Short stories are usually defined in terms of characteristics of modernism, in which the story begins in the middle, develops according to a truncated plot, and ends with an epiphany. This approach tends to ignore postmodernism, a movement often characterized by a negation of objective reality where plots are seemingly abandoned, surfaces are extraordinary, and symbols turn inward on themselves. This book examines postmodern forms and characteristic themes by analyzing a group of short stories that make use of postmodern narrative strategies, including nonfictional fiction, gender profiling, and death as an image.
The volume begins with a discussion of the blurred lines between fiction and nonfiction in the short story and imaginative personal essay. It then looks at the role of women in works by such authors as Sandra Cisneros, Leslie Marmon Silko, Joyce Carol Oates, and Lorrie Moore. This is followed by a section of chapters on postmodern masculinity and short fiction. The next section focuses on death as an image and theme in works by Richard Ford, Richard Brautigan, and James Joyce. The final set of chapters considers postmodern short fiction from South Africa and Canada.
Acknowledgments
Introduction by Farhat Iftekharuddin
Fictional Nonfiction And Nonfictional Fiction
Playing It Straight by Making It Up: Imaginative Leaps in the Personal Essay by Marilyn Abildskov
Facts and Fancy: The "Nonfiction Short Story" by Michele Morano
Historiografiction: The Fictionalization of History in the Short Story by Michael Orlofsky
Women's Identity in the Postmodern World
Closure in Sandra Cisneros's "Woman Hollering Creek" by Rose Marie Cutting
The Silence of the Bears: Leslie Marmon Silko's Writerly Act of Spiritual Storytelling by Brewster E. Fitz
The Feminine Consciousness as Nightmare in the Short-Short Stories of Joyce Carol Oates by Wayne Stengel
Postmodernism in Women's Short Story Cycles: Lorrie Moore's Anagrams by Karen Weekes
Contemporary Men and Their Stories
Crippled by the Truth: Oracular Pronouncements, Titillating Titles, and the Postmodern Ethic by Richard Lee
Male Paradigms in Thom Jones and Tom Paine by Paul R. Lilly
Eloquence and Plot in Denis Johnson's Jesus' Son: The Merging of Premodern and Modernist Narrative by J. Scott Farrin
Ardor with a Silent H: Submitting to the Ache of Love in Edmund White's "Skinned Alive" by Raymond Frontain
The Genre Which Is Not One: Hemingway's In Our Time, Difference, and the Short Story Cycle by Peter Donahue
Death As Image And Theme In Short Fiction
Short Stories to Film: Richard Ford's "Great Falls" and "Children" as Bright Angel by Larry D. Griffin
Melancholia and the Death Motif in Richard Brautigan's Short Fiction by Brenda M. Palo
Perhaps She Had Not Told Him All the Story: The Disnarrated in James Joyce's Dubliners by Howard Lindhom
Postmodern Narrative Around The World
Multiple Narrative Frames in R. R. R. Dhlomo's "Juwawa" by Christine Loflin
Beyond Genre: Canadian Surrealist Short Fiction by Allan Weiss
Postmodernism in the American Short Story: Some General Observations and Some Specific Cases by Harold Kaylor
Selected Bibliography
Index
About the Editors and Contributors
