Blank Fictions: Consumerism, Culture and the Contemporary American Novel FROM THE PUBLISHER
The "blank fiction" of young American writers like Dennis Cooper, Lynne Tillman, Bret Easton Ellis and Susanna Moore represents a shift away from the postwar obsession with dense plots, political subject-matter and academic philosophising. These writers appear to value superficiality over complexity, mass culture over high culture and youth over experience. In the first scholarly critique of blank fiction, James Annesley assesses a wide range of recent American writing and identifies their principal unifying characteristics. Challenging conventional postmodernist approaches, Annesley reveals the dynamic of blank writing to be tied to the dominant economic forces of contemporary capitalism. This contextual analysis concentrates on the relationship between blank fiction and consumerism and positions the writing within the wider currents of contemporary American culture.
FROM THE CRITICS
Booknews
Blank fiction, the term used to describe the writing of current young American authors such as Dennis Cooper, Lynne Tillman, Bret Easton Ellis and Susanna Moore, is explored in this analysis, and deemed a distinct product of post-modern consumer culture. This study considers the context of superficiality, mass culture, and youth, in chapters on violence, sex, shopping, labels, and decadence--aiming to examine and catalog the disturbing preoccupations of this literature. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.
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