Some other frequency

Description

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 interviews, the literary landscape of America is populated by an extraordinary vibrant group of authors publishing formally daring and thematically diverse fiction, though mostly outside the "official channels" of major commercial presses.

Subjects

Series Statement

• Penn studies in contemporary American fiction