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The Postmodern Short Story Forms and Issues
Farhat Iftekharrudin, Joseph Boyden, Mary Rohrberger, Jaie Claudet
ISBN: 0-313-32375-5
ISBN-13: 978-0-313-32375-1
296 pages
Praeger Publishers
Publication: 12/30/2003
List Price: $78.95 (UK Sterling Price: £54.95)
Availability: In Stock
Media Type: Hardcover
Trim Size: 6 1/8 x 9 1/4
Subjects:
Description: Short stories are usually defined in terms of characteristics of modernism, in which the story begins in the middle, develops according to a truncated plot, and ends with an epiphany. This approach tends to ignore postmodernism, a movement often characterized by a negation of objective reality where plots are seemingly abandoned, surfaces are extraordinary, and symbols turn inward on themselves. This book examines postmodern forms and characteristic themes by analyzing a group of short stories that make use of postmodern narrative strategies, including nonfictional fiction, gender profiling, and death as an image.

The volume begins with a discussion of the blurred lines between fiction and nonfiction in the short story and imaginative personal essay. It then looks at the role of women in works by such authors as Sandra Cisneros, Leslie Marmon Silko, Joyce Carol Oates, and Lorrie Moore. This is followed by a section of chapters on postmodern masculinity and short fiction. The next section focuses on death as an image and theme in works by Richard Ford, Richard Brautigan, and James Joyce. The final set of chapters considers postmodern short fiction from South Africa and Canada.
Table of Contents:
  • Acknowledgments
    Introduction by Farhat Iftekharuddin
    Fictional Nonfiction And Nonfictional Fiction
    Playing It Straight by Making It Up: Imaginative Leaps in the Personal Essay by Marilyn Abildskov
    Facts and Fancy: The "Nonfiction Short Story" by Michele Morano
    Historiografiction: The Fictionalization of History in the Short Story by Michael Orlofsky
    Women's Identity in the Postmodern World
    Closure in Sandra Cisneros's "Woman Hollering Creek" by Rose Marie Cutting
    The Silence of the Bears: Leslie Marmon Silko's Writerly Act of Spiritual Storytelling by Brewster E. Fitz
    The Feminine Consciousness as Nightmare in the Short-Short Stories of Joyce Carol Oates by Wayne Stengel
    Postmodernism in Women's Short Story Cycles: Lorrie Moore's Anagrams by Karen Weekes
    Contemporary Men and Their Stories
    Crippled by the Truth: Oracular Pronouncements, Titillating Titles, and the Postmodern Ethic by Richard Lee
    Male Paradigms in Thom Jones and Tom Paine by Paul R. Lilly
    Eloquence and Plot in Denis Johnson's Jesus' Son: The Merging of Premodern and Modernist Narrative by J. Scott Farrin
    Ardor with a Silent H: Submitting to the Ache of Love in Edmund White's "Skinned Alive" by Raymond Frontain
    The Genre Which Is Not One: Hemingway's In Our Time, Difference, and the Short Story Cycle by Peter Donahue
    Death As Image And Theme In Short Fiction
    Short Stories to Film: Richard Ford's "Great Falls" and "Children" as Bright Angel by Larry D. Griffin
    Melancholia and the Death Motif in Richard Brautigan's Short Fiction by Brenda M. Palo
    Perhaps She Had Not Told Him All the Story: The Disnarrated in James Joyce's Dubliners by Howard Lindhom
    Postmodern Narrative Around The World
    Multiple Narrative Frames in R. R. R. Dhlomo's "Juwawa" by Christine Loflin
    Beyond Genre: Canadian Surrealist Short Fiction by Allan Weiss
    Postmodernism in the American Short Story: Some General Observations and Some Specific Cases by Harold Kaylor
    Selected Bibliography
    Index
    About the Editors and Contributors
About the Author: FARHAT IFTEKHARRUDIN is Associate Professor of English and Dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Texas at Brownsville. He is Editor of the literary journal Short Story.

JOSEPH BOYDEN published a collection of short fiction, Born with a Tooth (2001).

MARY ROHRBERGER is Adjunct Professor of English at the University of New Orleans. She is Executive Editor of Short Story.

JAIE CLAUDET is currently working on a novel.
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