This paper reads Larry Beinhart’s novel The Librarian (2004) and its nonfiction companion Fog Facts (2005) as a double attempt at writing that is politically invested in representing reality but that nevertheless is openly aware of the postmodern crisis of representation. In this sense, I read both books as indicative of a broad cultural search for forms of writing that engage their readers’ reality without simply attempting to return to a less complicated moment before postmodernism. The paper situates both books within crucial textual contexts: a broad ‘epistemic panic’ about the facts and reality at the time, a surge of political nonfiction published in response to George W. Bush’s Presidency, and a longer tradition of political fiction. Tracing how the novel struggles with
its nonfiction aspects and how the nonfiction book relies on fiction to make its point, I then look at how the two books evoke political affect to have a realist appeal of sorts despite their insistence on the precarious nature of all realist representation. Reading both books as distinctly popular, mass-market products and thus bringing together the debate around post-postmodernism from literary studies with an interest in reading pleasures informed by popular culture studies, I argue that the two books constitute decidedly popular attempts at a new, meta-aware yet politically engaged textuality.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:DRESDEN/oai:qucosa.de:bsz:15-qucosa-206587 |
| Date | 06 July 2016 |
| Creators | Herrmann, Sebastian M. |
| Contributors | Universität Leipzig, Philologische Fakultät, Universität Leipzig, Philologische Fakultät |
| Publisher | Universitätsbibliothek Leipzig |
| Source Sets | Hochschulschriftenserver (HSSS) der SLUB Dresden |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | doc-type:bookPart |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | Poetics of politics : textuality and social relevance in contemporary American literature and culture / Sebastian M. Herrmann [Hrsg.] ... Heidelberg : Winter, 2015. S. 133-151. ISBN 978-3-8253-6447-2 |
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