U.S. & Canadian Authors - Interviews, 20th Century American Literature - General & Miscellaneous - Literary Criticism, 20th Century American Literature - Post WWII - Literary Criticism, Postmodernism - Literary Movements, Literary Theory - General & Misce

Some Other Frequency

Name: Some Other Frequency
Author: Larry McCaffrey
ISBN: 9780812232011

by Larry McCaffrey

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Overview

What resources are left for fiction in an era in which reading and writing seem increasingly irrelevant, obsolete, or debased? How have such concepts as "realism," "narrative," even "fiction" itself evolved since the first wave of postmodernism thirty years ago? How are writers responding to the challenges posed by the explosion of electronic media and the implosion of readers' attention spans? And how can fiction writers remain innovative when even the most radical features previously associated with the avant-garde routinely show up in mainstream television ads and music videos? In Some Other Frequency, Larry McCaffery dances on the sharp edge of contemporary American fiction to ask these and other questions of fourteen of today's most interesting fiction writers. McCaffery converses with the young, recklessly daring, and furiously productive William Vollmann and with Marianne Hauser, who published her first novel nearly sixty years ago ... with Native American trickster novelist Gerald Vizenor and "guerrilla writer" Harold Jaffe (whose literary technique is to "plant a bomb, sneak away") ... with stark minimalist Lydia Davis and text-and-collage artist Derek Pell ... with muscular pop icon Mark Leyner and proto-punk diva Kathy Acker. They are a diverse lot, shaped by very different literary and personal influences, and addressing divergent readerships. All, however, are among the most brilliant and radically innovative authors currently writing, and all jump off the page in McCaffery's intimate, finely tuned, and wide-ranging interviews. McCaffery's subjects talk about the nature of postmodernism and the crisis of representation, the ambiguities of contemporary life and the lure of literature. In his paradigm-busting introduction, McCaffery finds himself at odds with pessimistic announcements proclaiming the "death of the author" and the marginalization of language-based communication in general and fiction in particular. Judging from the examples of these i