The Cambridge introduction to postmodern fiction

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The Cambridge Introduction to

Postmodern Fiction

Postmodern fiction presents its readers with a challenge: instead of

enjoying it passively, they have to work to understand it, to question

their own responses, and to examine their views about what fiction is.

Yet accepting this challenge is what makes postmodern writing so

pleasurable to read and rewarding to study.

Unlike most introductions to postmodernism and fiction, this book

places the emphasis on literature rather than theory. It introduces the

most prominent British and American novelists associated with

postmodernism, from the ‘pioneers’, Beckett, Borges and Burroughs, to

important post-war writers such as Pynchon, Carter, Atwood, Morrison,

Gibson, Auster, DeLillo, and Ellis. Designed for students and clearly

written, this Introduction explains the preoccupations, styles and

techniques that unite postmodern authors.

bran nicol is Reader in Modern and Contemporary Literature at the

University of Portsmouth and has previously taught at Lancaster and

Chichester. He has published on D. M. Thomas, Iris Murdoch,

postmodernism and stalking in contemporary culture.

The Cambridge Introduction to

Postmodern Fiction

BRAN NICOL

CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS

Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore,

São Paulo, Delhi, Dubai, Tokyo

Cambridge University Press

The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 8RU, UK

First published in print format

ISBN-13 978-0-521-86157-1

ISBN-13 978-0-521-67957-2

ISBN-13 978-0-511-64161-9

© Bran Nicol 2009

2009

Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521861571

This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the

provision of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part

may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press.

Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy

of urls for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication,

and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain,

accurate or appropriate.

Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York

www.cambridge.org

Paperback

eBook (NetLibrary)

Hardback

For Karen, Joe and Jamie

Contents

Acknowledgements page xi

Preface: reading postmodern fiction xiii

Introduction: postmodernism and

postmodernity 1

Postmodernity and ‘late capitalism’ 3

Baudrillard and simulation 4

Poststructuralism, postmodernism, and ‘the real’ 6

Sociology and the construction of reality 8

Jameson and the crisis in historicity 9

Lyotard and the decline of the metanarrative 11

Irony and ‘double-coding’ 12

Chapter 1 Postmodern fiction: theory

and practice 17

An incredulity towards realism 17

What postmodern fiction does 30

How to read postmodern fiction 39

Chapter 2 Early postmodern fiction:

Beckett, Borges, and Burroughs 50

Samuel Beckett 52

Jorge Luis Borges 58

William Burroughs 65

vii

viii Contents

Chapter 3 US metafiction: Coover, Barth,

Nabokov, Vonnegut, Pynchon 72

Barth’s Funhouse and Coover’s Descants 75

Vladimir Nabokov, Pale Fire 82

Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five 86

Thomas Pynchon 89

Chapter 4 The postmodern historical novel:

Fowles, Barnes, Swift 99

Historiographic metafiction 103

British historiographic metafiction 105

John Fowles, The French Lieutenant’s Woman 106

Graham Swift, Waterland 112

Julian Barnes, Flaubert’s Parrot 116

Chapter 5 Postmodern-postcolonial fiction 121

Salman Rushdie, Midnight’s Children 124

Toni Morrison, Beloved 127

Ishmael Reed, Mumbo Jumbo 133

Chapter 6 Postmodern fiction by women:

Carter, Atwood, Acker 140

Angela Carter 142

Margaret Atwood 148

Kathy Acker 156

Chapter 7 Two postmodern genres:

cyberpunk and ‘metaphysical’ detective

fiction 164

Sci-fi and cyberpunk 164

William Gibson, Neuromancer 167

Detective fiction 171

Jorge Luis Borges, ‘Death and the Compass’ 173

Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose 175

Paul Auster, City of Glass 178

Contents ix

Chapter 8 Fiction of the ‘postmodern

condition’: Ballard, DeLillo, Ellis 184

Conclusion: ‘ficto-criticism’ 184

J. G. Ballard, Crash 186

Don DeLillo, White Noise and Libra 191

Bret Easton Ellis, American Psycho 197

References 205

Index 215

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Ray Ryan of Cambridge University Press for his enthusi￾asm and patience, colleagues in the English department and in the Centre for

European and International Studies Research at the University of Portsmouth

for their support, and my wife and our boys for their laughter and love.

xi

Preface: reading postmodern fiction

The commonest complaint about the narratives of Beckett or Burroughs

is that they are hard to read, they are ‘boring’. But the charge of boredom

is really hypocritical. There is, in a sense, no such thing as boredom.

Boredom is only another name for a certain species of frustration. And

the new languages which the interesting art of our time speaks are

frustrating to the sensibilities of most educated people.

Susan Sontag, ‘One Culture and the New Sensibility’ (1965)

Sometimes I suspect that good readers are even blacker and rarer swans

than good writers. . . . Reading, obviously, is an activity which comes

after that of writing; it is more modest, more unobtrusive, more

intellectual.

Jorge Luis Borges, Preface to A Universal History of Infamy

(1935) (trans. Norman Thomas di Giovanni, 1972)

In an essay about postmodern fiction a student once declared that Beckett’s

writing ‘doesn’t go down easily’. As I was the marker, I had to point out that

this phrase was not exactly appropriate academic discourse. But I could also

see her point. If reading Jane Austen is like having a nice Sunday lunch, and

The Da Vinci Code is the equivalent of a McDonald’s, then reading Beckett is,

for some, like being asked to complete the ‘Bushtucker Trial’ in the TV show

I’m A Celebrity . . . Get Me Out Of Here.

Besides the parallel between literature and food, her statement implied a

definition of fiction. A novel should be something accessible, easy to read.

Literature should be digestible. But why is this? Why shouldn’t literature be a

challenge to the reader? Who said reading a novel has to be easy? After all, we

accept more readily the fact that modern art, the kind we are confronted with in

the Tate Modern or the Turner Prize, does not communicate straightforwardly,

that we have to work to interpret it. Even poetry, part of the staple diet on

university literature courses, is something we accept from the outset is not

going to give its meaning over to us without a struggle.

xiii