Hikaru Fujii

Outside, America (eBook, ePUB)

The Temporal Turn in Contemporary American Fiction

• Format: ePub

Produktbeschreibung

The idea of the "outside" as a space of freedom has always been central in the literature of the United States. This concept still remains active in contemporary American fiction; however, its function is being significantly changed. Outside, America argues that, among contemporary American novelists, a shift of focus to the temporal dimension is taking place. No longer a spatial movement, the quest for the outside now seeks to reach the idea of time as a force of difference, a la Deleuze, by which the current subjectivity is transformed. In other words, the concept is taking a "temporal turn." Discussing eight novelists, including Don DeLillo, Richard Powers, Paul Theroux, and Annie Proulx, each of whose works describe forces of given identities-masculine identity, historical temporality, and power, etc.-which block quests for the outside, Fujii shows how the outside in these texts ceases to be a spatial idea. With due attention to critical and social contexts, the book aims to reveal a profound shift in contemporary American fiction.

Produktdetails

• Verlag: Bloomsbury eBooks US
• Seitenzahl: 160
• Erscheinungstermin: 25. April 2013
• Englisch
• ISBN-13: 9781441133007
• Artikelnr.: 54115727

Autorenporträt

Hikaru Fujii is Associate Professor of English Department at Doshisha University, Japan.

Inhaltsangabe

Introduction: America and Outside
Part I: Space of Outside
1. Dear American Road: The End of the Road in Annie Proulx's Postcards and Richard Powers's Operation Wandering Soul
2. Where the Tides Rise and Ebb: Power and "America" in Steve Erickson's Rubicon Beach
3. Journey to the End of the Father: Battlefield of Masculinity in Paul Theroux's The Mosquito Coast
4. The American Traveler's Love And Solitude: The Pragmatics of the Double in William T. Vollmann's The Atlas
Part II: Practices of Outside
5. Nietzsche, Crime Fiction, and Question of Masculinity in Denis Johnson's Already Dead: A California Gothic
6. A Man with a Green Memory: Cinema, War and Freedom in Stephen Wright's Meditations in Green
7. Time and Again: The Outside and the Narrative Pragmatics in The Body Artist
8. WWDD (What Would Disney Do)?: Cinematic Field and Narrative Act in Richard Powers's Prisoner's Dilemma
Chapter 9: Writing from a Different "Now": Question of Ahistorical Time in Contemporary Los Angeles Fiction
Conclusion: The Temporal Turn in American Fiction
Bibliography
Index