The Use of Conventional Literary Techniques in Postmodern Fiction:

A New Kind of Mimesis

A THESIS
SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL
OF THE UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA
BY

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Diane Christine Herbst
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IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS

FOR THE DEGREE OF
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

December 1995
 UMI Number: 9612968

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UMI Microform 9612968

Copyright 1996, by UMI Company. All rights reserved.

This microform edition is protected against unauthorized

copying under Title 17, United States Code.

UMI
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 UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA

This is to certify that I have examined this bound copy of a doctoral thesis by

Diane Christine Herbst

and have found that it is complete and satisfactory in all respects,

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and that any and all revisions required by the final
examining committee have been made.
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Name of Faculty Adviser
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Signature^ Faculty Adviser

29. —
Date

GRADUATE SCHOOL
TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction 3

Chapter 1 : Critical debate on postmodern fiction 13

Chapter 2: Mimesis and social influences on postmodern fiction 32

Chapter 3: Overdetermined genres 51

Chapter 4: Historical fact and figure in postmodern fiction 85

Chapter 5: Female characters as objects in postmodem fiction 104

Chapter 6: Female characters as agents inpostmodern fiction 131

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Chapter 7: Sensationalism in postmodern fiction 157

Conclusion IE 169

Bibliography 172
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Dissertation-Introduction
The following study is probably the result of one conversation with a professor

during my first year of graduate school, in which the professor asked if there really is

such a thing as postmodern fiction. Initially, I found the question uninterpretable—after

all, the scholarship on postmodern fiction was already fairly extensive—but the more

postmodem fiction and criticism I read, the more I realized how ill-defined this category

was and is. At that time, I felt a need to pin it down, dissect it, and find the means of

neatly labeling each piece of postmodern fiction. I now have a better understanding of

what prompted the question, and rather than offering a clinical definition of postmodem

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fiction, I will attempt to offer a means by which the reader can evaluate if and how a text

fits the postmodern rubric.

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The question of whether or not there really is a postmodern fiction stems largely

from its similarities and partial concomitance with modernist fiction. In their attempts to
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carve out a unique position for postmodern fiction within the literary canon, some of the

critics on postmodem fiction have too vehemently separated postmodem and modernist

fiction. This thesis will instead discuss postmodern fiction's likenesses to both modernist
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and conventional realistic fiction. In doing so, it will focus largely on the aspects of

postmodern fiction which it shares with other literary styles, aspects which have been

overlooked in the focus on what is new about postmodern fiction. The result is a view of

postmodern fiction as distinct from, and yet building on, earlier literary traditions.

Like any other literary form, postmodem fiction has built on the traditions

preceding it, most notably on modernist and realistic fiction. Its likeness to realistic

fiction is discussed in length throughout the thesis, particularly in chapter two, which

focuses on postmodem fiction's mimetic qualities. Its relationship to modernist fiction,

although not covered as thoroughly in this thesis, is even more striking. Postmodern

fiction shares many of the characteristics which mark modernist fiction: a sophisticated
 4

• sense of the multiplicity of meaning which inheres in language, an innovative use of

form, a play with language and literary convention, and a questioning of meaning and of

the social or linguistic norms which in the past had coalesced to form a conventionally

accepted view of an orderly universe.

Many critics have argued that postmodern fiction is really just a subset of

modernist fiction in which the techniques first introduced in modernist fiction are taken

to a further extreme. However, an examination of the use of similar techniques in

; modernist and postmodern texts illustrates striking differences underlying their usage.

\ For instance, play with language is a widely recognized characteristic of postmodern

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; fiction, but one need merely look at Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man to

i find an extreme awareness of the constructed nature of language-of its arbitrary qualities

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! and ability to take on multiple meanings--in modernist fiction. The scene in which little
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Stephen hides under the table, reciting a poem to himself based on the conversation of
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g the adults around him, is just one example (8). Juxtapose this scene with Vonnegut's

• Breakfast of Champions, in which Vonnegut provides multiple meanings of words such

’ as "lamb," even drawing pictures to illustrate his definitions. In both texts, the use of
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; language is sophisticated and examines the questionable ability of language to encompass

a communal meaning. A striking difference between the texts, however, is that Joyce's

text recaptures the meaning that inheres in the words for the young protagonist, Stephen,

• thereby recreating the personal significance of this scene for Stephen, whereas

Vonnegut's text relays a sense of uncertainty, of an inability to communicate a fixed

meaning. For Joyce, this meaning, although reduced from the communal to the personal,

is still possible to capture.

Another feature of postmodern fiction, which is also found in modernist fiction, is

its play with fictional techniques and form. In modernist fiction, the use of techniques

such as stream of consciousness or the fragmenting of time and perspective in novels

 5

such as Faulkner's The Sound and The Fury were a radical break from conventional

realistic fiction. These techniques again highlighted the complexity of language and the

difficulty of reaching a point of shared meaning. Faulkner's novel, with its several

narrators, illustrated the difficulty of finding meaning among dissonant personal

perspectives. However, it did not, finally, question that the truth was attainable even

though it, like Joyce's text, made truth personal rather than communal. Postmodern

fiction's play with the forms and techniques of fiction goes beyond this in its focus on the

inability of society or the individual to reach a final, fixed meaning (even though an

objective event occurred or an object exists in the outside world), and in its overt focus

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on the fictionality of the text. Neither Faulkner's The Sound and The Fury nor Joyce's

Portrait highlight the text's fictionality. Instead, these texts attempt to recover a personal
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sense of reality. Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five, although a text which focuses on an

actual historical event and an objection on the author's part to the atrocity of the Dresden
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firebombing, draws attention to its own fictional status. It does so in several ways,

including the intrusive voice of the author explaining that he was there for several scenes

and the introduction of far-fetched space travelers who resemble toilet plungers.
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Vonnegut does not deny the reality of events like the Dresden firebombing. However, he

seriously questions the possibility of encapsulating them in this or any text. He himself

states in the prologue that this novel is of necessity a failure--it is so in the sense that he

cannot objectively recreate that historical event. Rather than providing an eyewitness

account of the Dresden firebombing posing as The Truth, he opts to give a partial view,

one which the reader can only see as limited in scope. The most critical underlying

difference between Faulkner's and Vonnegut's texts is not their play with fictional

technique. Instead, it is the extent to which Vonnegut questions the ability of any

linguistic or historical account to encapsulate more than a partial truth. This sense in

postmodern fiction distinguishes it from modernist and realistic fiction.

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The other major difference between modernist and postmodern fiction, which is

discussed further in chapter one, is postmodern fiction's questioning of the reality of both

the textual and the external world. For all its sophistication, modernist literature did not

question that the external world could be known. Instead, as discussed above, it located

the ability to perceive reality in the individual rather than in society as a whole.

Postmodern fiction goes further than this, questioning whether or not it is ever possible to

reach an objective viewpoint. This thesis will argue that postmodern fiction rejects the

notion of objectivity. This should not be confused with the argument that no external

reality exists. Instead, it is a belief that human beings can never separate themselves

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from their limited perspectives, and therefore can never have a total or an objective

viewpoint. An external reality exists, but is never fully knowable. Thus, the personal can
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have some value, but it can never claim full truth value, because it will always remain a

subjective, necessarily partial, viewpoint. This idea is explored more thoroughly in

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chapters one and two, and again in chapter four, which examines postmodern fiction's

use of historical facts and figures.

Throughout, the thesis is concerned with two major issues: the mimetic qualities
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inherent in postmodern fiction and the techniques which postmodern fiction shares with

more conventional types of fiction. Much of the criticism on postmodern fiction has

focused on discrete breaks with earlier types of fiction, a view which does not fit much of

the postmodem fiction I have read. In particular, the theory of the autotelic text, which

bears no relation to external reality, seems to work better in theory than in reality. For

example, a text which is posited as autotelic in its structure as a linguistic picture rather

than a narrative is Robbe-Grillet's "The Secret Room." In many ways, this short story

does break with literary norms-there is very little plot or narrative progression and there

are no real characters. Even so, it is actually inundated with contemporary social values,

not least of which is the tendency to make a woman an object at which to look, as is
 7

demonstrated by its detailed description of a woman's nude, lifeless, but still warm body

chained to an altar. Thus, this theory is suspect from the outset because it fails to account

for the full range of social connections that are possible within a fictional text.

Like many of the critics writing on postmodern fiction, I view it not as discrete

from other fictional styles, but as part of a literary continuum in which realist and modem

fiction largely precede, but also coincide with it. Many of the critical studies of

postmodern fiction, including those by critics who do not view it as a radical break from

past literary traditions, focus on what makes it different from other forms of fiction. This

thesis focuses on the qualities and literary techniques which postmodern fiction shares

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with other fictional styles. Because this is an uncommon focal point in a study of

postmodern fiction, the thesis covers a broad spectrum of postmodern texts rather than
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focusing minutely on a few. The downfall of this type of study is that it can seem

superficial, or the examples chosen can seem hand-picked to fit narrow readings.
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However, the thesis has been approached in this manner in order to illustrate that the

qualities and techniques which are discussed in it are common in postmodern fiction.

The thesis takes a fairly narrow view of postmodern fiction, in that it begins with
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the definitions of postmodern fiction which have been presented by other critics, many of

whom are also practitioners of postmodern fiction. For this reason, and in order to

maintain a focus on postmodern texts rather than on criticism per se, there is little

discussion of critics outside of those who deal with postmodern fiction. Many literary

theorists, including the Russian formalists, can offer insights into postmodern fiction.

However, the intent of the thesis is to clarify, and in some respects to redefine, what

postmodern fiction is by building on the postmodern criticism which has preceded it.

This is most apparent in the discussion of the various definitions of postmodern fiction

which have been offered, and in the chapters on the use of genre and of historical facts
 8

and figures, because these chapters begin within the theoretical framework that the

postmodern critics have suggested. .

Because postmodern fiction has been variously defined, the thesis begins with a

discussion, in chapter one, of postmodern fiction's major traits and of some of the

definitions which have been offered. This chapter is an overview of the opinions offered

on postmodern fiction, rather than an exhaustive review of the literature, and is intended

to provide the reader with a brief introduction to the prevailing criticism as well as a

tentative working definition of postmodern fiction.

Chapter two examines postmodern fiction's mimetic impulse, and describes the

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social factors which have influenced this fiction. Rather than rejecting mimesis, as many

theorists have claimed, postmodern fiction rejects the overly simplistic notion that fiction
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(or any type of language) can reflect reality in a straightforward, direct correspondence.

Postmodern fiction, which evolved partly as a response to the realization that objectivity
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is impossible, attempts instead to reflect the convolutions, randomness, and

disjunctiveness so prevalent in contemporary society.

In addition to discussing the mimetic qualities of postmodern fiction, the thesis

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looks at how this fiction uses conventional literary techniques as signposts for readers
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In this context, conventional literary techniques refers to techniques which have been

employed in representational fiction such as has been traditionally perceived as

embodying realism. In some cases, as in the objectification of female characters

discussed in chapter five, these techniques are used in much the same manner in

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Readers are referred to often in this text. The reader posited in the thesis is
sophisticated enough to be familiar both with conventional literary techniques and
genres, and enough a participant in twentieth century Western culture to recognize the
historical and "camp" aspects of it which are discussed in this text. In other words, the
"reader" may at times approach the ideal reader that Calvino searches for in If on a
winter's night a traveler—one who is seasoned enough to recognize the richness of the text
but willing to accept the postmodern author's text on its own merits as well.
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postmodern fiction as in conventional fiction. Other techniques, however, are employed

in new ways. The use of overdetermined genres- that is, genres such .as the detective

story in which the conventions are so well-known that they have become formulaic-by

postmodern writers, discussed in chapter three, is one example of a conventional'

technique which is altered to convey a changing view of literature and reality. In either

case, the conventional technique helps guide the reader through an otherwise

unconventional text.
The other techniques which are discussed are the use of historical facts and events

in fictional contexts, the depiction of female characters as agents, and the use of

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sensationalism. These are not the only conventional techniques employed in postmodern

fiction. One could also discuss its cinematic qualities, the prevalence of scoptophilia, or
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any number of other qualities or literary techniques. This thesis does not mean to suggest

that the techniques discussed are the only ones which comprise postmodem fiction; only
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that they are prevalent enough to illustrate a definite correlation between postmodern and

other styles of fiction. In the same vein, the techniques which are discussed in the thesis

could be approached from different angles. In the chapter on overdetermined genres, for
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instance, the romance or science fiction genres could easily be included. The chapters on

the depiction of female characters could likewise focus instead on male characters.

Thus, this study is meant to be representative, not prescriptive, in its focus. The

techniques discussed in the thesis are revealing in their similarity to conventional literary

usage, but also in the ability of postmodern fiction to foreground or transmute these

techniques, making the reader freshly aware of them as conventions. In this sense, the

use of these techniques raises questions both about postmodem fiction's relationship to

past literary styles and about its ability to depict our reality. This thesis only provides an

overview; any one of the techniques discussed in the thesis would be a fruitful area of
further study.
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Through the examination of these techniques, the thesis demonstrates that

postmodern literature proves to be far less discrete from conventional fiction than its

form often suggests. As stated earlier, it is an extension of, rather than a radical break

from, earlier literaiy forms. Its use of conventional literary techniques is one indication

of its heritage, although conventional aspects of postmodem fiction have often been

overlooked as critical attention focused on the new aspects of postmodem fiction. The

statement that there are likenesses between postmodem and other forms of fiction may

seem simplistic since some likenesses between postmodem and other styles of literature

are unavoidable. All literature is comprised of language, for example. However,

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postmodern literature's use of language both differentiates it from and links it to other

literary forms. Because the conventional aspects of postmodem fiction are central to the
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thesis, it will also discuss what makes postmodem fiction a fictional style in its own

right. Despite the critical attention paid to its innovative stylistic qualities, postmodern
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fiction differs most markedly from earlier fictional schools, particularly from modernist

fiction, in its questioning of language and reality. The best-known characteristics of

postmodern fiction-its play with language and form and its highlighting of its own
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fictionality--are actually as much a result of the changed focus in postmodern fiction as

they are of the overt tendency toward playfulness in this fiction.

Like language, the conventional techniques discussed in this thesis are or may be

necessary to the reader's understanding of particular texts. In a radically experimental

text, such as Ronald Sukenick's Out or Kath} .cker's Great Expectations, the use of a

conventional technique-here, the objectification of women and sensationalism,

respectively, are familiar literary qualities that the reader comprehends. In some cases,
these qualities may become the reason a person reads the fiction.

The conventional literary techniques discussed are familiar to the reader, but also

mimetic in their ability to either reflect or evoke external reality and society. Thus, the
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objectification of women in postmodern fiction often recognizes the existence of both

misogyny and a fear of the women's movement in this century, and is as likely to refute

these social values as it is to uphold them. The use of sensationalism, including

pornography, reflects our society's fascination with sex and the transgression of moral

boundaries. The use of historical figures and events comments on the subjectivity of

historical fact. In many cases, postmodern literature's use of these techniques also serves

as a critique of contemporary popular culture's impersonality and insensitivity to the

individual. What has often gone unrecognized by denigrators of postmodern fiction is its

power to depict society's problems, perhaps because it does not tend to offer solutions.

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Looking more carefully at postmodern fiction's mimetic function and social

commentary brings a better definition of postmodern fiction-one encompassing enough

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to include previously marginalized groups of writers. Instead of allowing the self­

definition of the past offered by practitioners such as Federman, Barth, Sukenick, and
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Gass, (which is the starting point of this thesis) we should look at postmodern fiction's

potential, both as an art form and as a social artefact. Chapter six, which examines the

depiction of female characters as agents, goes beyond looking at how postmodern fiction
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uses conventional literary techniques, to discover some of this fiction's potential.

While chapter six is also about the mimetic qualities of postmodern literature, it

discusses literature which, by and large, is not often classified as postmodern. As this

chapter demonstrates, the definition of postmodern literature has been artificially narrow

and has needlessly excluded many of the authors discussed. Postmodern literature has

greater potential for social commentary than has been acknowledged by critics who

focused too exclusively on its playfulness and its penchant to break conventional rules.

Actually, it is precisely these qualities which make it a powerful means of cultural

examination. To assume that one cannot mix playfulness with serious intent is to
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exclude a literary relationship long accepted in such traditional forms as satire and
dramatic comedy. .

To value literature for the pleasure one derives from it is to recognize its value as

a human accomplishment. However, to view it as completely disparate from other

aspects of our reality denies much of its value. Perhaps poets are not "the

unacknowledged legislators of mankind" that Shelley claimed. Perhaps literature does

not, in many instances, change society. Even so, to deny its relevance to our society and

our reality is to impoverish both literature and the real world. This thesis attempts to

recognize both postmodern fiction's artistic value and its relevance as a social artefact

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that is inextricably linked to the society of which it is a construct. That the focus tends

toward the social relevance of postmodern fiction is perhaps unavoidable given the
nature of the project.
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Chapter 1: Critical debate on postmodern fiction

Postmodern literature has eluded critics' and practitioners' attempts to define it,

due partly to its contemporaneity and partly to its polyglot nature. Its contemporaneity

means that the critics discussing postmodern fiction have no historical distance from

which to compare it to other styles or movements within literary history. Even more

problematic, however, is the heterogeneity of this fiction, which plays on literary

conventions, constantly mutating into other forms. It is possible to view postmodern

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fiction as a broad literary movement; it is neither possible nor helpful to view it as a

rigidly definable literary school. This may be why its critics have such difficulty finding
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common ground in their discussions of it; and why so many terms for this fiction (and

largely similar fictional styles) exist.

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Part of the confusion concerning the definition of postmodern fiction is that there

has been too much emphasis on making a neat distinction between postmodern fiction

and other types of fiction, in particular modem and realist fiction. In this thesis, there
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will be no attempt to make a discrete distinction, because I believe that many texts could

arguably be placed in more than one category. Therefore, it is preferable to examine why

a text can be seen as postmodem, and the types of techniques and concerns this fiction

has. None of the techniques discussed in this thesis are unique to postmodern fiction.

The fact that these techniques are used to describe postmodern fiction is a reflection of

the extent to which they are highlighted in the text, and also the extent to which a variety

of postmodem techniques is present. A compelling argument for placing postmodern

fiction within a continuum of literary styles rather than viewing it as a discrete break

from other fictional forms is that it does employ many of the same techniques found in

other fiction. In addition, it is not helpful to view postmodern fiction as strictly a late
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twentieth-century phenomenon, although the majority of postmodern texts have been

written since World War II, because texts like Sterne's Tristam Shandy, and Joyce's

Finnegan's Wake belie this simple distinction.

Some of the terms used to define postmodern fiction have included metafiction,

surfiction, fabulation, and self-apparent fiction. Different critics foreground various

traits and exclude others, basing their idea of which authors belong in the postmodern

camp on their definition. Even so, I believe that the general idea of postmodernism is

clear to readers. In literature, its most recognizable features include: the foregrounding

of its own fictionality; the play with literary conventions and with language; open-

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endedness; and a focus on fiction as a process. I would add to this standard list at least

two more illuminating features. The first is that postmodern fiction questions its
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ontological status, and in doing so questions the status of our external reality as well.

The second trait, which modem fiction approaches but never fully defines, is that
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postmodern fiction defines its self-referentiality as inevitable. Its status as a linguistic

artefact implies that it will always exist within language; therefore, linguistic allusion is

impossible to avoid. The pervasive nature of language implies as well an

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interconnectedness between all cognitive acts, blurring the lines between fact and fiction.

What postmodern fiction does, finally, is not to negate the possibility of an exterior

reality but to recognize that we, of necessity, overlay actual physical reality with a fragile

construct of language and limited perception. Postmodern fiction thus emphasizes the

impossibility of ever perceiving an objective reality and celebrates the possibilities—-of

humor, of life-affirmation, of creative play-that are open to us. This perception of

reality and its impact on fiction will be discussed in more detail later, in a tentative
working definition of postmodem fiction. -

First, though, it is worth returning to the most recognizable traits of postmodern

fiction, on which critics tend to agree. In postmodern literature, the reader is forced to
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see the text as fiction, not as a story which could be true. For instance, one method that

Kurt Vonnegut uses to short circuit his readers' suspension of disbelief is his own

appearance in his texts, including SIaughterhouse-Five and Breakfast of Champions.

Postmodern literature also plays with literary conventions, foregrounding them as

artificial techniques. John Barth does so in his short story, "Lost in the Funhouse," when

he uses the nineteenth-century convention of giving only the first letter of a place name,

meant to convey a sense of hiding the true characters' identities, only to explain

immediately thereafter that, "Initials, blanks, or both were often substituted for proper

names in nineteenth-century fiction to enhance the illusion of reality." (Funhouse 69) His

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explanation is jarring in its highlighting of a supposedly opaque literary device and in its

interruption of the narrative. Techniques which are often foregrounded in this manner
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include narrative sequence, time and frame of reference, and authorial distance. In

addition, postmodern fiction often includes impossible or fantastic elements which

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underscore its fictional status. Angela Carter's Nights at the Circus, in which the main

character is a woman with the wings of a bird, or Mark Helprin's Winter's Tale. in which

a horse flies—literally and between time periods— both employ this technique. The use of
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techniques formerly found almost exclusively in science fiction, for instance the

extraterrestrials and space travel in Slaughterhouse-Five, is yet another example of

foregrounding a text's fictionality.

A common element of postmodem fiction is its play with language, which is seen

as an arbitrary system rather than as an opaque tool. As a system, language can control

or limit communication by forcing our observations and emotions to conform to

preconceived linguistic patterns. How we describe an event, thing, or feeling, even how

we perceive it, is proscribed by the language we use. As Patricia Waugh and many other

critics have pointed out, metafictional devices which stress the fictionality of both the

text and reality abound in postmodern fiction. In particular, postmodern fiction revels in
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making the underpinnings of literature obvious. For instance, Richard Brautigan ends

Trout Fishing In America with the word "mayonnaise" because, as he points out in his

"Prelude to the Mayonnaise Chapter," "I always wanted to write a book that ended with

the word mayonnaise." (111) Taking the idea of language as a tool to its logical extreme,

he expunges the word of any meaning beyond his desire to use it. Using language for its

own sake-and in this instance not even for the meaning of the sign but for its sound-is

alien to traditional prose fiction and highlights fiction's use of language as its medium.

What becomes obvious is that language is not merely a tool, as earlier authors have

assumed; it is also a maker of meaning. In addition, our reliance on language as an

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ordering tool becomes clear.

Foregrounding the construction of the artefact, which the play with language does
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in postmodern fiction, is common to all postmodem art. In postmodem architecture,

pipes may be on the outside of the building, painted bright colors, rather than being
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hidden within the framework. Like using words for their own sake in fiction, this forces

the viewer to recognize that the building is not a natural part of his or her surroundings,

but a constructed object. Other buildings are built of uncommon materials or with odd,
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nonfunctional angles in order to startle the reader into recognizing their presence, and

that they are, again, constructs rather than natural occurrences. The art museum at the

University of Minnesota is an example of such a structure. The outer walls are

constructed of extremely bright, silver-colored metal. A more traditional building might

be passed by unnoticed because it blends into its surroundings, becoming part of the

cityscape, but the refulgence and the unlikely angles of the museum's exterior structure

jump out at the passers-by. Whether or not one likes it, one definitely notices it.

In music, an example of the postmodern tendency to make an art form's

component parts obvious would be the introduction of everyday sounds into musical

scores. John Cage goes even further by attempting to make his music as unmelodic as
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possible. To many, it sounds like random notes, rather like an orchestra warming up

before a concert. Performance art, with its extreme emphasis on art as process rather

than product, is another example of the postmodem sensibility at work. Here, the

construction of the art is not only foregrounded, it actually becomes the art. Thus, the act

of producing art, which usually remains obscure, is the "art," which the audience

experiences but can never hold or own. In the postmodern age, art is less consumable,

which may be Barthes's implication in his discussion of the writerly text, discussed later

in this chapter.
Postmodern fiction is also open-ended or equivocal, refusing to come to a neat

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conclusion. Again, Brautigan's Trout Fishing, which ends arbitrarily, on a whim of the

author, comes to mind. Finally, postmodem literature is about fiction-as a process, as

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the actual physical text, and as the literary canon. The focus on fiction in postmodern

literature is qualitatively distinct from conventional allusion because the topic becomes
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the fiction itself. For instance, in Kathy Acker's in Memorium to identity, Acker pirates

Temple Drake from Faulkner's Sanctuary, rewriting this character. In doing so, she

accomplishes two things: she gives Temple a point of view in her own right, and she
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criticizes the original novel, which made Temple responsible for Goodwin's death

without ever giving her a voice. Acker also brands her text as fiction-how could a reader

believe that a text in which the main character is a fictional character from another piece

of fiction is an historical account? Instead, the reader is forced to see the text as a fiction.

While this list is not exhaustive, it includes several of the basic characteristics of
postmodern literature. Most of the critics who have written on postmodern literature

agree that these or similar features are the most easily recognizable in postmodern

fiction. However, these features are not enough, in themselves, to easily distinguish

postmodern fiction from other literary schools, which has led to some confusion. There

have been two extremes in the attempt to define postmodern fiction, one in which
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everything contemporary and experimental has been included, and one in which only the

most self-absorbed, metafictional texts have been included. The [Link] way to

think about postmodern fiction lies in its positing of the text as a literary construct which

is embedded in a web of language and culture from which it, and the socially constructed

reality which surrounds it, cannot escape. This would demand less counting of

characteristics within texts in order to identify them as postmodern, and more reliance on

a culturally identified world view.

Unfortunately, in many instances, characteristics of postmodem literature have

been listed and used to compile a group of postmodern authors, excluding authors who

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do not portray all these characteristics in their fiction, or whom the critic in question feels

is making too strong a connection to extra-textual (real world) values. This has led to an
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overly restrictive definition of postmodem literature, based on a cataloguing of

techniques that denies the fluidity of this fiction. It is preferable to view it much more
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loosely, as a style in which authors play with and juxtapose questions of fictionality and

reality. For instance, feminist works which portray many of the characteristics of

postmodern literature have not been classified as postmodern because they contain a
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social message. This is clear in Barth's article, "The Literature of Replenishment," in

which he claims that many of the texts by contemporary female writers are "secular news

reports." (422) The reasoning behind the exclusion of these authors from the postmodern

canon is that postmodem literature is about itself or about fiction, not about the outside

world. This idea is invalid on two counts. First, the play with fictionality which is so

much a part of postmodem literature does not preclude a relationship to the outside

world, and second, even those texts which purport to be completely autotelic do, in fact,

have broad-based connections to our society and external reality.

There are several different "camps" in the debate on postmodem fiction. One

faction claims that postmodem fiction does not exist as a separate literary style, but is
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instead an offshoot of modem fiction, which it should be considered. For such critics,

including David Lodge and James Mellard, the differences between modern and

postmodern fiction have been exaggerated. Mellard refutes the claim that literature has

moved into a postmodern epoch in The Exploded Form: The Modernist Novel in

America, stating that it is in an advanced stage of modernism on the verge of conceiving

a postmodern paradigm. Mellard's reasons for this claim that literature has merely

reached a sophisticated stage of modernism include current fiction's adherence to

modernist epistemologies such as existentialism and subjectivity, and its awareness of its

own fictionality. This argument is fairly typical for these critics. The influence of these

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critics has been quite strong within the universities because of postmodern fiction's

resistance to conventional classroom teaching, in which a professor conducts a close

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reading of a text for the class, or possibly recounts an author's historical place and literary

development within the literary canon. Postmodern texts, which resist closed readings,
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are difficult to mainstream into this system. Read in the light of modem or realistic

fiction, postmodern texts can seem to be merely inferior modem fiction, which lends
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credence to this group's claims.

In addition, the point that postmodern fiction is, in many respects, an outgrowth

of modem fiction is valid. However, the argument that postmodem fiction shares

modem fiction's epistemological bias is not. The modernists wrote with a sense of a

disrupted society, were sophisticated in their use of language, and rejected the idea that

literature could reflect reality in a simplistic, straightforward manner. However, they still

believed that there was an orderly, recoverable reality, even if it was only a personal

reality. Further, their play with language (not including Joyce's Finnegans Wake as a

modernist text) did not ultimately question language's opacity and complicity with the

writing subject. Postmodem fiction's break with modem fiction comes at these junctures.

As Mary F. Robertson contends in "Hystery, Herstory, History: 'Imagining the Real' in

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Thomas's The White Hotel," postmodern authors "dissolve the boundary of difference

between sign and fact by asserting, as the modernists did not, that what usually passes as

'fact' is as much a sign or 'fiction' as anything else" (453). The inability to rely on

language as a tool for the artist or external reality as an objective truth separates the

postmodern from the modem.

Another group of critics which has been influential in the debate on postmodern

fiction is the poststructuralists. Derrida, Kristeva, Barthes, Foucault-such theorists have

written, largely from a philosophical perspective, on the nature of language and

literature, on the possibility of creating a new meaning (or any meaning) outside of

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language, and on the author's role in making textual meaning. I cannot begin to cover

their philosophies of literature, or their influence, in this context. Therefore, I speak of

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them only in the broadest terms, and do not mean to imply that their theories are

identical. Their influence has led to a preponderance of theorizing about literature which
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does not necessarily address the specific literature which it purports to delineate. In

addition, their theories of literature have often been mistakenly conflated with definitions
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of postmodern fiction. The poststructuralists do not discuss one style of writing only, but

a wide range of texts. Part of the confusion has arisen from the fact that the

poststructuralists stress the same concerns, from a philosophical point of view, that

postmodern authors stress in their fiction. For instance, Barthes differentiates between

the readerly and the writerly text, or the text of pleasure and the text of bliss in both

and The Pleasure of the Text. This split is largely between the closed and the open-

ended text, or the easily interpretable and therefore contained text versus the text which

refuses to provide closure. The closed text is one which can provide pleasure to the

reader, but is also one which will ultimately be consumed; that is, be passively read and

therefore used and discarded by the reader. Because he locates the difference between

these two types of text in an erotics of reading, however, it is impossible to provide a

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methodology by which to separate them. In this manner, Barthes refuses to define or

contain literature. In one sense, this is consistent with a definition of postmodern

literature which recognizes its plenitude. In another, however, it leaves the reader with

no concrete sense of the differences between postmodern and other literary styles,

particularly since Barthes seems to define texts from various literary schools as writerly.

It can be difficult to reconcile the abstract literary theories such critics propose with

actual texts. At times this has limited rather than expanded acceptance of postmodern

fiction, which has been understood as the writerly and therefore uncontrollable text. This

is particularly true within the university system, because postmodern texts are difficult to

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contain within a classroom setting.

Yet another group of critics has rejected postmodern fiction because it considers
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this fiction immoral. The tendency away from direct didacticism has discouraged many

critics, including John Gardner, Warner Berthoff, and Raymond Olderman. These critics
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disparage postmodern fiction for its refusal to instruct; in their eyes, it has abdicated

literature's role and responsibility as society's moral compass. Obviously, one must

question their stance that literature's primary role is to teach, which forswears its value as
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art. However, in addition to having too narrow a view of literature, they also insist upon

too facile a view of didacticism. Postmodern fiction represents the world indirectly by

depicting its chaotic profusion of signs, and it instructs indirectly by forcing the reader to

recognize the random, overstimulated nature of our reality, and to begin to examine it.

As Jerry Varsava explains in Contingent Meanings: Postmodern Fiction, Mimesis and

the Reader, the obligation for valuing "mimetic adequacy or moral relevance" (41 ) falls

on the reader rather than the text or author. As in so many other respects, the reader's

role in apportioning moral value becomes active rather than passive with postmodern

fiction. The author no longer occupies the position of telling the reader what to think.

Varsava's linkage between mimesis and morality is also important, because critics have
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often conflated the two. Varsava acknowledges the connection, but also allows them

some distance. It is fair to say that part of the relevance of mimetic fiction is that it

reflects a view of morality. However, authors such as John Gardner do not seem to

recognize that depicting the moral confusion of a society in which everything seems

relative may also instruct by providing that insight. To change the context somewhat,

Ihab Hassan describes the same tendency in postmodern fiction in The Postmodern Turn.

As he explains, postmodernism sustains the movement 'from unique truth and a world

fixed and found,' as Goodman remarked, 'to a diversity of right and even conflicting

versions of worlds in the making." (172) In a world in which the individual must choose

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between conflicting information, images and theories, it is no longer possible to simply

state the truth. Instead, this, too, becomes open to interpretation and to evaluation by the
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reader. Therefore, to judge postmodern fiction by absolute moral standards is impossible

since, in many instances, an absolute standard no longer exists (assuming it ever did).
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Some critics have attempted to define postmodern fiction in such a way that a

school could be defined. Ronald Suckenick, William Gass, and Raymond Federman, all

practitioners of postmodern fiction as well as critics, belong to this group. For these
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critics, postmodern fiction is that which challenges the boundaries of fiction and

language. Refusing to view fiction as a representation or reflection of reality, they see it

instead as completely autoreferential. Made of language, which controls meaning, fiction

is not able to refer to anything beyond itself, or at most, other fiction. These are the

critics who believe that literature's ability to reflect an outside reality is a fallacy.

The view that literature is autoreferential leads as well to the conclusion that it is

autotelic. Because it cannot refer to or reflect an exterior reality, it creates its own world

which is independent of external reality. Raymond Federman propounds the primacy of

language and the inability of literature to mean outside the confines of the text in

"Surfiction—Four Propositions in Form of an Introduction":

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