The Writer in the Writing. Author as Hero in Postwar American Fiction

The structure of this study, although implicitly chronological, is above all thematic. The Introduction focuses on how the novels of the 1950s and early 1960s reflect, comically and absurdly, a sense of exhaustion and depravity, mental numbness and emptiness. Writer-protagonists project themselves as murky and haunted selves determined by exterior chaos and complemented by interior anxiety, as unaccomplished artisans nvoived in futile attempts to seek renewal. Chapter One deals with the new wave of expression freed by meta-and self-reflexive fiction in the 1960s and later decades. Absorbed by the reflection of fiction itself as technique, writer-heroes discover that confusion and loss may be a way of reclaiming art. They boldly discard older patterns of literary representation, invent verbal labyrinths from which they insist they cannot escape, establish new relationships with other characters, and discover new means of linking the mimetic with the metafictional. Confronting everyday existence, writers in fiction often vacillate between exuberance and anxiety. Many speak of being lonely and loveless, isolated and withdrawn. In Chapter Two I look at these and other aspects of their confrontation with American experience. Though accusatory, heroes are frequently inspired, or energized, by moral corruption, violence, terrorism or conspiracy. Their views of city life and relationships with women are similarly contradictory. Their perspectives on Europe are an arresting mixture of horror and fascination, puzzlement and confusion. In Chapter Three I look at writers' intellectual, creative and professional concerns. Largely critical of their cultural pedigree, or other writers' views, they concentrate on the challenges and frustrations of a writer ensnared by materialism and media glitz. However, underneath such complaints lies another interesting contradiction. Today's writer-heroes gladly substitute the time-honored tradition of the artist's resistance to fame and wealth for a desire for market success and popularity. These, when they come, bring various forms of backlash, which writers in turns lament and obsessively analyze.