Innovative Fictions since 1950

Autumn 2008
Richard Walsh

This module examines an international range of innovative fictions since 1950,

considering them both as literary works in their own right and in relation to
established conventions of fiction. We shall be asking ourselves how (or if) these texts
work as fictions, and what light they shed upon notions of fictional representation,
fictive rhetoric and literary competence.
In the seminar programme below there are two texts set for each week (I have
avoided unmanageably long works like Gravity’s Rainbow, JR, Ratner’s Star or
Infinite Jest). The first (in bold) is the primary text and will be the main focus of our
discussion; the second is chosen to complement and/or throw into relief certain
aspects of the first, to help contextualise our discussion and to resist any suspicion
that this is merely an eclectic series of eccentric fictions. Some of these texts are not
widely available, and you may need to trawl online secondhand booksellers for your
own copies. The editions recommended are the ones I’ll be using, but other editions
are acceptable if necessary.
The suggested readings for each week should all be available in the library or
online. For the purposes of the seminar you are not expected to read them all, but do
browse amongst them for any approaches that seem congruent with your own
experience of the texts themselves. At the end of the seminar programme I have also
given a brief list of other innovative fictions (restricted to one per author), and a
bibliography of more general book-length studies.

Seminar Programme

Week 2—Atrophied Meaning

Samuel Beckett. Watt. 1953. London: John Calder, 1976.
B. S. Johnson. House Mother Normal. 1971. Newcastle: Bloodaxe, 1984.

Suggested readings:
Ackerley, Chris. "Samuel Beckett and the Geology of the Imagination: Toward an
Excavation of Watt." Journal of Beckett Studies 13, no. 2 (2004): 150-63.
Beausang, Michael, and Valérie Galiussi. "Watt: Logic, Insanity, Aphasia." Style 30,
no. 3 (1996): 495-513.
Benjamin, Shoshana. "What's Watt." Poetics Today 18, no. 3 (1997): 376-96.
Cohn, Ruby. "Watt in the Light of the Castle." Comparative Literature 13, no. 2
(1961): 154-66.
Culik, Hugh. "The Place of Watt in Beckett's Development." MFS: Modern Fiction
Studies 29, no. 1 (1983): 57-71.
Hayman, David. "Getting Where? Beckett's Opening Gambit for Watt."
Contemporary Literature 43, no. 1 (2002): 28-49.
Hesla, David H. "The Shape of Chaos: A Reading of Beckett's Watt." Critique:
Studies in Modern Fiction 6, no. 1 (1963): 85-105.
Mood, John J. "'the Personal System'—Samuel Beckett's Watt." PMLA: Publications
of the Modern Language Association of America 86 (1971): 255-65.
Swanson, Eleanor. "Samuel Beckett's Watt: A Coming and a Going." Modern Fiction
Studies 17 (1971): 264-68.
 Trivisonno, Ann M. "Meaning and Function of the Quest in Beckett's Watt." Critique:
Studies in Modern Fiction 12, no. 2 (1970): 28-38.
Wall, John. "A Study of the Imagination in Samuel Beckett's Watt." New Literary
History: A Journal of Theory and Interpretation 33, no. 3 (2002): 533-58.

Week 3—Narrative Metaphysics

Jorge Luis Borges. Labyrinths. 1964 (1956-60). Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1970.
Paul Auster. The New York Trilogy. 1985-7. London: Faber, 1988.

Suggested readings:
Alford, Steven E. "Mirrors of Madness: Paul Auster's the New York Trilogy."
Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction 37, no. 1 (1995): 17-33.
Bonnefoy, Yves, and John T. Naughton. "Homage to Jorge Luis Borges." New
Literary History: A Journal of Theory and Interpretation 21, no. 1 (1989):
163-73.
Boulter, Jonathan Stuart. "Partial Glimpses of the Infinite: Borges and the
Simulacrum." Hispanic Review 69, no. 3 (2001): 355-77.
Chibka, Robert L. "The Library of Forking Paths." Representations 56 (1996): 106-22.
Dimovitz, Scott A. "Public Personae and the Private I: De-Compositional Ontology in
Paul Auster's the New York Trilogy." MFS: Modern Fiction Studies 52, no. 3
(2006): 613-33.
Dubnick, Heather Lisa. "Bodying Forth the Impossible: Metamorphosis, Mortality,
and Aesthetics in the Works of Jorge Luis Borges." Enculturation: A Journal
for Rhetoric, Writing, and Culture 3, no. 2 (2001).
Gracia, Jorge J. E. "Borges's 'Pierre Menard': Philosophy or Literature?" Journal of
Aesthetics and Art Criticism 59, no. 1 (2001): 45-57.
Irwin, John T. "The False Artaxerxes: Borges and the Dream of Chess." New Literary
History: A Journal of Theory and Interpretation 24, no. 2 (1993): 425-44.
Mosher, Mark. "Atemporal Labyrinths in Time: J. L. Borges and the New Physicist."
Symposium: A Quarterly Journal in Modern Literatures 48, no. 1 (1994): 51-
61.
Stephens, Cynthia. "Conflicting Interpretation of Language and Reality in Borges's
Narrative." The Modern Language Review 85, no. 1 (1990): 65-76.
Wright, Edmond. "Jorge Luis Borges's 'Funes the Memorious': A Philosophical
Narrative." Partial Answers: Journal of Literature and the History of Ideas 5,
no. 1 (2007): 33-49.

Week 4—High Metafiction

John Barth. Lost in the Funhouse. 1968. New York: Doubleday Anchor, 1988.
Robert Coover. Pricksongs and Descants. 1969. New York: New American Library,
1970.

Suggested readings:
Fulmer, James Burton. "'First Person Anonymous': Sartrean Ideas of Consciousness in
Barth's Lost in the Funhouse." Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction 41,
no. 4 (2000): 335-47.
 Lee, L. L. "Robert Coover's Moral Vision: Pricksongs & Descants." Studies in Short
Fiction 23, no. 1 (1986): 63-69.
Martin, W. Todd. "Self-Knowledge and Self-Conception: The Therapy of
Autobiography in John Barth's Lost in the Funhouse." Studies in Short Fiction
34, no. 2 (1997): 151-57.
Schmitz, Neil. "Robert Coover and the Hazards of Metafiction." Novel: A Forum on
Fiction 7, no. 3 (1974): 210-19.
Woolley, Deborah A. "Empty 'Text,' Fecund Voice: Self-Reflexivity in Barth's Lost in
the Funhouse." Contemporary Literature 26, no. 4 (1985): 460-81.

Week 5—Lipogrammatic Fictions

Georges Perec. A Void (La Disparition). 1994 (1969). Trans. Gilbert Adair.
London: Vintage, 2008.
Walter Abish. Alphabetical Africa. 1974. New York: New Directions, 1974.

Suggested readings:
Braulis, Tavares. "The Void: From Borges's Being to Perec's Nothingness." New York
Review of Science Fiction 9, no. 7 [103] (1997): 10-10.
Briggs, Kate. "Translation and Lipogram." Paragraph: A Journal of Modern Critical
Theory 29, no. 3 (2006): 43-54.
James, Alison. "Automatism, Arbitrariness, and the Oulipian Author." French Forum
31, no. 2 (2006): 111-25.
Mawhinney, Heather. "'Vol Du Bourbon': The Purloined Letter in Perec's La
Disparition." Modern Language Review 97, no. 1 (2002): 47-58.
Motte, Warren, and Jean-Jacques Poucel. "Pereckonings: Reading Georges Perec."
Yale French Studies 105 (2004): 1-179.
Motte, Warren. "Writing under Duress." American Book Review 19, no. 2 (1998): 1.
Roubaud, Jacques, and Jean-Jacques Poucel. "Perecquian Oulipo." Yale French
Studies 105 (2004): 99-109.
Schilling, Derek. "Belated Jewish Modernism in France: Georges Perec's Cult of
Memory." Modernism/Modernity 13, no. 4 (2006): 729-45.
Schirato, Anthony. "Comic Politics and Politics of the Comic: Walter Abish's
Alphabetical Africa." Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction 33, no. 2
(1992): 133-44.

Week 6—reading week

Week 7—Fantasy and Fable

Donald Barthelme. The Dead Father. 1975. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul,
1977.
Jeanette Winterson. Sexing the Cherry. 1989. London: Vintage, 1996.

Suggested readings:
Davis, Robert Con. "Post-Modern Paternity: Donald Barthelme's the Dead Father." In
Critical Essays on Donald Barthelme, edited by Richard F. Patterson, 185-95.
New York: G. K. Hall, 1992.
 Doan, Laura. "Jeanette Winterson's Sexing the Postmodern." In The Lesbian
Postmodern, edited by Laura Doan, 138-55. New York: Columbia UP, 1994.
Makinen, Merja. The Novels of Jeanette Winterson. Edited by Nicolas Tredell,
Reader's Guides to Essential Criticism. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan,
2005.
Walsh, Richard. "The Dead Father: Innovative Forms, Eternal Themes." In Critical
Essays on Donald Barthelme, edited by Richard F. Patterson, 173-84. New
York: G. K. Hall, 1992.
Zeitlin, Michael. "Father-Murder and Father-Rescue: The Post-Freudian Allegories of
Donald Barthelme." Contemporary Literature 34, no. 2 (1993): 182-203.

Week 8—The Interpolated Reader

Italo Calvino. If on a winter’s night a traveller. 1981 (1979). London: Picador,
1982.
William Gass. Willie Masters’ Lonesome Wife. 1989 (1968). Urbana: Dalkey Archive,
1989.

Suggested readings:
Coover, Robert. "On Mrs. Willie Masters." Review of Contemporary Fiction 24, no. 3
(2004): 10-23.
de Lauretis, Teresa. "Reading the (Post)Modern Text: If on a Winter's Night a
Traveller." In Calvino Revisited, edited by Franco Ricci, 131-45. Ottawa:
Dovehouse, 1989.
Feinstein, Wiley. "The Doctrinal Core of If on a Winter's Night a Traveller." In
Calvino Revisited, edited by Franco Ricci, 147-55. Ottawa: Dovehouse, 1989.
Fink, Inge. "The Power Behind the Pronoun: Narrative Games in Calvino's If on a
Winter's Night, a Traveler." Twentieth Century Literature: A Scholarly and
Critical Journal 37, no. 1 (1991): 93-104.
Kaufmann, Michael. "The Textual Body: William Gass's Willie Master's Lonesome
Wife." Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction 35, no. 1 (1993): 27-42.
McCaffery, Larry. "The Art of Metafiction: William Gass's Willie Masters' Lonesome
Wife." Critique: Studies in Modern Fiction 18, no. 1 (1976): 21-35.
Salvatori, Mariolina. "Italo Calvino's If on a Winter's Night a Traveler: Writer's
Authority, Reader's Autonomy." Contemporary Literature 27, no. 2 (1986):
182-212.
Simpson, M. Carleton. "Participation and Immersion in Walton and Calvino."
Philosophy and Literature 29, no. 2 (2005): 321-36.
Sorapure, Madeleine. "Being in the Midst: Italo Calvino's If on a Winter's Night a
Traveler." MFS: Modern Fiction Studies 31, no. 4 (1985): 702-10.
Visoi, Marie-Anne. "Parody in the Postmodernist Novel: Se Unanotte D'inverno Un
Viaggiatore." Modern Language Studies 27, no. 3-4 (1997): 159-73.
Watts, Melissa. "Reinscribing a Dead Author in If on a Winter's Night a Traveler."
MFS: Modern Fiction Studies 37, no. 4 (1991): 705-16.
Week 9—Dionysian Excess
Kathy Acker. Don Quixote. 1986. London: Paladin, 1986.
Alasdair Gray. 1982, Janine. 1984. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1985.

Suggested readings:
Boyd, S. J. "Black Arts: 1982 Janine and Something Leather." In The Arts of Alasdair
Gray, edited by Robert Crawford and Thom Nairn, 108-23. Edinburgh:
Edinburgh UP, 1991.
Harrison, William M. "The Power of Work in the Novels of Alasdair Gray." The
Review of Contemporary Fiction 15, no. 2 (1995): 162-69.
Pitchford, Nicola. "Flogging a Dead Language: Identity Politics, Sex, and the Freak
Reader in Acker's Don Quixote." Postmodern Culture: An Electronic Journal
of Interdisciplinary Criticism 11, no. 1 (2000).
Simmons, Ryan. "The Problem of Politics in Feminist Literary Criticism: Contending
Voices in Two Contemporary Novels." Critique: Studies in Contemporary
Fiction 41, no. 4 (2000): 319-34.
Walsh, Richard. "The Quest for Love and the Writing of Female Desire in Kathy
Acker's Don Quixote." Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction 32, no. 3
(1991): 149-68.

Week 10—Post-Irony
David Foster Wallace. Brief Interviews with Hideous Men. 1999. London: Abacus,
2001.
Lydia Davis. Varieties of Disturbance. 2007. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux,
2007.

Suggested readings:
Boswell, Marshall. Understanding David Foster Wallace, Understanding
Contemporary American Literature (Ucal). Columbia, SC: U of South
Carolina P, 2003.
Knight, Christopher J. "An Interview with Lydia Davis." Contemporary Literature 40,
no. 4 (1999): 525-51.

Select List of Recommended Texts

Martin Amis, Time’s Arrow, 1991.
Richard Brautigan, Trout Fishing in America, 1967.
Christine Brooke-Rose, Thru, 1975.
William Burroughs, Naked Lunch, 1959.
Michel Butor, Second Thoughts (La Modification), 1957.
Angela Carter, The Bloody Chamber, 1979.
J. M. Coetzee, Waiting for the Barbarians, 1980.
Julio Cortazar, Hopscotch, 1963.
Don Delillo, Ratner’s Star, 1976.
E. L. Doctorow, Ragtime, 1975.
Marguerite Duras, Moderato Cantabile, 1958.
 Brett Easton Ellis, American Psycho, 1991.
Dave Eggers, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, 2000.
Diamela Eltit, E. Luminata, 1983
Raymond Federman, The Voice in the Closet, 1979.
John Fowles, The French Lieutenant’s Woman, 1969.
Janet Frame, Owls Do Cry, 1957.
Carlos Fuentes, Terra Nostra, 1975.
William Gaddis, JR, 1975.
Gabriel Garcia Marquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude, 1967.
John Hawkes, Travesty, 1976.
Shelley Jackson, Patchwork Girl, 1995 (hypertext).
Michael Joyce, Afternoon, 1987 (hypertext).
Ursula Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness, 1969.
Toni Morrison, Beloved, 1987.
Vladimir Nabokov, Pale Fire, 1962.
Flann O’Brien, The Third Policeman, 1968.
Thomas Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow, 1973.
Ishmael Reed, Flight to Canada, 1976.
Alain Robbe-Grillet, Jealousy, 1957.
Salman Rushdie, Midnight’s Children, 1981.
Joanna Russ, The Female Man, 1975
Will Self, The Quantity Theory of Insanity, 1991.
Gilbert Sorrentino, Mulligan Stew 1979
Art Spiegelman, Maus, 1986-92 (graphic novel).
Ronald Sukenick, 98.6, 1975.
Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five, 1969.
Chris Ware, Jimmy Corrigan, Smartest Kid on Earth, 2000 (graphic novel).

Critical Bibliography
Bellamy, Joe D. The New Fiction: Interviews with Innovative American Writers.
Urbana: U. of Ill. P, 1974.
Botting, Fred. Sex, Machines and Navels: Fiction, Fantasy and History in the Future
Present. Manchester, England: Manchester UP, 1999.
Burke, Ruth E. The Games of Poetics: Ludic Criticism and Postmodern Fiction,
American University Studies Iii: Comparative Literature (Compl): 47. New
York: Peter Lang, 1994.
Caramello, Charles. Silverless Mirrors: Book, Self and Postmodern American Fiction.
Tallahassee: UP of Florida, 1983.
Caviola, Hugo. In the Zone: Perception and Presentation of Space in German and
American Postmodernism, International Cooper Series in English Language
and Literature. Boston: Birkhäuser, 1991.
Clavier, Berndt. John Barth and Postmodernism: Spatiality, Travel, and Montage,
Studies on Themes and Motifs in Literature (Stml): 83. New York, NY: Peter
Lang, 2007.
Conte, Joseph M. Design and Debris: A Chaotics of Postmodern American Fiction.
Tuscaloosa, AL: U of Alabama P, 2002.
Couturier, Maurice, and Regis Durand. Donald Barthelme, Contemp. Writers. London:
Methuen, 1982.
Edwards, Brian. Theories of Play and Postmodern Fiction, Comparative Literature
and Cultural Studies (Clcst). New York, NY: Garland, 1998.
Fokkema, Aleid. Postmodern Characters: A Study of Characterization in British and
American Postmodern Fiction, Postmodern Studies (Pmdns): 4. Amsterdam:
Rodopi, 1991.
Gordon, Lois. Robert Coover: The Universal Fictionmaking Process,
Crosscurrents/Modern Critiques (Cmc). Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP,
1983.
Heuser, Sabine. Virtual Geographies: Cyberpunk at the Intersection of the
Postmodern and Science Fiction, Postmodern Studies (Pmdns): 34. New York,
NY: Rodopi, 2003.
Holmes, Frederick M. The Historical Imagination: Postmodernism and the Treatment
of the Past in Contemporary British Fiction, English Literary Studies
Monograph Series (Els): 73. Victoria, BC: University of Victoria, 1997.
Horstkotte, Martin. The Postmodern Fantastic in Contemporary British Fiction,
Horizonte: Studien Zu Texte Und Ideen Der Europã¤Ischen Moderne: 34.
Trier, Germany: Wissenschaftlicher, 2004.
Klinkowitz, Jerome. The Self-Apparent Word: Fiction as Language/Language as
Fiction. Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois UP, 1984.
Lord, Geoffrey. Postmodernism and Notions of National Difference: A Comparison of
Postmodern Fiction in Britain and America, Postmodern Studies (Pmdns): 18.
Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1996.
MacFarlane, Scott. The Hippie Narrative: A Literary Perspective on the
Counterculture. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2007.
Maltby, Paul. Dissident Postmodernists: Barthelme, Coover, Pynchon, Penn Studies
in Contemporary American Fiction. Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania P, 1991.
Markey, Constance. Italo Calvino: A Journey toward Postmodernism, Crosscurrents:
Comparative Studies in European Literature and Philosophy (Crosscurrentsc).
Gainesville, FL: UP of Florida, 1999.
Marshall, Brenda K. Teaching the Postmodern: Fiction and Theory. New York:
Routledge, 1992.
Olsen, Lance. Circus of the Mind in Motion: Postmodernism and the Comic Vision,
Humor in Life and Letters. Detroit: Wayne State UP, 1990.
Pitchford, Nicola. Tactical Reading: Feminist Postmodernism in the Novels of Kathy
Acker and Angela Carter. Lewisburg, PA; London, England: Bucknell UP;
Associated UP, 2002.
Rubinson, Gregory J. The Fiction of Rushdie, Barnes, Winterson, and Carter:
Breaking Cultural and Literary Boundaries in the Work of Four
Postmodernists. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2005.
Shiloh, Ilana. Paul Auster and Postmodern Quest: On the Road to Nowhere, Modern
American Literature: New Approaches (Moal): 35. New York, NY: Peter
Lang, 2002.
Slade, Andrew. Lyotard, Beckett, Duras, and the Postmodern Sublime, Currents in
Comparative Romance Languages and Literatures (Ccrll): 146. New York,
NY: Peter Lang, 2007.
Smethurst, Paul. The Postmodern Chronotope: Reading Space and Time in
Contemporary Fiction, Postmodern Studies (Pmdns): 30. Amsterdam,
Netherlands: Rodopi, 2000.
Stevick, Philip. Alternative Pleasures: Postrealist Fiction and the Tradition. Urbana:
U of Illinois P, 1981.
Stoltzfus, Ben. Postmodern Poetics: Nouveau Roman and Innovative Fiction,
Occasional Papers in Language, Literature and Linguistics (Oplll): A35. Ames:
Iowa State Univ., 1987.
Tani, Stefano. The Doomed Detective: The Contribution of the Detective Novel to
Postmodern American and Italian Fiction. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP,
1984.
Tompkins, Cynthia Margarita. Latin American Postmodernisms: Women Writers and
Experimentation. Gainesville, FL: UP of Florida, 2006.
Varsava, Jerry A. Contingent Meanings: Postmodern Fiction, Mimesis, and the
Reader. Tallahassee: Florida State UP, 1990.
Walsh, Richard. Novel Arguments: Reading Innovative American Fiction, Cambridge
Studies in American Literature and Culture (Csalc): 91. Cambridge:
Cambridge UP, 1995.
Wells, Lynn. Allegories of Telling: Self-Referential Narrative in Contemporary
British Fiction, Costerus (Costerus): 146. New York, NY: Rodopi, 2003.