Research & Innovation

This study presents an account of the problematics of the book and of the authorial self as they appeared in critical theory in the 1960s-1980s and, previously, in literary modernism and the American literary tradition. It then explores these problematics as they appear across a range of works by the first generation of postmodern American fiction writers. It focuses on a pronounced ambivalence in these works that issued from an assimilation of incompatible precepts from contemporary critical theory, literary modernism, and the American literary tradition. The particular precepts assimilated, moreover, also induced the fiction to conduct a reflexive meditation on the book and the authorial self and on the very ambivalence it reveals towards them.

This interdisciplinary collection of original essays by many hands traces the development of postmodern performance. Its many topics include the differences between ritual and theater, psychoanalytic theory of film and music, and performative writing. It was the inaugural volume in the series, “Theories of Contemporary Culture,” subsequently published for over thirty years.

Funeral black. Chrome bumpers and trim. Blood red velour pillow seats and paneling. The first thing she bought herself after college. An investment in her future. And Ritch stole it.

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The sun slept under morning clouds, giving off a bluish light through the dark buildings of the city.

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He hated that he didn't have hands like his father, my grandfather, which were, according to my father, hammer hands. But, unfortunately, he, my father, had flame-shaped hands and would often wear gloves to hide them away. 

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And I don’t mean versus bad, but is she better?

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Horse and his fishermen sip water and smoke cigarettes, faces salt stained and cracked raw. Their fishy eyes fall on girls.