Outside, America The Temporal Turn in Contemporary American Fiction

by Fujii, Hikaru

• ISBN13: 9781628925364
• ISBN10: 1628925361
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2014-10-23
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic

Summary

The idea of the "outside" as a space of freedom has always been central in the literature of the United States. This concept still remains active in contemporary American fiction; however, its function is being significantly changed. Outside, America argues that, among contemporary American novelists, a shift of focus to the temporal dimension is taking place. No longer a spatial movement, the quest for the outside now seeks to reach the idea of time as a force of difference, a la Deleuze, by which the current subjectivity is transformed. In other words, the concept is taking a "temporal turn."
Discussing eight novelists, including Don DeLillo, Richard Powers, Paul Theroux, and Annie Proulx, each of whose works describe forces of given identities-masculine identity, historical temporality, and power, etc.-which block quests for the outside, Fujii shows how the outside in these texts ceases to be a spatial idea. With due attention to critical and social contexts, the book aims to reveal a profound shift in contemporary American fiction.

Author Biography

Hikaru Fujii is Assistant Professor of English Department at Doshisha University, Japan.

Table of Contents

Introduction: America and Outside / Part I: Space of Outside / 1. Dear American Road: The End of the Road in Annie Proulx's Postcards and Richard Powers's Operation Wandering Soul / 2. Where the Tides Rise and Ebb: Power and "America" in Steve Erickson's Rubicon Beach / 3. Journey to the End of the Father: Battlefield of Masculinity in Paul Theroux's The Mosquito Coast / 4. The American Traveler's Love And Solitude: The Pragmatics of the Double in William T. Vollmann's The Atlas / Part II: Practices of Outside / 5. Nietzsche, Crime Fiction, and Question of Masculinity in Denis Johnson's Already Dead: A California Gothic / 6. A Man with a Green Memory: Cinema, War and Freedom in Stephen Wright's Meditations in Green / 7. Time and Again: The Outside and the Narrative Pragmatics in The Body Artist / 8. WWDD (What Would Disney Do)?: Cinematic Field and Narrative Act in Richard Powers's Prisoner's Dilemma / Chapter 9: Writing from a Different "Now": Question of Ahistorical Time in Contemporary Los Angeles Fiction / Conclusion: The Temporal Turn in American Fiction / Bibliography / Index