- AutorIn
- Sebastian M. Herrmann
- Titel
- Foggy realisms? Fiction, nonfiction, and political affect in Larry Beinhart’s Fog facts and The librarian
- Zitierfähige Url:
- https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:bsz:15-qucosa-206587
- Quellenangabe
- Poetics of politics : textuality and social relevance in contemporary American literature and culture / Sebastian M. Herrmann [Hrsg.] ... Heidelberg : Winter, 2015. S. 133-151. ISBN 978-3-8253-6447-2
- Erstveröffentlichung
- 2015
- Abstract (EN)
- This paper reads Larry Beinhart’s novel The Librarian (2004) and its nonfiction companion Fog Facts (2005) as a double attempt at writing that is politically invested in representing reality but that nevertheless is openly aware of the postmodern crisis of representation. In this sense, I read both books as indicative of a broad cultural search for forms of writing that engage their readers’ reality without simply attempting to return to a less complicated moment before postmodernism. The paper situates both books within crucial textual contexts: a broad ‘epistemic panic’ about the facts and reality at the time, a surge of political nonfiction published in response to George W. Bush’s Presidency, and a longer tradition of political fiction. Tracing how the novel struggles with its nonfiction aspects and how the nonfiction book relies on fiction to make its point, I then look at how the two books evoke political affect to have a realist appeal of sorts despite their insistence on the precarious nature of all realist representation. Reading both books as distinctly popular, mass-market products and thus bringing together the debate around post-postmodernism from literary studies with an interest in reading pleasures informed by popular culture studies, I argue that the two books constitute decidedly popular attempts at a new, meta-aware yet politically engaged textuality.
- Andere Ausgabe
- Link zur Originalpublikation "Poetics of politics : textuality and social relevance in contemporary American literature and culture"
Link: https://www.winterverlag. de/en/detail/978-3-8253-6447-2/Herrmann_ea_Eds_Poetics_of_Politics/ - Freie Schlagwörter (DE)
- US-Präsidenten, Realismus, Affekt, Popularkultur, politischer Roman
- Freie Schlagwörter (EN)
- presidency, realism, affect, nonfiction, political novel
- Klassifikation (DDC)
- 810
- 320
- Herausgeber (Institution)
- Universität Leipzig
- URN Qucosa
- urn:nbn:de:bsz:15-qucosa-206587
- Veröffentlichungsdatum Qucosa
- 06.07.2016
- Dokumenttyp
- Buchbeitrag
- Sprache des Dokumentes
- Englisch