The American Novel in the 21st Century

Cultural Contexts – Literary Developments – Critical Analyses
Erscheinungsjahr 2019
ISBN: 978-3-86821-809-1
Verlag: WVT Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier

Buch, Englisch, Band 21, 400 Seiten, Format (B × H): 155 mm x 225 mm, Gewicht: 723 g

Reihe: WVT Handbücher zum literatur- und kulturwissenschaftlichen Studium

Focusing on the ways in which contemporary fiction and new genres of the novel are entangled with a variety of societal challenges and concerns, the aim of this volume is to provide students, university teachers, and literary scholars with a compact overview of the US-American novel in the first two decades of the new millennium. What are the dominant themes and recurring topics of recent American novels? How can the cultural dynamics of literary change in contemporary fiction be conceptualized, and what are the institutional, political, economic, cultural, ecological, and social contexts that have driven generic change in the American novel in the last fifteen to twenty years? What authors – established and new – have shaped the course of the novel in the 21st century? What are the most influential novels of the new millennium thus far, and how have they responded to, altered, and complicated our very notion of ‘the American novel’? The chapters in this handbook aim to address these questions in a manner that is at once systematic, clearly structured, and deliberately pluralistic and open, particularly with regard to the theoretical and methodological frameworks applied.

Zielgruppe

The aim of this volume is to provide students, university teachers, and literary scholars with a compact overview of the US-American novel in the first two decades of the new millennium.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Basseler, Michael

Nünning, Ansgar

Inhaltsverzeichnis

TABLE OF CONTENTS I. INTRODUCTION/SURVEY 1. MICHAEL BASSELER & ANSGAR NÜNNING The American Novel in the 21st Century: Changing Contexts, Literary Developments, New Modes of Reading ......................... 1 2. PHILIPP LÖFFLER The Sociology and Institutions of Contemporary American Literature ...................... 37 II. LITERARY REPRESENTATIONS OF CRISES, POLITICS, AND THE ‘WAR ON TERROR’ 3. BIRGIT DÄWES Ground Zero Fiction: Jonathan Safran Foer’s EXTREMELY LOUD &INCREDIBLY CLOSE (2005), Don DeLillo’s FALLING MAN (2007), and Wendy Mills’s ALL WE HAVE LEFT (2016) ..................................................................... 59 4. ELIZABETH KOVACH Novel Ontologies after 9/11: Narrating the Politics of Being and Existence in Paul Auster’s MAN IN THE DARK (2008) and Jonathan Franzen’s FREEDOM (2010) .. 73 5. FELIX HAASE & STEFANIE SCHÄFER Revisioning and Rewriting American History in Geraldine Brooks’ MARCH (2005), James McBride’s THE GOOD LORD BIRD (2013), and E.L. Doctorow’s THE MARCH: A NOVEL (2005) ........ 87 6. MICHAEL BASSELER & ISABEL KALOUS The Post-Civil Rights Novel: Re-negotiating African American Identities, Racism, and Cultural Memory in Colson Whitehead’s THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD (2016) and Paul Beatty’s THE SELLOUT (2015) ....................................................................... 101 7. RÜDIGER HEINZE Fictions of Immigration: Becoming American in Jhumpa Lahiri’s THE NAMESAKE (2004), Anne Tyler’s DIGGING TO AMERICA (2006), and Junot Díaz’s THE BRIEF WONDROUS LIFE OF OSCAR WAO (2007) ............................ 117 8. TIM LANZENDÖRFER Toward the American World-Novel: The Aesthetics and Politics of Transnationalism and Cosmopolitanism in Aleksandar Hemon’s NOWHERE MAN (2002), Teju Cole’s OPEN CITY (2011), and Peter Mountford’s A YOUNG MAN’S GUIDE TO LATE CAPITALISM (2011) ................ 135 9. CHRISTIAN KLOECKNER Deconstructing the Fictions of Finance Capitalism: Don DeLillo’s COSMOPOLIS (2003) and Nathaniel Rich’s ODDS AGAINST TOMORROW (2013) ............. 153 10. MICHAEL BASSELER Fictions of Resilience: Narrating (Environmental) Catastrophe and Crisis in Cormac McCarthy’s THE ROAD (2006) and Jesmyn Ward’s SALVAGE THE BONES (2011) ................................................................ 169 III. NEW FORMS OF LIFE IN CONTEMPORARY AMERICAN NOVELS 11. JOHANNA HARTMANN The ‘Precariousness of Being’ in the Art Novel of the 21st Century: Siri Hustvedt’s WHAT I LOVED (2003) and Michael Cunningham’s BY NIGHTFALL (2010) ............................................................. 187 12. SONJA SCHILLINGS Erotic Fantasies in the Popular Thriller: Lee Child’s JACK REACHER Series (1997-) and Karin Slaughter’s GRANT COUNTY Series (2001-2007) ................. 201 13. EVA-SABINE ZEHELEIN Love, Money, and (New Types of) Family in the 21st Century: Annie Weatherwax’s ALL WE HAD (2014) and Cynthia D’Aprix Sweeney’s THE NEST (2016) .......................................................... 215 14. NICO VÖLKER Narrating the Changing City: Jonathan Lethem’s THE FORTRESS OF SOLITUDE (2003) and Jacqueline Woodson’s ANOTHER BROOKLYN (2016) as Contemporary Urban Novels ................................................................................ 231 15. CLEMENS SPAHR The Consumption of Life: Consumerist Capitalism and the Commodification of the Self in Colson Whitehead’s APEX HIDES THE HURT (2006) and Gary Shteyngart’s SUPER SAD TRUE LOVE STORY (2010) .............................................. 247 16. WIBKE SCHNIEDERMANN The Fictions of the American Dream Reconsidered: George Packer’s THE UNWINDING (2013) and J.D. Vance’s THE HILLBILLY ELEGY (2016) ....................... 263 17. ALEXANDER SCHERR The Contemporary North American Science Novel: Richard Powers’s THE ECHO MAKER (2006) and GENEROSITY: AN ENHANCEMENT (2009) .......................... 279 18. SUSANNE KATHARINA CHRIST Fictions of Dementia: Exploring Alzheimer’s Disease in Lisa Genova’s STILL ALICE (2007) and Stefan Merrill Block’s THE STORY OF FORGETTING (2008) .......... 297 19. INA BERGMANN Historical Biofiction: Writing Lives in Diane Glancy’s Stone Heart (2003) and John May’s POE & FANNY (2004) ....................................................................... 309 20. JOHANNES VOELZ The American Novel and the Transformation of Privacy: Ben Lerner’s 10:04 (2014) and Miranda July’s THE FIRST BAD MAN (2015) ............. 323 IV. BEYOND POSTMODERNISM: NEW FORMS OF STORYTELLING IN CONTEMPORARY NOVELS 21. ALEXANDER SCHERR & ANSGAR NÜNNING The Fragmented U.S.-American Novel in the 21st Century: Broken Narratives and Disrupted Lives in Jennifer Egan’s A VISIT FROM THE GOON SQUAD (2010) and Joshua Ferris’ THEN WE CAME TO THE END (2007) ...................................................... 341 22. SASCHA PÖHLMANN Fictions of the Internet and Transmedial Storytelling in the Digital Age: Thomas Pynchon’s BLEEDING EDGE (2013) and Mark Z. Danielewski’s THE FAMILIAR (2015-) ................................................................................................ 359 23. JAN BAETENS Visual Culture and the Rise of Graphic Novels: Art Spiegelman’s IN THE SHADOW OF NO TOWERS (2004) and Gene Luen Yang’s AMERICAN BORN CHINESE (2006) ................................................................................ 371 Authors ..................................................................................................................... 383