Stock characters in 9-11 fiction : homosociality and nihilist performance / Sandra Singer.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Singer, Sandra, 1957- author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Characters and characteristics in literature.

Psychic trauma in literature.

Fiction--21st century--History and criticism.

Fiction.

September 11 Terrorist Attacks, 2001--Influence.

September 11 Terrorist Attacks, 2001.

Influence (Literary, artistic, etc.).

Genre:

Criticism, interpretation, etc.

Physical Description:

x, 154 pages ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

New York, NY : Peter Lang Publishing, Inc., [2019]

Summary:

Stock Characters in 9/11 Fiction considers fictional work of the time subsequent to the attacks. The book develops and investigates models of stock characters in 9/11 fiction who promote the trauma meme within a narrative arc of tragedy; the conceptual evolution of trauma and media as thematic arcs is interpreted within specific 9/11 novels and in correspondence with other terrorist fiction. The almost exclusively male stock character protagonists include the male homosocial perpetrator and the tightrope walker. Among the more recent authors discussed are Amy Waldman and Thomas Pynchon, whose novels illustrate the way characters inhabit media models, rather than, as previously thought, using media for disseminating terrorist events and messaging. Other featured writers include Bernhard Schlink, Don DeLillo, Claire Messud, Ian McEwan, Joseph O'Neill, and Colum McCann. Stock Characters in 9/11 Fiction is a valuable text for scholars of 9/11 fiction, as well as for professors and university students studying contemporary literature.

Contents:

Homosocial Character Dynamics in Bernhard Schlink's The Weekend

Revisiting the Image of the Falling Man in Novels, Television and Film

Self-Subtraction from the System: The Sleeper Cell in Claire Messud's The Emperor's Children

Limitations of the Hyper-Rationalist in Ian McEwan's Saturday

Gambling and Postcolonial Games of Risk in Joseph O'Neill's Netherland

From Modernism to Postmodernism: The Trauma Meme Transformed in Colum McCann's Let the Great World Spin

Media Defining Terrorism in Friedrich Dürrenmatt's The Assignment, Amy Waldman's The Submission and Thomas Pynchon's Bleeding Edge.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9781433149405

1433149400

OCLC:

1099530500

Publisher Number:

99983677162