1 Contemporary Literature, 1970 to Present
Linda Hutcheon, A Poetics of Postmodernism (New York: Routledge, 1988).
One of the most important and influential studies of Postmodernist literature,
introducing the concepts of “historiographic metafiction” and “minoritarian”
racial, ethnic, sexual, and gendered voices.
Hutcheon, The Politics of Postmodernism (New York: Routledge, 1989).
Continues the work of Hutcheon’s previous volume but focuses on the politi-
cal implications of Postmodernist strategies, particularly in feminist and other
minoritarian works. The introduction provides a particularly useful description of
the debates about defining and understanding Postmodernism.
Frederic Jameson, Postmodernism; or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (Dur-
ham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1991).
One of the key documents in Postmodernist theory. Jameson discusses Post-
modernism as the manifestation of the values and assumptions of a late-
capitalist economy, an economy dominated by consumerism in which every-
thing is commodified.
Brian McHale, Postmodernist Fiction (New York: Routledge, 1987).
Influential study that looks at Postmodernist fiction by American, British,
and European writers, including William S. Burroughs, Don DeLillo, E. L.
Doctorow, Thomas Pynchon, Kurt Vonnegut, John Barth, Robert Coover,
and Ishmael Reed, among the Americans. McHale argues that Postmodern-
ist writing concerns itself with questions of being (ontology), as opposed to
Modernism, which focuses on questions of the nature and limits of knowledge
(epistemology).
Patrick O’Donnell, Latent Destinies: Cultural Paranoia and Contemporary U .S.
Narrative (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2000).
Examines the prevalence of paranoia and conspiracy theories in contemporary
American writing, film, and television, focusing on the roles of nationalism,
gender, and criminality in such novels as Thomas Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot
49 (1966), Norman Mailer’s The Executioner’s Song (1979), and Don DeLillo’s
Libra (1988) and Underworld and films such as In the Realm of the Senses (1976),
The Killer Inside Me (1976), JFK (1991), Reservoir Dogs (1992), Groundhog Day
(1993), and The Truman Show (1998).
Susan Strehle, Fiction in the Quantum Universe (Chapel Hill: University of North
Carolina Press, 1992).
Argues that a strain of contemporary American literature has developed out
of concepts from quantum physics in which reality is seen as discontinuous,
dynamic, relative, statistical, indeterminate, subjectively observed, and uncertainly
known. Naming this fiction “actualism,” Strehle uses this framework to read
major novels by Thomas Pynchon, Robert Coover, William Gaddis, John Barth,
Margaret Atwood, and Donald Barthelme.
Patricia Waugh, Metaf iction: The Theory and Practice of Self-Conscious Fiction
(New York: Methuen, 1984).
Seminal study of metafiction and self-reflexivity as Postmodernist techniques.