, 213–14, 215–26, 232–3, 235–6, 239–41, 243–4, 247–8, 252–4, 256, 259, 264

redemption 91, 103, 108, 165, 178, 212

Redfield, Marc 257Redpath, Phil 40referentiality 8, 14, 28–30, 34, 37–8,

40, 43, 48, 51–2, 56, 68–70, 116, 119, 132, 145, 156, 158, 166–9, 198, 202, 216–19, 260

regionalism 27regression 23, 37, 40, 250Reisz, Matthew J. 115relation

intersubjective 22, 28, 34, 35, 90, 99, 106, 151, 160–1, 179, 222–3, 228–32, 240–1, 246, 253, 257

subject-object 35, 83–4text-world 9, 17, 38, 40, 52,

59–60, 65–7, 69–70, 73, 110, 120, 154, 160, 167–8, 177, 189, 219–20

religion 37, 64, 83–4, 101, 119, 131, 245, 252, 255

remainder 62, 170, 189renewalism 30–2, 37, 45repetition compulsion 99responsibility 15, 34–5, 41, 48, 65,

88–9, 106, 124, 143–4, 146, 160, 174, 178–9, 182, 215, 220, 231–2, 236, 240, 242–4, 247, 253

of fiction 15–17, 22, 25, 49, 55, 72, 74–5, 106, 113, 118, 127, 145, 149, 153–4, 181–3, 199, 210, 218–20

revenge 152, 173, 193revolt 224, 226–7revolution 4, 24, 41, 196, 248, 253 rhizomatic 251Ribbat, Christoph 149, 265Richter, Virginia 257Robinson, Marilynne 24Roosevelt, Eleanor 155Rorty, Richard 12Roth, Philip 258Rowling, J. K.

Harry Potter 43Roy, Arundhati

The God of Small Things 265Rushdie, Salman

Midnight’s Children 59, 61, 242, 253, 262, 263

Satanic Verses 118Ryan, Judith 14, 256

Saintsbury, George 156Saldívar, Ramón 6Sánchez-Acre, Anna María 257satire 218, 262scepticism 4–5, 15–16, 18, 24, 29,

38, 42, 62–4, 114, 116, 145, 169–70, 193, 221, 234–5, 237

schizophrenia 225Scholes, Robert 158, 159Schröder, Nicole 232Schweighauser, Philipp 67, 259science 49, 51, 53, 61, 94, 253

natural sciences 83–4, 86, 178, 192

science fiction 8, 236Second World War 114, 195, 203Seita, Sophie 257self, the 18, 31, 35, 67, 85, 87, 90,

102, 109, 146, 198, 213, 221, 242–5, 249, 251–2, 258

self-knowledge 97, 102, 138, 204, 212, 242, 244–5

compare other, theself-referentiality 33, 131, 219self-reflexivity 5, 159, 189, 220



290 Index

shtetl 8, 114–17, 119–33, 135–9, 142–3, 145, 150, 262

Siebers, Tobin 171Sim, Stuart 3, 255Simpson, Kathryn 187, 196, 198,

204, 210–13simulacra 14, 183, 195, 204, 213,

265simulation 14, 110, 183Sinbad 62, 265sincerity 6, 23–4, 26–7, 33–4, 43, 45,

46, 56, 92, 98, 139, 145, 160, 166, 193, 203, 217–18, 220

Singer, Marc 153, 166–7, 174, 263Slemon, Stephen 260Slocombe, Will 81–2, 84–5, 90, 108,

112Smith, Alfred E. 156Smith, Ali 233, 235Smith, Zadie 28, 233, 257social framework 251society 5, 7, 41, 50, 167, 171, 191,

211, 215, 240–2, 244–6, 249–51, 258, 263

solipsism 31, 35, 46, 48, 49, 79, 82, 84, 87–90, 108, 146, 181, 183, 186, 218, 221, 232, 242

son 99, 103–5, 125, 174, 179, 228–9, 223, 230, 234

compare family; father; grandfather; grandmother; mother

Sontag, Susan 80spectrality 6, 30–1, 45–6, 233, 255Spiderman 43Star Wars 43Stendhal 9Sterne, Lawrence 224

Tristram Shandy 188Stewart, Susan 168Stierstorfer, Klaus 29structure 1, 3–4, 6, 7, 80–1, 84, 107,

110, 183, 187, 225–6, 231–2, 247, 249, 251–3

social 183, 225–6, 231, 249, 251–3narrative see narrative

Stuckists 25style 1, 9, 25, 28–9, 32, 80, 121, 124,

137, 141, 148–50, 154, 191, 202, 216, 234, 265

Su, John J. 263subject, the 31, 35, 48, 67, 168, 170,

184, 232, 239, 242–3fragmentation of 6, 239, 251

subjectivity 27, 83–4, 120, 242, 255

see also self, the subversion 1, 4–7, 10. 14, 16, 23–4,

36, 53–4, 67, 70, 72, 74–5, 97, 113, 116–19, 181, 183–4, 187, 215, 223, 225, 233, 235, 252–3, 257, 262, 263

superhero 8, 17, 43, 148, 150–5, 161, 163–4, 166–7, 171–3, 176–8, 217–18, 219, 227, 244, 252

supernatural 9–10, 17, 55–7, 59–60, 95, 105, 157, 212

surrealism 164, 183, 186, 198, 211Swales, Martin 241Sybil of Cumae 104, 262sympathy 17, 236, 261

tall tale 115technology 5, 41–2, 87, 192, 246,

258teleology 4, 25, 45testimonial 22, 115, 124, 128–9,

137, 145, 236textuality 39, 114, 182, 202The New Yorker 156theory 13

conspiracy 184, 193cultural/literary 2, 6, 14, 52–3, 75,

80–3, 88 110, 215, 237–9, 251, 256

of the fantastic 12, 55–61, 260of the fictive 13, 55, 66–8

Thomas, Bronwen 262Timmer, Nicoline 6, 31–3, 35, 43,

232Todorov, Tzvetan 13, 55–60, 68, 92,

95, 167, 192, 199, 260Toffler, Alvin 266Tokyo 181, 183, 186, 188, 190–2,

193–7, 206, 209, 211, 212, 244, 265

Tolan, Fiona 7Tolkien, J.R.R. 260

The Lord of the Rings 43, 53, 259



Index 291

Toth, Josh 25, 29–32, 37, 45–6, 255, 258

Trachimbrod 114–20, 121–4, 125–7, 129, 130–3, 134–8, 139, 140–2, 144–5, 146, 148, 151, 231, 233, 263

Traill, Nancy Helen 255, 256, 260transcendence 3–4, 37, 45, 53, 71,

101, 109, 152, 153, 210, 230, 235

transgression 5, 52–3, 65, 67–70, 72–3, 144, 157–8, 182, 217–8, 222, 234, 237

trauma 14, 97–102, 116, 151, 153–4, 176, 181, 188, 214, 226, 229–30, 242, 244, 262, 263

travelogue 8, 115–16, 142, 182tribalism 27Trilling, Lionel 34trompe-l’œil 184, 190Truffaut, François 224truth 134–6, 170, 204, 210, 230,

244, 253, 255claims 26–7, 40, 43, 51, 55, 63–4,

71, 73–4, 94, 116, 148, 158, 205and communication 12, 33–5, 49,

94, 248elusiveness of 6, 15–16, 37, 64, 93,

105, 114, 215, 223, 236in representation 14, 16, 33, 36,

51, 55, 86, 92, 125, 139–40, 143, 149–50, 159–60, 213, 235

UFO 92Ukraine 8, 115, 116, 141, 142uncanny, the 56–9, 68, 83, 95, 97,

106, 192, 199, 261uncertainty 9, 17, 46, 49, 57–8, 79,

106, 111, 126–31, 172, 182–3, 187, 190, 191–2, 199–200, 202, 204, 210–11, 236, 242, 244, 258

unreliability 16, 87, 94, 96, 116, 128, 130, 139, 184, 192–3, 219, 234

USA see Americautopia 4, 35, 49–50, 170–1, 178,

245, 253, 258, 263

van den Akker, Robin 35Vergil

Æneid 104, 262verisimilitude 9, 11, 52, 54, 65,

72–3, 156, 160, 162, 260Vermeulen, Timotheus 35Versluys, Kristiaan 25, 257, 260Victoria and Albert Museum 1, 4, 7Victorianism 27, 259video games 8, 54, 192, 194–9, 205,

264Virginia, USA 86virtual reality 192, 195–7, 264Vollmann, William T. 25–6

Wallace, David Foster 29, 33, 38, 46“E Unibus Pluram” 4–5, 23–4, 255Infinite Jest 31“Octet” 34–5

Watt, Ian 160Waugh, Patricia 187, 218, 219, 262Web 2.0 42–3Weese, Katherine J. 260Welch, James 27Welles, Orson 155–6, 224Williams, Jeffrey 55, 95, 189Williamson, Edwin 120Wilson, Leigh 185, 224, 264, 265Wolf, Werner 73Wolfe, Gary K. 255Wolfe, Tom 26, 29Wolf-Meyer, Matthew 47World Fair 170writing 8, 35, 49, 80–1, 85, 92,

100–1, 104, 113–6, 120, 122, 125, 126, 142–3, 146–7, 160, 176, 200–3, 207–9, 220, 236–7, 239, 244, 258, 265

Yggdrasil 104, 111youth 97, 103, 149–50, 168, 170,

172, 175, 191, 195, 223–4, 227, 230–2, 244, 249–51, 254, 257

see also adolesence

Zalewski, Daniel 191Zeuxis 8Zima, Peter V. 245



Literature after Postmodernism: Reconstructive Fantasies

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