1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910461692403321

Autore

Grausam Daniel <1975->

Titolo

On endings [[electronic resource] ] : American postmodern fiction and the Cold War / / Daniel Grausam

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Charlottesville, : University of Virginia Press, 2011

ISBN

1-280-49062-4

9786613585851

0-8139-3166-5

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (206 p.)

Disciplina

813/.5409

Soggetti

American fiction - History and criticism - Theory, etc

Postmodernism (Literature) - United States

Cold War - Influence

Cold War in literature

Electronic books.

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references (p. [179]-189) and index.

Nota di contenuto

Introduction: On endings -- Institutionalizing postmodernism: John Barth and modern war -- The Crying of Lot 49, circa 1642; or, Pynchon, periodicity, and total war -- The time of the nation, the time of the state -- Unthinking the thinkability of the unthinkable -- Trying to understand end zone -- The dominant tense: Richard Powers and late postmodernism -- Afterword: Critical conventions/postmodern canons.

Sommario/riassunto

What does narrative look like when the possibility of an expansive future has been called into question? This query is the driving force behind Daniel Grausam's On Endings, which seeks to show how the core texts of American postmodernism are a response to the geopolitical dynamics of the Cold War and especially to the new potential for total nuclear conflict. Postwar American fiction needs to be rethought, he argues, by highlighting postmodern experimentation as a mode of profound historical consciousness. On Endings significantly extends the project of historicizing postmodernism while returning the nuclear to a central place in the study of the Cold War.