Rise from the ashes

[Dave Monroe]

Rise from the ashes
John Freeman
September 10, 2011 .


The September 11 attacks spelt the end of the 'systems novel' and the
rise of a more diverse and meaningful literary landscape.

EUROPE may be the birthplace of the all-encompassing philosophers, the
men - and they were largely men - who attempted to stuff the whole
world into a theoretical system, but the US is where this urge found
root in storytelling. Or at least it was.

In every decade from the 1950s to the year 2000, the US produced a
novel that took a great deep breath and attempted to capture all the
systems of modern life at work: William Gaddis's The Recognitions
(1955), Thomas Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49 and Gravity's Rainbow
(1966 and 1973), Don DeLillo's White Noise (1985) and David Foster
Wallace's Infinite Jest (1996).

[...]

http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/books/rise-from-the-ashes-20110909-1k1df.html