The Columbia History of the American Novel

individualism of the times. And if such identities at times themselves reinforced the age's cultural stereotypes, they were at least the necessary precursor to what would become in subsequent generations a more truly oppositional literature.

David Van Leer

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The Late Twentieth Century

Introduction

Readers who glance at the titles of the chapters in this section cannot help noticing that, for the authors of these chapters, the idea of 'American' literature has undergone significant change in the latter part of this century. The crucial questions surrounding the canon, national and class boundaries, race, personal identity, genre, gender, the scene and nature of writing, and history are reflected in the proliferations of the 'American' novel over the last forty years. One could only call the development of the novel in this period 'rhizomic,' in the sense of French philosophers Giles Deleuze and Félix Guattari's conception of the 'rhizome' as a weedy growth, like crabgrass, with multiple crossings and branchings, growing everywhere.

To write an impossibly comprehensive or total history of the American novel in this (or any) period would be a contradiction in terms, for not only is the period itself open-ended and dynamic, but also many of the intellectual currents that have risen out of the novels written during this time are at odds with each other as they render problematic, for example, the relation between fiction and history, the relation of 'major' to 'minor' literature, the constitution of the author and the constituencies of the readership, the nature of representation, or the nature of writing itself. How, then, to write a representative history — as literary histories have been traditionally conceived — of the major authors and works of a determined place and period? Rather than chase after that illusory and highly questionable goal, the writers in this section (indeed, throughout this His--513- tory) have chosen to take local and specific points of departure that might be seen as incursions or interventions into the inconceivable totality of the American novel in the late twentieth century. Together, the chapters in this section might be seen as a mosaic in process, unfinished, with indefinite frame and border, yet conveying a colorful impression of the liveliness and utter heterogeneity of the literature of this period. In fact, it is this very openness, this sense of 'presentness,' that forms one of the most attractive features of the contemporary American novel that challenges the 'the,' the 'contemporary,' the 'American,' and the 'novel' as the defining limits of its exfoliations.

The reader of these incursionary chapters, then, may or may not find her or his favorite author mentioned in these pages; scholars of contemporary American fiction may or may not find discussed in detail those authors they deem most important or 'major.' We have not attempted, here, to be either exhaustive or canonical since, as I have suggested, exhaustiveness and canonicity are two of the many issues the contemporary American novel puts into question. But the writers of these chapters have attempted to be historical in their collective sense of history — including literary history-as a collage of proliferating movements and subjects interacting in ways seen and unseen, neither wholly determined by some larger plan or system, nor wholly indeterminate within the intertwined matrices of event and inscription. It is this sense of 'history' that pervades the discussion of authors and works in these chapters. With this in mind, the reader is invited to roam across the capacious, worldly, bordering yet borderless country of the contemporary American novel, therein to discover the vitality and power of this writing, along with its faults and its fragility, its resistances and complicities, its indelible being there.

Patrick O'Donnell

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Postmodern Culture

What do we mean by 'postmodern culture?' Does this vague phrase refer to crucial features of contemporary life? Or is it a categorical device deployed by critics and artists to further their own projects? Has the term 'postmodern' become such a buzz word that it means anything, refers to everything — hence signifies nothing?

These questions exemplify the degree to which the debate about what does or does not constitute 'postmodern culture' is not a mere disagreement about the use or misuse of a phrase but rather a raging battle over how we define and conceive of the role of culture in American society (as well as those abroad). More pointedly, it highlights how we interpret the current crisis in our society and best muster resources from the past and present to alleviate this crisis. Any interpretation of this crisis that alludes to 'postmodern culture' presupposes some notions of the modern, modernity, modernization, and modernism — when they began, when they peaked, when they declined, when they ended, what was good and bad about them, and why the advent of 'postmodern culture' has emerged. And any use of these notions bears directly and indirectly on how one conceives of what is worth preserving and changing in the present. In this regard the way in which one characterizes 'postmodern culture' reflects one's anxieties, frustrations, allegiances, and visions as a critic. In short, one's very intellectual vocation is at stake in one's conception of 'postmodern culture.'

Because of the promiscuous uses of the adjective 'postmodern' -515- in conjunction with philosophy, literature, et al. - and the various reductions of 'postmodern culture' to a variety of 'postmodernisms' — we must be clear as to the level on which our inquiry proceeds. We are not proceeding at the level of the popular mind that usually associates 'postmodern culture' with a set of styles, forms, and figures — be it the historical eclecticism of buildingmaking as in the decorative and ornamental references to older styles in the architecture of Michael Graves, Robert Venturi, Philip Johnson, and Robert A. M. Stern, the desequentializing music of John Cage, Laurie Anderson, and Philip Glass, the denarrativizing literature of Donald Barthelme, Ishmael Reed, and John Barth, or the defamiliarizing photography of Barbara Kruger and the early Martha Rosler.

Nor are we proceeding at the level of the academic mind that often views 'postmodern culture' as a product of the recent French occupation of the American intellectual landscape — be it Jean-François Lyotard's claim about the increasing incredulity toward master narratives (for example, Marxism, Enlightenment rationalism, or Whiggish liberalism), Jean Baudrillard's reflections about the saturation of simulacra and simulations in consumer-driven America, or poststructuralists' (Jacques Derrida or Michel Foucault) pronouncements about decentered, fragmented subjects caught in a labyrinthine world of no escape.

The popular and academic minds tend to be fixated on symptomatic emblems of 'postmodern culture,' yet we must probe deeper if we are to grapple seriously with our present moment — the moment of postmodern culture. On the one hand, the popular mind is right to see that discourses about postmodernism — especially in architecture, literature, and the arts — were initiated in the United States as a kind of revolt against domesticated modernisms of the academy, museum, and galleries during the Cold War period (1945-89). Since European artists and critics tended to link modernisms with transgression and revolt against authority, their critiques of domesticated modernisms were usually put forward in the name of more radical modernisms. On the other hand, the academic mind is right to note that French post-Marxist issues of difference, otherness, alterity, and marginality are central to 'postmodern culture.' Ironically, the waning of Marxist influence on the Left Bank of Paris, along with trans-516- gressive revolts against homogenizing Communist parties and expanding French bureaucracies, seized the imagination of world-weary ex-New Left academics in the United States caught offguard by feminist, black, brown, red, gay, and lesbian challenges in the name of identity and community. Yet neither the popular nor the