DOCSLIB.ORG

Durham E-Theses

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Durham E-Theses Durham E-Theses At the edges of perception: William Gaddis and the encyclopedic novel from Joyce to David foster Wallace Burn, Stephen J. How to cite: Burn, Stephen J. (2001) At the edges of perception: William Gaddis and the encyclopedic novel from Joyce to David foster Wallace, Durham theses, Durham University. Available at Durham E-Theses Online: http://etheses.dur.ac.uk/4235/ Use policy The full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, without prior permission or charge, for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-prot purposes provided that: • a full bibliographic reference is made to the original source • a link is made to the metadata record in Durham E-Theses • the full-text is not changed in any way The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders. Please consult the full Durham E-Theses policy for further details. Academic Support Oce, Durham University, University Oce, Old Elvet, Durham DH1 3HP e-mail: [email protected] Tel: +44 0191 334 6107 http://etheses.dur.ac.uk 2 "AT THE EDGES OF PERCEPTION": WILLIAM GADDIS AND THE ENCYCLOPEDIC NOVEL FROM JOYCE TO DAVID FOSTER WALLACE A thesis submitted in August 2001 for the degree of PhD to the University of Durham By Stephen J. Burn (Department of English Studies) The copyright of this thesis rests with the author. No quotation from it should be published in any form, including Electronic and the Internet, without the author's prior written consent. All information derived from this thesis must be acknowledged appropriately. L Q torn 2002 ABSTRACT "AT THE EDGES OF PERCEPTION": WILLIAM GADDIS AND THE ENCYCLOPEDIC NOVEL FROM JOYCE TO DAVID FOSTER WALLACE "Longer works of fiction," a character in William Gaddis's J_R complains of the current literary scene, are now "dismissed as classics and remain . largely unread due to the effort involved in reading and turning any more than two hundred pages" (527). This study argues that despite most literary critics constructing American postmodernism as a movement that privileges short works, in contrast to the encyclopedic masterworks of modernism, there are in fact a large number of artistically sophisticated contemporary novels of encyclopedic scope that demonstrate often ignored lines of continuity from works like James Joyce's Ulysses. In arguing this, I attempt not just to draw attention to a neglected strain in contemporary American fiction, but also to provide a more accurate context in which those few recent encyclopedic novels that have assumed centrality, like Gravity's Rainbow, might be evaluated. In doing so, this thesis also seeks to demonstrate the pivotal position of William Gaddis who, despite publishing four impressive novels that engage with the legacy of modernism and pre-empt elements of postmodernism, has been excluded from most studies dealing with the transition between the two movements. Through detailed readings of four encyclopedic novels - Gaddis's The Recognitions, Don DeLillo's Underworld. Richard Powers's The Gold Bug Variations, and David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest -1 show Gaddis's continuation of encyclopedic modernism, the importance of his example to later writers, and the continuing vitality of the encyclopedic novel beyond the defined limits of modernism. However, as these novels try to encompass the full circle of knowledge, in order to do justice to their diverse learning I have adopted a different approach in each chapter. Very broadly, they attempt to encircle art, psychology, science, and literature, which, taken together, attempt to synthesise a defence of the contemporary encyclopedic novel. While minimalist writers from Raymond Carver to Ann Beattie have affirmed that less is more, this thesis argues that, in some cases, more really is more. Frontispiece: Engraving by Benoit-Louis Prevost, Frontispiece to the 1772 edition of Diderot and D'Alembert's Encyclopedic (Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco). The engraving shows Truth, wrapped in a veil, encircled by Reason, Philosophy, Theology, and other personifications of sciences, arts and crafts. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Over the course of researching and writing this project I received help and encouragement from a lot of people, but I'd like to particularly thank Lesley and Russ Burn, Audrey, Denis, and Sophie Ferguson, and Jamie Pearson for their support. Professor Patricia Waugh has been an excellent supervisor for this thesis, and I have benefited immensely from both her encyclopedic knowledge, and her encouragement in difficult times Without her help, it would have been a far worse piece of work, and may never have been finished... Also in Durham's Department of English, I have profited from conversations with Sean Burke, and Mark Sandy. Mark's stoic patience in the face of endless questions and proof-reading was a great relief. Particularly unfortunate, though, were Jon Adams and Julie Ferguson, who suffered more with this project than most. Jon proof-read, discussed, made suggestions, and, ultimately helped me forget it. Julie lived with this thesis longest, without losing her sweetness and patience, and I feel very lucky and grateful to have had her encouragement. My parents, however, have suffered this longer than anyone, and I am especially grateful for their constant support. iv CONTENTS ABSTRACT i FRONTISPIECE ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS iii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS v-viii ETYMOLOGY ix EXTRACTS x-xii INTRODUCTION 1-35 The Encyclopedic Narrative in the Twentieth Century. CHAPTER ONE 36-96 "A Perfectly Ordered Chaos": William Gaddis's The Recognitions. CHAPTER TWO 97-131 "The American Book of the Dead": Don DeLillo's Underworld. CHAPTER THREE 132-73 "An Encyclopedia of the Information Age": Richard Powers's The Gold Bug Variations. CHAPTER FOUR 174-205 "Immanent Domain". David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest. CONCLUSION 206-18 "At the Edges of Perception " Works Cited 219-55 LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS With all the primary texts by Gaddis, DeLillo, and Powers, I have endeavoured to use the American first editions with the exception of Gaddis's The Recognitions and JR, where Gaddis corrected some errors for the first Penguin editions, and DeLillo's Americana which DeLillo cut slightly for its reprint as a Penguin paperback in 1989. David Foster Wallace's works provide a slightly different case. The first edition of The Broom of the System is so rare that even Wallace himself reputedly does not have a copy, so I have used references to a paperback reprint. More difficult to establish is the textual status of Infinite Jest. There are a number of differences between the first edition and the paperback reprint, such as Hal claiming to be "thirteen in June" on page 27 of the hardback, and "eleven in June" on the same page in the paperback. There is no note on the copyright page of the reprint suggesting that any corrections have been made, but details such as Hal's age (given JJ 49), are only consistent with the book's chronology if the reprint is taken as authoratitive, so I have assumed that this is the case. Scholarly disputes about the authority of different texts of Joyce's works have once more flared up following the 1997 publication of Danis Rose's edition of Ulysses, and, as it seems an authoritative edition of Ulysses, in particular, may never be established, I have used Penguin reprints of Joyce's first three books. While these editions are perhaps not definitive, they are at least widely available. For Finnegans Wake, however, there does seem to be some consensus on the authority of the Faber third edition, so I have used this text of Joyce's last work. It is perhaps also worth noting that I have used square brackets to signal capitalisation changes made to preserve grammatical constructions for all texts, with the exception of the Wake on the assumption that its language, and Joyce's avowed aim to forego "cutandry grammar" (Selected Letters 318), presents a special case. Works by James Joyce: D Dubliners. introd. Terence Brown (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1992). P A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, ed. and introd. Seamus Deane (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1992). U Ulysses, introd. Declan Kiberd (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1992). FW Finnegans Wake, 3rd ed. (London: Faber, 1964). Works by William Gaddis: R The Recognitions, introd. William H. Gass (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1993). JR JR, introd. Frederick R. Karl (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1993). CG Carpenter's Gothic (New York: Viking-Penguin, 1985). F A Frolic of His Own (New York: Poseidon-Simon, 1994). Works by Don DeLillo: A Americana (Harmondsworth: Penguin. 1989). EZ End Zone (Boston: Houghton, 1972). GJS Great Jones Street (Boston: Houghton. 1973). RS Ratner's Star (New York: Knopf, 1976). RD Running Dog (New York: Knopf, 1978). AZ Amazons: An Intimate Memoir by the First Woman Ever to Play in the National Hockey League [published under the pseudonym Cleo Birdwell] (New York: Holt, 1980). N The Names (New York: Knopf, 1982). WN White Noise (New York: Viking-Penguin, 1985). L Libra (New York: Viking-Penguin, 1988). M Mao JJ (New York: Viking-Penguin, 1991). UW Underworld (New York: Scribner-Simon, 1997). BA The Body Artist (New York: Scribner-Simon, 2001). Works by Richard Powers: 3F Three Farmers on Their Way to a Dance (New York: Beech Tree-Morrow, 1985). PD Prisoner's Dilemma (New York: Beech Tree-Morrow, 1988). GBV The Gold Bug Variations (New York: Morrow, 1991). OWS Operation Wandering Soul (New York: Morrow, 1993). G2.2 Galatea 2.2 (New York: Farrar, 1995). G Gain (New York: Farrar, 1998). PTD Plowing the Dark (New York: Farrar, 2000). Works by David Foster Wallace: BS The Broom of the System (London: Abacus-Little. 1997). Girl Girl with Curious Hair (New York: Norton, 1989).
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Daniel Green
    DANIEL GREEN 2 TABLE OF CONTENTS RADICAL REALISTS “Like Life: Radical Realism and the Fiction of Sam Pink” (5) “Reinforcing Hard Reality: Stephen Dixon” (14) “Sincerity and the Surface: On Nicholson Baker” (19) “Not Somewhere or Anywhere” (Ottessa Moshfegh) (26) “Entering Cross River” (Rion Amilcar Scott) (30) “Contextualized Naturalism: The Artfulness of Russell Banks's Affliction” (36) “Sleights of Hand” (Philip Roth) (46) REGRESSIVE REALISTS “Richard Powers I: Forsaking Illusions” (50) “Lost in the Woods: Richard Powers, The Overstory” (58) “Safely Familiar” (Denis Johnson) (63) “Getting At The Thing Itself” (Kent Haruf” (66) “Endless Talk” (Richard Ford) (71) “Killing the Joke” (Lorrie Moore) (80) “Until the Movie Comes Out” (Richard Russo) (84) “Illusions of Substance” (Charles Baxter) (89) 3 PREFACE The underlying assumption of most of my critical writing has been that, far from representing a tangential, eccentric practice (as much of current literary culture would have it), “experimental” fiction in fact provides an indispensable service in helping to keep the literary resources of fiction refreshed. Often this entails contrasting such fiction with a conventionalized or exhausted realism, which despite the interventions of fabulists and postmodernists (not to mention the efforts of many genre writers) remains more or less the default preference in both American fiction and general-interest literary criticism. But the problem with a blanket critique of realism, especially from the years after World War II, and even more especially
    [Show full text]
  • The Road to Hell
    The road to hell Cormac McCarthy's vision of a post-apocalyptic America in The Road is terrifying, but also beautiful and tender, says Alan Warner Alan Warner The Guardian, Saturday 4 November 2006 Article history The Road by Cormac McCarthy 256pp, Picador, £16.99 Shorn of history and context, Cormac McCarthy's other nine novels could be cast as rungs, with The Road as a pinnacle. This is a very great novel, but one that needs a context in both the past and in so-called post-9/11 America. We can divide the contemporary American novel into two traditions, or two social classes. The Tough Guy tradition comes up from Fenimore Cooper, with a touch of Poe, through Melville, Faulkner and Hemingway. The Savant tradition comes from Hawthorne, especially through Henry James, Edith Wharton and Scott Fitzgerald. You could argue that the latter is liberal, east coast/New York, while the Tough Guys are gothic, reactionary, nihilistic, openly religious, southern or fundamentally rural. The Savants' blood line (curiously unrepresentative of Americans generally) has gained undoubted ascendancy in the literary firmament of the US. Upper middle class, urban and cosmopolitan, they or their own species review themselves. The current Tough Guys are a murder of great, hopelessly masculine, undomesticated writers, whose critical reputations have been and still are today cruelly divergent, adrift and largely unrewarded compared to the contemporary Savant school. In literature as in American life, success must be total and contrasted "failure" fatally dispiriting. But in both content and technical riches, the Tough Guys are the true legislators of tortured American souls.
    [Show full text]
  • INFORMATION to USERS the Most Advanced Technology Has Been Used to Photo­ Graph and Reproduce This Manuscript from the Microfilm Master
    "On the hole business is very good."-- William Gaddis' rewriting of novelistic tradition in "JR" (1975) Item Type text; Thesis-Reproduction (electronic) Authors Thomas, Rainer Publisher The University of Arizona. Rights Copyright © is held by the author. Digital access to this material is made possible by the University Libraries, University of Arizona. Further transmission, reproduction or presentation (such as public display or performance) of protected items is prohibited except with permission of the author. Download date 05/10/2021 10:15:18 Link to Item http://hdl.handle.net/10150/291833 INFORMATION TO USERS The most advanced technology has been used to photo­ graph and reproduce this manuscript from the microfilm master. UMI films the text directly from the original or copy submitted. Thus, some thesis and dissertation copies are in typewriter face, while others may be from any type of computer printer. The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. Broken or indistinct print, colored or poor quality illustrations and photographs, print bleedthrough, substandard margins, and improper alignment can adversely affect reproduction. In the unlikely event that the author did not send UMI a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if unauthorized copyright material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. Oversize materials (e.g., maps, drawings, charts) are re­ produced by sectioning the original, beginning at the upper left-hand corner and continuing from left to right in equal sections with small overlaps. Each original is also photographed in one exposure and is included in reduced form at the back of the book.
    [Show full text]
  • OLLI Spring 2020 the Novels of Richard Powers: an Overview
    Regier – Syllabus for The Novels of Richard Powers: An Overview - 1 OLLI Spring 2020 The Novels of Richard Powers: An Overview Instructor: Willis Goth Regier E-mail address: [email protected] Course Description: Authors like to hear that their latest book is their best. When saying that about a Richard Powers novel we should always add “so far.” Every new novel makes some advance upon the others, and who is to say that one step is more important than another? Yet some novels seem to be strides rather than steps, and his latest, The Overstory (2018) is such a stride. This course will survey each of Powers’ twelve novels in chronological order, from Three Farmers on Their Way to a Dance (1985) to The Overstory. I will feature favorite passages in each novel, reflect their glories, and indicate what is distinctive about each. Powers’ readers will be reminded of novels they wish to reread. The course will also consider Powers’ novels as twelve parts of a whole which, properly put together, gives us a large look at Richard Powers. I will propose theses about the novels: They refuse to succumb to the predictabilities of a genre. They change themes, structures, and tones, though some themes recur and reassert their importance. The twelve take up complex issues and pose problems of individual responsibility. They have in common Powers’ resolution to make each unique and his determination in every case to “get it right.” Recommended: Richard Powers, The Overstory (New York: W. W. Norton, 2018). Regier – Syllabus for The Novels of Richard Powers:
    [Show full text]
  • James Phelan, Peter J. Rabinowitz, and Robyn Warhol, Series Editors
    THEORY AND INTERPRETATION OF NARRATIVE James Phelan, Peter J. Rabinowitz, and Robyn Warhol, Series Editors Narrative Theory Core Concepts and Critical Debates DAVID HERMAN JAMES PHELAN PETER J. RABINOWITZ BRIAN RICHARDSON ROBYN WARHOL THE OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY PRESS | COLUMBUS Copyright © 2012 by The Ohio State University. All rights reserved. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Narrative theory : core concepts and critical debates / David Herman ... [et al.]. p. cm. — (Theory and interpretation of narrative) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-8142-5184-3 (pbk. : alk. paper) — ISBN 0-8142-5184-6 (pbk. : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-8142-1186-1 (cloth : alk. paper) — ISBN 0-8142-1186-0 (cloth : alk. paper) — ISBN 978- 0-8142-9285-3 (cd-rom) 1. Narration (Rhetoric) I. Herman, David, 1962– II. Series: Theory and interpretation of nar- rative series. PN212.N379 2012 808.036—dc23 2011049224 Cover design by James Baumann Text design by Juliet Williams Type set in Adobe Minion Pro Printed by Thomson-Shore, Inc. The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materi- als. ANSI Z39.48–1992. 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 CONTENTS Preface ix Acknowledgments xiii Part One Perspectives: Rhetorical, Feminist, Mind-Oriented, Antimimetic 1. Introduction: The Approaches Narrative as Rhetoric JAMES PHElan and PETER J. Rabinowitz 3 A Feminist Approach to Narrative RobYN Warhol 9 Exploring the Nexus of Narrative and Mind DAVID HErman 14 Antimimetic, Unnatural, and Postmodern Narrative Theory Brian Richardson 20 2. Authors, Narrators, Narration JAMES PHElan and PETER J.
    [Show full text]
  • Theory and Interpretation of Narrative James Phelan, Peter J
    View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by KnowledgeBank at OSU THEORY AND INTERPRETATION OF NARRATIVE JAMES PHELAN, PETER J. RABINOWITZ, AND ROBYN WARHOL, SERIES EDITORS FOR VANESSA, MAX, AND MILLY THE RETURN OF THE OMNISCIENT NARRATOR Authorship and Authority in Twenty-First Century Fiction PAUL DAWSON THE OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY PRESS COLUMBUS Copyright © 2013 by The Ohio State University. All rights reserved. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Dawson, Paul, 1972– The return of the omniscient narrator authorship and authority in twenty-first century fiction / Paul Dawson. pages cm—(Theory and interpretation of narrative) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN-13: 978-0-8142-1233-2 (cloth : alk. paper) ISBN-10: 0–8142– 1233–6 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Fiction—Technique. 2. Omniscience (Theory of knowledge) in literature. 3. Narration (Rhetoric) I. Title. II. Series: Theory and interpretation of narrative series. PN3355.D246 2013 808.3—dc23 2013031509 Cover design by AuthorSupport.com Text design by Juliet Williams Type set in Adobe Sabon Printed by Sheridan Books, Inc. The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials. ANSI Z39.48–1992. 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 CONTENTS Acknowledgments vii Introduction The Return of Omniscience in Contemporary Fiction 1 CHaptER 1 Omniscience and Narrative Authority 25 CHaptER 2 The Direct Address and the Ironic
    [Show full text]
  • European Journal of American Studies, 2-1 | 2007 “Only the Conversation Matters” 2
    European journal of American studies 2-1 | 2007 Spring 2007 “Only the Conversation Matters” An interview with Richard Powers Jean-Yves Pellegrin Édition électronique URL : https://journals.openedition.org/ejas/1145 DOI : 10.4000/ejas.1145 ISSN : 1991-9336 Éditeur European Association for American Studies Référence électronique Jean-Yves Pellegrin, « “Only the Conversation Matters” », European journal of American studies [En ligne], 2-1 | 2007, document 2, mis en ligne le 27 avril 2007, consulté le 08 juillet 2021. URL : http:// journals.openedition.org/ejas/1145 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/ejas.1145 Ce document a été généré automatiquement le 8 juillet 2021. Creative Commons License “Only the Conversation Matters” 1 “Only the Conversation Matters” An interview with Richard Powers Jean-Yves Pellegrin NOTE DE L’ÉDITEUR This interview took place at the Sorbonne on the 20th of February 2006. Many thanks to Richard Powers for his exceptional kindness and patience. 1 From Three Farmers on Their Way to a Dance (1985) to The Echo Maker (2006), American novelist Richard Powers explores the effects of modern science and technology on human lives. He teaches in the Creative Writing M.F.A. program at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1998, has been awarded a MacArthur Fellow (1989) and is the recipient of a Lannan Literary Award (1999). 2 Jean-Yves Pellegrin is Associate Professor of American literature at the University of Paris-Sorbonne (Paris IV). He has translated two novels by Richard Powers. 3 J-Y.
    [Show full text]
  • Catalogfall14 Spring15-G586.Pdf
    DZANC STAFF Steven Gillis, Co-Founder and Publisher Dan Wickett, Co-Founder Guy intoci, Editor-in-Chief Jeffery Gleaves, Director of Marketing & Publicity Michelle Dotter, Editor Pat Walsh, Director of Foreign Rights Steven Seighman, Design BOARD OF DIRECTORS Steven Gillis (Chair), Jeff Parker, Jeremy Chamberlain BOARD EMERITUS Doug Wilson, James Rosenfeld, Peter Fayroian NATIONAL COUNCIL Fred Ramey, Jessica Stockton Bagnulo ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Dzanc Books is supported, in part, by grants from the Community Founda- tion of SE Michigan, specifically targeted grants from John and Jean Wickett, the Meijer Foundation, and various individuals Visit our website: www.dzancbooks.org 1 WELCOME TO DZANC BOOKS TABLE OF CONTENTS Shortly after opening our doors in 2006, Dzanc Books was hailed as “the future of publishing” by Publishers Weekly. A fully invested publishing house with print distribution through Consortium, and eBook distribution through Open Road Media, Dzanc Books is committed to not only publishing great DZANC FRONTLIST BOOKS.................................4 works, but promoting our authors through print and online media, author tours, and through audio/visual THE OLD REACTOR media. In our first few years, Dzanc authors have been reviewed everywhere both in print and online, a novel by david ohle OFFERINGS FROM A RUST BELT JOCKEY including the Los Angeles Times Book Review, The Believer, Time Out New York, NewPages, Bookslut, a novel by andrew plattner Mid-American Review, American Book Review, The Review of Contemporary Fiction, Publishers Weekly, A DIFFERENT BED EVERY TIME stories by jac jemc Rain Taxi, Elle Magazine, Vanity Fair, and numerous others. With award-winning authors such as Josip BY LIGHT WE KNEW OUR NAMES Novakovich, Laura van den Berg, and Hesh Kestin, coupled with great emerging writers like Sean McGrady, stories by anne valente Eugene Cross, and Jac Jemc, Dzanc is excited to present the best and the brightest authors writing today.
    [Show full text]
  • Richard Powers and the Post-Postmodern Novel of Ideas: Part 1: the First Four Novels
    Texture: A Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences 2017 Richard Powers and the Post-Postmodern Novel of Ideas: Part 1: The First Four Novels Martin Kich Professor of English Wright State University Lake Campus Abstract In producing a very substantial body of highly regarded work, Richard Powers has established himself as one of the major American novelists of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Powers has taken the novel into new territory, and his work very clearly represents an acute awareness of and a conscious synthesis of the traditions in the American novel, and the novel more broadly. This essay treats Powers’ first four novels which stand as a substantial and noteworthy body of work. They demonstrate the things that make his novels distinctively his: the daunting range of interests and preoccupations; the gradual enlargement of his sensibilities, or his sense of the world, and of his place as a novelist within that world; and the continuing refinement of his skills as a novelist and his increasing sense, I think, of a cumulative legacy—of how each new novel complements his earlier efforts and yet extends it in terms of the selection and treatment of subjects, structure, characters, themes, and style. Keywords: Richard Powers, Postmodernism, Novel of Ideas, Dos Passos. Introduction Since 1985, eleven of Richard Powers’ novels have been published. His output has been very regular, with each new novel following the previous one at an interval of two to three years, with the exception of his most recent novel, Orfeo, which appeared five years after the novel that preceded it, Generosity.
    [Show full text]
  • Don Delillo and the Harbingers of Mortality
    MISCELÂNEA Revista de Pós-Graduação em Letras UNESP – Campus de Assis ISSN: 1984-2899 www.assis.unesp.br/miscelanea Miscelânea, Assis, vol.9, jan./jun.2011 DON DELILLO AND THE HARBINGERS OF MORTALITY Gustavo Vargas Cohen (Doutorando — UFRS) RESUMO ABSTRACT O objetivo do presente texto é capturar The aim of the present text is to os sinais e contingências que podem capture the signs and contingencies dificultar e impedir o progresso de um that may hamper and prevent a writer’s escritor. A relevância de Don DeLillo para progress. It acknowledges Don DeLillo’s a literatura mundial é apresentada e relevance to world literature, corroborada por uma lista comentada corroborated by an informed listing of dos prêmios recebidos pelo autor e dos the awards the author has received and temas abordados individualmente em of the themes approached in his suas obras. O texto também discute os individual novels. The text also predecessores de DeLillo, as raízes discusses DeLillo’s predecessors, the históricas de seu tipo de representação historical roots of his kind of realistic realista da sociedade contemporânea e portrayal of contemporary society and as sementes de seu estilo de escrita pós- the seeds to his post-modern writing moderno. A parte final traz um quadro style. The final part brings an outline of geral dos sintomas como evidenciados the symptomatic evidence as shaped by pelos argumentos que seus críticos the arguments that critics offer for oferecem para consideração. O texto consideration. The text concludes by conclui reconhecendo os efeitos acknowledging the side-effects of colaterais de escrever com tamanha writing with such profusion, intensity profusão, intensidade e diversidade.
    [Show full text]
  • Ty and Multiplicity in the Novels of Richard Powers
    View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by OpenEdition European journal of American studies 2-1 | 2007 Spring 2007 Surviving in the Particular? Uni(versali)ty and Multiplicity in the Novels of Richard Powers Heinz Ickstadt Electronic version URL: http://journals.openedition.org/ejas/1119 DOI: 10.4000/ejas.1119 ISSN: 1991-9336 Publisher European Association for American Studies Electronic reference Heinz Ickstadt, « Surviving in the Particular? Uni(versali)ty and Multiplicity in the Novels of Richard Powers », European journal of American studies [Online], 2-1 | 2007, document 1, Online since 22 May 2007, connection on 30 April 2019. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/ejas/1119 ; DOI : 10.4000/ ejas.1119 This text was automatically generated on 30 April 2019. Creative Commons License Surviving in the Particular? Uni(versali)ty and Multiplicity in the Novels of... 1 Surviving in the Particular? Uni (versali)ty and Multiplicity in the Novels of Richard Powers Heinz Ickstadt 1 Although some of the ‘masters’ of postmodernism are still producing ‘postmodern’ narratives (e.g. Robert Coover with his recent Lucky Pierre), contemporary American fiction has largely moved ‘back’ into realism’s territory of the everyday that the postmodernists had been so determined to abandon. It is true that, as in the case of Don DeLillo, this new realism is not grounded in any ontological notion of the ‘real’ but in an experienced ‘hyper-reality’ of surface and of image. Yet it makes nevertheless use of familiar conventions of realism: its emphasis on everyday experience, the importance of family, and the question (explored in conversation and communicative interaction) of shared values.
    [Show full text]
  • Ali Dissertation Revised
    Recuperating Deliberation in Early-Postmodern US Fiction by Alistair M. C. Chetwynd A dissertation submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (English Language and Literature) in the University of Michigan 2016 Doctoral Committee: Professor Gregg D. Crane, Chair Professor Patricia S. Yaeger, Chair (Deceased) Professor Sarah Buss Professor Jonathan E. Freedman Associate Professor Gillian C. White Acknowledgments This project took an aeon, and first thanks are equally to the English department at the University of Michigan for time and money, and my family and friends for never actually saying out loud that I should give it up and do something easier and more useful with my life. I’m also extremely grateful to each of my committee for stepping in to help me work on something a long way from any of their own academic interests. I really miss Patsy Yaeger: in particular her enthusiasm about getting to read bits of what she called a “weird” and “wonky” project. I’m grateful to her for feedback on sentence-level writing and the excellent, frequent marginal comment “Where’s The Joy???” Gregg Crane very helpfully took over after Patsy’s death, and his exhortations to be more precise, especially in talking about the relationship between fictions and philosophies, were always energizing: only Danny Hack’s Novel Theory course pushed me more forcefully in the directions my PhD work finally took than Gregg’s 20-second aside about how useful he found early pragmatism for thinking about literature, back in the second or third class session I sat in at Michigan.
    [Show full text]