Dissident Postmodernists: Barthelme, Coover, Pynchon, Volume 2Among Maltby's models of dissident postmodernist writing are Gravity's Rainbow, The Public Burning, Snow White, and more recent publications like Vineland and Spanking the Maid. In a series of close and provocative readings, he examines the ways in which these works respond to the erosion of the public sphere, the elevation of functionalist discourse, the enlargement of the state propaganda network, the corporate management of mass communications, and the diffusion of concept-poor language forms which limit social understanding. Alert to such developments, Maltby argues, dissident postmodernists such as Barthelme, Coover, and Pynchon write with politicized perceptions of language and a heightened awareness of language as a medium of social integration. Dissident Postmodernists will be of particular interest to students and scholars of contemporary American fiction and the postmodernism debates. |
Contents
Language and Late Capitalism | 24 |
Donald Barthelme | 43 |
Robert Coover | 82 |
Copyright | |
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aesthetic alien American balloon Barthelme's Barthes bourgeois Burroughs capitalist CBDC cold war commodity communication concept consciousness context Copyright critique culture defined discourse of America discussed dissident postmodernist dominant Donald Barthelme dreck entropy Eugénie Eugénie Grandet example Falling Dog forms function Gravity's Rainbow Habermas Hence ideology insofar Jameson language late capitalism late-capitalist society Lefebvre literary logic Marcuse meaning-systems metafiction mode modernist myth narrative narrator Nixon novel observes Oedipa order of meaning parody perceived perception perspective political postmodernism postmodernist fiction postmodernist writers problem production Public Burning public sphere Pynchon question reality reflects reified remarks Reprinted by permission Robert Coover Rosenbergs sign-reflective signifiers Slothrop Snow White social order space Spanking the Maid speak story subversive suggests technological rationality theory Thomas Pynchon tion Uncle Sam UPUA use-value Vineland William Burroughs words writing Yurok