1st Edition
American Fiction of the 1990s Reflections of history and culture
American Fiction of the 1990s: Reflections of History and Culture brings together essays from international experts to examine one of the most vital and energized decades in American literature. This volume reads the rich body of 1990s American fiction in the context of key cultural concerns of the period.
The issues that the contributors identify as especially productive include:
- Immigration and America’s geographical borders, particularly those with Latin America
- Racial tensions, race relations and racial exchanges
- Historical memory and the recording of history
- Sex, scandal and the politicization of sexuality
- Postmodern technologies, terrorism and paranoia
American Fiction of the 1990s examines texts by established authors such as Don DeLillo, Toni Morrison, Philip Roth and Thomas Pynchon, who write some of their most ambitious work in the period, but also by emergent writers, such as Sherman Alexie, Chang-Rae Lee, E. Annie Proulx, David Foster Wallace, and Jonathan Franzen. Offering new insight into both the literature and the culture of the period, as well as the interaction between the two in a way that furthers the New American Studies, this volume will be essential reading for students and lecturers of American literature and culture and late twentieth-century fiction.
Contributors include: Timothy Aubry, Alex Blazer, Kasia Boddy, Stephen J. Burn, Andrew Dix, Brian Jarvis, Suzanne W. Jones, Peter Knight, A. Robert Lee, Stacey Olster, Derek Parker Royal, Krishna Sen, Zoe Trodd, Andrew Warnes and Nahem Yousaf.
1. Introduction America and Its Borders 2. Latino/a Un-bordering in US Fiction - A. Robert Lee 3. Constituting Immigrants as Americans - Nahem Yousaf 4.Cultural Translation in Bharati Mukherjee’s The Holder of the World - Krishna Sen Racial Exchanges 5.Red, White and Black: Racial Exchanges in Fiction by Sherman Alexie - Andrew Dix 6.Globalization and American Violence in Toni Morrison’s Jazz and Charles Johnson’s Dreamer - Andrew Warnes 7.The Reappearance of the Mixed-Race Character in American Fiction - Suzanne W. Jones Telling Histories 8.Origins and Empire in Mason & Dixon - Stacey Olster 9.Reimagining the Historical Subject in Philip Roth's American Trilogy and Beyond - Derek Parker Royal 10. Tim O’Brien and the topography of trauma - Brian Jarvis Sex and the Popular 11.Queer Fiction and the American Protest Literature Tradition - Zoe Trodd 12. Regular Lolitas: The Afterlives of an American Adolescent - Kasia Boddy 13. Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings in Fiction - Sharon Monteith Technologies and Terror 14. Beyond the Cold War in Don DeLillo's Mao II and Underworld - Peter Knight 15. Glamorama, Fight Club, and the Terror of Narcissistic Abjection - Alex E. Blazer 16. Addiction and Recovery in David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest - Timothy Aubry 17.Technology and Mediation at the End of Postmodernism - Stephen J. Burn
Biography
Jay Prosser
'It is to this collection's credit that it provides an extensive overview of 1990s U.S. fiction that is not only accessible to students, but one that will also be welcomed by those working at advanced levels in U.S. literary studies. Prosser's excellent collection provides a full and comprehensive sense of a decade that has only partially been explored, redefining the place of authors who continued to mature in the nineties, establishing the significance of writers who were emerging in this decade, and redrawing the cultural landscape of nineties America.' - Philip Leonard, Gramma: Journal of Theory and Criticism
"As a whole, the collection demonstrates not only the breadth and depth of 1990s American fiction but also the diverse critical languages available to interrogate and interpret those texts." - D.E. Magill, University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown
