The American Century: Literature since 1945 735The challenging and breaking up of genres by some writers does not mean, of
course, that other have not chosen to exploit genre formulas by staying within their
limits. There is, it seems, an inexhaustible public appetite for formulaic fiction, as the
career of Stephen King (1947–) testifies. King has achieved phenomenal success by
simply and skillfully working within different genres, particularly horror, and utilizing
their formulas, their rhythms of expectation, tension, and release, to the full. Other
writers have achieved as much success by developing new formulas. A variant on the
police procedural, for instance, the legal procedural, was developed by Scott Turow
(1949–) in Presumed Innocent (1987) and John Grisham (1955–) in a series of
bestsellers beginning with A Time to Kill (1989). And Thomas Harris (1940–), in
The Silence of the Lambs (1988), probed the psychology of a serial killer in a form that
might be called Noir Gothic. Even here, however, the distinction between genre and
literature tends to become blurred to the point of disappearance. And another, equally
unnerving journey into the mind of a serial killer, American Psycho (1991) by Bret
Easton Ellis is, quite clearly, a crossover. A surfeit of violence and horror, an obsession
with commodity fetishism, and a knowing use of narrator (it is never clear whether
the killer, who tells the story, is recording fact or fantasizing), all turn this novel, not
untypically for its times, into a work that seems to want to be sensationalistic and
serious at one and the same moment. Books like American Psycho or Generation X:
Tales for an Accelerated Culture (1991) by Douglas Coupland (1952–) seem, in fact,
not so much to critique commodity culture as to be contained in it. In the new
information age, the sign has been commodified, becoming the standard coinage, the
fuel of the postmodern economy. So, the inference is, the author, in adding his
signature to his series of signs – known as the story or poem – is simply signing on to
the economy. He is acknowledging, however wryly or bleakly, his implication in a
culture where, as the narrator of Generation X puts it, “genuine capital H history”
has ended, “turned into a press release, a marketing strategy.” Writers like Coupland
and Ellis are sometimes called the blank generation (which itself sounds suspiciously
like a marketing strategy). Their characters exist in a state of anomie, in a deadpan
culture of empty television shows, “Elvis moments,” semi-disposable Swedish
furniture, fast food, and designer labels. And their fiction circulates in that culture as
part of its currency, stamped with the blank, value-free mark of the times. To talk of
any distinction between genre and writing is peculiarly irrelevant here, since the world
recorded and the recording instrument are themselves layerings of genres – series of
imitations of life that have no evident existence outside the systems of exchange.
In God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater (1965) by Kurt Vonnegut, the protagonist
drunkenly addresses a meeting of writers of science fiction. “I love you sons of
bitches,” he announces. “You’re all I read any more. You’re the only ones who’ll talk
about the really terrific changes going on.” That echoes a sentiment expressed by
many readers of science fiction. Given the enormous pace of technological change in
the twentieth century, with its consequent transformation of every corner of our
lives, its potential for further transformation and perhaps global annihilation,
then, so the argument goes, science fiction is the only form of literature
really addressing the truth. Separate and different from mainstream literature, itGGray_c05.indd 735ray_c 05 .indd 735 8 8/1/2011 7:31:42 PM/ 1 / 2011 7 : 31 : 42 PM