Post-Chicks

[Derek C. Maus]

On Tue, 7 Sep 1999, Peter Campbell wrote:

> I was wondering if anyone could offer me a small list of women
> postmodern novelists and their best (or at least most accessible) work. 

Kathy Acker. She's probably more closely associated with the theorists who
have come to dominate post-modern as a concept than anyone. Having said
that, her writing is also sometimes borderline incomprehensible and often
not that rewarding when it is comprehensible. However, HANNIBAL LECTER, MY
FATHER and GREAT EXPECTATIONS are pretty remarkable. Almost nothing of
hers is "accessible" by normal standards, but much of it is nevertheless
rather good.

Second the recommendation of Angela Carter. NIGHTS AT THE CIRCUS, WISE
CHILDREN and her short story collections are all worth the trouble.

Lyudmila Petrushevskaya's plays and stories make for a pretty good
representation of postmodernism in Russian literature, although she also
passes pretty well as a naturalist at times. Sergey, any help here? THE
TIME: NIGHT is a novel of hers that mingles a number of styles, including
many that are recognizably post-modern (at least as I see the term).

Christa Wolf also writes in a fairly postmodern vein, especially in
CASSANDRA and THE QUEST FOR CHRISTA T.

I would add Jeanette Winterson, but I can't really recommend anything that
I would consider particularly good. She writes well, but her enourmous ego
("I basically AM Virginia Woolf except better") is impossible to extirpate
from the books and really gets in the way for me.

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