M&D and the Ampersand

[Dave Monroe]

On Sun, Nov 8, 2009 at 12:29 PM, rich <richard.romeo at gmail.com> wrote:

> http://web.missouri.edu/~cohenss/M&D

"This line between black and white is most clearly represented by one
significance of the visto that, because of chronology, can never be
made quite explicit within the novel: as the popularly designated
divider of Union from Rebel states in the Civil War.  The absence from
the novel of the name by which the line came to b known underscores
this implicit knowledge." (p. 271)

Meanwhile ...

Cohen, Samuel.  After the End of History:
   American Fiction in the 1990s .  Iowa City: U of Iowa P, 2009.

In this bold book, Samuel Cohen asserts the literary and historical
importance of the period between the fall of the Berlin wall and that
of the Twin Towers in New York. With refreshing clarity, he examines
six 1990s novels and two post-9/11 novels that explore the impact of
the end of the Cold War: Pynchon's Mason & Dixon, Roth's American
Pastoral, Morrison's Paradise, O'Brien's In the Lake of the Woods,
Didion's The Last Thing He Wanted, Eugenides's Middlesex, Lethem's
Fortress of Solitude, and DeLillo's Underworld. Cohen emphasizes how
these works reconnect the past to a present that is ironically keen on
denying that connection. Exploring the ways ideas about paradise and
pastoral, difference and exclusion, innocence and righteousness,
triumph and trauma deform the stories Americans tell themselves about
their nation’s past, After the End of History challenges us to
reconsider these works in a new light, offering fresh, insightful
readings of what are destined to be classic works of literature.

At the same time, Cohen enters into the theoretical discussion about
postmodern historical understanding. Throwing his hat in the ring with
force and style, he confronts not only Francis Fukuyama’s triumphalist
response to the fall of the Soviet Union but also the other literary
and political “end of history” claims put forth by such theorists as
Fredric Jameson and Walter Benn Michaels. In a straightforward,
affecting style, After the End of History offers us a new vision for
the capabilities and confines of contemporary fiction.

http://www.uipress.uiowa.edu/books/2009-fall/cohen-amer.htm