Structuring the Void: The Struggle for Subject in Contemporary American Fiction
Files
Download Full Text
Description
If, as the literary theorists of postmodernism contend, “content” does not exist, then how can fiction continue to be written? Jerome Klinkowitz, himself a veteran practitioner and theorist of fiction, addresses this question in Structuring the Void, an account of what today’s novelists and short story writers do when they produce a fictive work. Klinkowitz’s focus is on the way in which writers have turned this lack of content itself into subject matter, and, by thus “structuring the void,” have created a new form of fiction. Among the writers Klinkowitz discusses are Richard Brautigan, Kurt Vonnegut, Max Apple, Saul Bellow, Erica Jong, Susan Quist, Gerald Rosen, Rob Swigart, and Grace Paley. He shows how, in the absence of subject matter, these writers persist in the act of structuring—by organizing autobiography as a narrative device, ritualizing national history and popular culture, or formalizing a comic response to a new imaginative state, the state of California. Klinkowitz also considers subjects such as gender and war, which, though they cannot be represented, nevertheless exercise constraints on a writer’s intention to structure. What emerges from Klinkowitz’s analysis is a clear sense of what today’s fiction—and fiction writing—is about. As such, Structuring the Void will prove invaluable to anyone with an interest in contemporary literature. -- Provided by publisher
Keywords
American fiction -- 20th century -- History and criticism; Postmodernism (Literature) -- United States; Literary form;
Document Type
Book
ISBN
9780822312055
Publication Date
1992
Publisher
Duke University Press
City
Durham, NC
Department
Department of Languages and Literatures
Object Description
181 p. ; 24 cm
Language
en
Recommended Citation
Klinkowitz, Jerome, "Structuring the Void: The Struggle for Subject in Contemporary American Fiction" (1992). Faculty Book Gallery. 261.
https://scholarworks.uni.edu/facbook/261
