Kathryn Hume
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- August 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780801450013
- eISBN:
- 9780801462870
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Cornell University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7591/cornell/9780801450013.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, American, 20th Century Literature
A frequent complaint against contemporary American fiction is that too often it puts off readers in ways they find difficult to fathom. Books such as Bret Easton Ellis's American Psycho, Katherine ...
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A frequent complaint against contemporary American fiction is that too often it puts off readers in ways they find difficult to fathom. Books such as Bret Easton Ellis's American Psycho, Katherine Dunn's Geek Love, and Don DeLillo's Underworld seem determined to upset, disgust, or annoy their readers—or to disorient them by shunning traditional plot patterns and character development. This book calls such works “aggressive fiction.” Why would authors risk alienating their readers—and why should readers persevere? Looking beyond the theory-based justifications that critics often provide for such fiction, this book offers a common-sense guide for the average reader who wants to better understand and appreciate books that might otherwise seem difficult to enjoy. The book considers roughly forty works of recent American fiction, including books by William Burroughs, Kathy Acker, Chuck Palahniuk, and Cormac McCarthy. It gathers “attacks” on the reader into categories based on narrative structure and content. Writers of some aggressive fictions may wish to frustrate easy interpretation or criticism. Others may try to induce certain responses in readers. Extreme content deployed as a tactic for distancing and alienating can actually produce a contradictory effect: for readers who learn to relax and go with the flow, the result may well be exhilaration rather than revulsion.Less
A frequent complaint against contemporary American fiction is that too often it puts off readers in ways they find difficult to fathom. Books such as Bret Easton Ellis's American Psycho, Katherine Dunn's Geek Love, and Don DeLillo's Underworld seem determined to upset, disgust, or annoy their readers—or to disorient them by shunning traditional plot patterns and character development. This book calls such works “aggressive fiction.” Why would authors risk alienating their readers—and why should readers persevere? Looking beyond the theory-based justifications that critics often provide for such fiction, this book offers a common-sense guide for the average reader who wants to better understand and appreciate books that might otherwise seem difficult to enjoy. The book considers roughly forty works of recent American fiction, including books by William Burroughs, Kathy Acker, Chuck Palahniuk, and Cormac McCarthy. It gathers “attacks” on the reader into categories based on narrative structure and content. Writers of some aggressive fictions may wish to frustrate easy interpretation or criticism. Others may try to induce certain responses in readers. Extreme content deployed as a tactic for distancing and alienating can actually produce a contradictory effect: for readers who learn to relax and go with the flow, the result may well be exhilaration rather than revulsion.
Kathryn Hume
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- August 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780801450013
- eISBN:
- 9780801462870
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Cornell University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7591/cornell/9780801450013.003.0006
- Subject:
- Literature, American, 20th Century Literature
This concluding chapter offers some final insights on aggressive fiction and why it is worthwhile to read material that makes us uncomfortable or actively upsets or revolts us. It returns to the ...
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This concluding chapter offers some final insights on aggressive fiction and why it is worthwhile to read material that makes us uncomfortable or actively upsets or revolts us. It returns to the modes of aggression discussed in previous chapters, explaining that these carry contradictions at their heart that cannot readily be resolved. Then the chapter goes on to examine how these properties of aggressive fiction “attack” the reader, suggesting that such fictions encourage alternate interpretive strategies, that they refuse to make instruction easy, offer temporary freedom from our preconceptions and prejudices, and that, among other things, they do not form a tidy subgenre. This chapter elaborates on the experiences of the reader as they tackle these aggressive fictions, and why they are and should keep on reading them.Less
This concluding chapter offers some final insights on aggressive fiction and why it is worthwhile to read material that makes us uncomfortable or actively upsets or revolts us. It returns to the modes of aggression discussed in previous chapters, explaining that these carry contradictions at their heart that cannot readily be resolved. Then the chapter goes on to examine how these properties of aggressive fiction “attack” the reader, suggesting that such fictions encourage alternate interpretive strategies, that they refuse to make instruction easy, offer temporary freedom from our preconceptions and prejudices, and that, among other things, they do not form a tidy subgenre. This chapter elaborates on the experiences of the reader as they tackle these aggressive fictions, and why they are and should keep on reading them.
