Writing the Past in Twenty-First-Century American Fiction

• Main Author: Lawrie, Alexandra
• Format: eBook
• Language: English
• Published: Edinburgh Edinburgh University Press 2022
• Edition: 1
• Subjects: 21st Century; American fiction; American Studies; Biography, Literature and Literary studies; History and criticism; History in literature; Language & Literature; Literary Criticism; LITERARY CRITICISM / Modern / 21st Century; Literary Studies; Literary studies: general; Literature; Literature: history and criticism; Modern
• ISBN: 9781474463447; 1474463444; 9781474463478; 1474463479; 9781474463461; 1474463460
• DOI: 10.1515/9781474463461

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.