Postmodern Counternarratives: Irony and Audience in the Novels of Paul Auster, Don DeLillo, Charles Johnson, and Tim O'Brien

by Christopher Donovan

Overview

This book provides a wide-ranging discussion of realism, postmodernism, literary theory and popular fiction before focusing on the careers of four prominent novelists. Despite wildly contrasting ambitions and agendas, all four grow progressively more sympathetic to the expectations of a mainstream literary audience, noting the increasingly neglected yet archetypal need for strong explanatory narrative even while remaining wary of its limitations, presumptions, and potential abuses. Exploring novels that manage to bridge the gap between accessible storytelling and literary theory, this book shows how contemporary authors reconcile values of posmodern literary experimentation and traditional realism.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780415971270
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	12/26/2004
Series:	Literary Criticism and Cultural Theory
Pages:	259
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

Christopher Donovan is Dean of Gregory College House at the University of Pennsylvania, where he lectures in the departments of English and Critical Writing and oversees residential programs in Modern Languages and Film Culture.

Table of Contents

I: Postmodernism, Liberal Ironism, and Contemporary Storytelling II: Social Realism in the Postmodern Age III: Middle Class Realism and the Acceptance of the Reader IV: Morality and Solidarity in the Ironic Novel V: Evil is the Movement Toward Void: Self-Absorption, Play, and the Ambiguous Gift of Genre in the Earlier Novels of Don DeLillo VI: Entropy and Efflorescence: To and From the Zero in the Early Novels of Paul Auster VII: Nobody Would Believe a Word: Earnestness in the Face of Postmodernism Terror in the Early Novels of Tim O'Brien VIII: Father's Gift of Mythopoesis and Love: Conflicted Voices in the Early Charles Johnson IX: The Days of Being a Shadow are Over: The Ironic Narrative in Practice X: Others First: Approaching Solidarity Bibliography