Liberalism and American literature in the Clinton era / Ryan M. Brooks.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Brooks, Ryan M., 1977- author.

Series:

Cambridge studies in American literature and culture

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

American fiction--20th century--History and criticism.

American fiction.

Literature and society--United States--History--20th century.

Literature and society.

Modernism (Literature)--United States.

Modernism (Literature).

Liberalism in literature.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (x, 239 pages) : digital, PDF file(s).

Place of Publication:

Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 2022.

Summary:

Liberalism and American Literature in the Clinton Era argues that a new, post-postmodern aesthetic emerges in the 1990s as a group of American writers - including Mary Gaitskill, George Saunders, Richard Powers, Karen Tei Yamashita, and others - grapples with the political triumph of free-market ideology. The book shows how these writers resist the anti-social qualities of this frantic right-wing shift while still performing its essential gesture, the personalization of otherwise irreducible social antagonisms. Thus, we see these writers reinvent political struggles as differences in values and emotions, in fictions that explore non-antagonistic social forms like families, communities and networks. Situating these formally innovative fictions in the context of the controversies that have defined this rightward shift - including debates over free trade, welfare reform, and family values - Brooks details how American writers and politicians have reinvented liberalism for the age of pro-capitalist consensus.

Contents:

Introduction: Try for a moment to feel this

The varieties of American neoliberalism

"The family gone wrong": experimental literature and conservative politics

Post-political form

SUPERNAFTA" vs. "El Gran Mojado": alternative fictional realitites and the fight for free trade

Afterword: then we came to the end.

Notes:

Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 20 Jun 2022).

Other Format:

Print version:

ISBN:

9781009019040 (ebook)

Access Restriction:

Restricted for use by site license.