NPPF book of possible interest

pynchonoid pynchonoid at yahoo.com
Fri Jul 11 14:09:30 CDT 2003


I've posted this to the P-list before, but it seems
appropriate again:

Faulkner and Postmodernism 

Edited by John N. Duvall and Ann J. Abadie

With essays by John Barth, Philip Cohen, John N.
Duvall, Doreen Fowler, Ihab Hassan, Molly Hite, Martin
Kreiswirth, Cheryl Lester, Terrell L. Tebbetts, Joseph
R. Urgo, and Philip Weinstein 

Where William Faulkner's fiction stands in relation to
that of Ellison, Pynchon, Nabokov, and other post-
modern greats 

Since the 1960s, William Faulkner, Mississippi's most
famous author, has been recognized as a central figure
of international modernism. But might Faulkner's
fiction be understood in relation to Thomas Pynchon's
Gravity's Rainbow as well as James Joyce's Ulysses? 

In eleven essays from the 1999 Faulkner and
Yoknapatawpha Conference, held at the University of
Mississippi, Faulkner and Postmodernism examines
William Faulkner and his fiction in light of
postmodern literature, culture, and theory. The volume
explores the variety of ways Faulkner's art can be
used to measure similarities and differences between
modernism and postmodernism. 

Essays in the collection fall into three categories:
those that use Faulkner's novels as a way to mark a
period distinction between modernism and
postmodernism, those that see postmodern tendencies in
Faulkner's fiction, and those that read Faulkner
through the lens of postmodern theory's contemporary
legacy, the field of cultural studies. 

In order to make their particular arguments, essays in
the collection compare Faulkner to more contemporary
novelists such as Ralph Ellison, Vladimir Nabokov,
Thomas Pynchon, Walker Percy, Richard Ford, Toni
Morrison, and Kathy Acker. But not all of the
comparisons are to high culture artists, since even
Elvis Presley becomes Faulkner's foil in one of the
essays. 

A variety of theoretical perspectives frame the work
in this volume, from Fredric Jameson's pessimistic
sense of postmodernism's possibilities to Linda
Hutcheon's conviction that cultural critique can
continue in postmodernism through innovative new forms
such as metafiction. Despite the different theoretical
premises and distinct conclusions of the individual
authors of these essays, Faulkner and Postmodernism
proves once again that in the key debates surrounding
twentieth-century fiction, Faulkner is a crucial
figure. 

John N. Duvall, an associate professor of English at
Purdue University, is the editor of Modern Fiction
Studies. 

Ann J. Abadie is associate director of the Center for
the Study of Southern Culture at the University of
Mississippi. 

<http://www.upress.state.ms.us/catalog/spring2002/faulkner_and_postmodernism.html>


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