Writing the Past in Twenty-First-Century American Fiction - by Alexandra Lawrie (Paperback)

About the Book

"Writing the Past in Twenty-First-Century American Fiction examines contemporary novels profoundly shaped by a sense of historical consciousness. Authors including Ben Lerner, Colson Whitehead, Dana Spiotta, Hari Kunzru and Garth Greenwell each use flashbacks, historical parallels and non-sequential narrative arrangements to emphasise the re-emergence, in a twenty-first-century context, of historical structures and circumstances. This study explores how these frequent moments of temporal slippage amount to a 'falling out of time', as characters are forced to confront the past crises which continue to exert pressure on their own contemporary moment."--

Book Synopsis

Writing the Past in Twenty-First-Century American Fiction examines contemporary novels profoundly shaped by a sense of historical consciousness. Authors including Ben Lerner, Colson Whitehead, Dana Spiotta, Hari Kunzru and Garth Greenwell each use flashbacks, historical parallels and non-sequential narrative arrangements to emphasise the re-emergence, in a twenty-first-century context, of historical structures and circumstances. This study explores how these frequent moments of temporal slippage amount to a 'falling out of time', as characters are forced to confront the past crises which continue to exert pressure on their own contemporary moment.

From the Back Cover

Argues for a reawakened commitment to historicity in contemporary American fiction Writing the Past in Twenty-first-century American Fiction examines contemporary novels profoundly shaped by a sense of historical consciousness. Authors including Ben Lerner, Colson Whitehead, Dana Spiotta, Hari Kunzru and Garth Greenwell each use flashbacks, historical parallels and non-sequential narrative arrangements to emphasise the re-emergence, in a twenty-first-century context, of historical structures and circumstances. This study explores how these frequent moments of temporal slippage amount to a 'falling out of time', as characters are forced to confront the past crises which continue to exert pressure on their own contemporary moment. Alexandra Lawrie is a Senior Lecturer in English Literature at the University of Edinburgh.

Review Quotes

'Always historicize!' Fredric Jameson taught us, and Alexandra Lawrie does so compellingly in her account of a turn-of-the-millennium generation of US novelists who have themselves taken Jameson's lesson to heart. Sampling half a dozen or so representative writers, some of them familiar, others less so, Lawrie illuminates the contemporary art of fiction by adeptly interweaving attentive close reading with contextualizing historical information.

--Brian McHale, The Ohio State University, Author of Postmodernist Fiction and The Cambridge Introduction to Postmodernism

About the Author

Alexandra Lawrie is a Senior Lecturer in English Literature at the University of Edinburgh.