Swallowing a world : globalization and the maximalist novel / Benjamin Bergholtz.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Bergholtz, Benjamin, author.

Series:

Frontiers of narrative

Frontiers of narrative series

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Fiction--20th century--History and criticism.

Fiction.

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

Maximalism (Literature).

Literature and globalization.

Physical Description:

1 online resource.

Other Title:

Path to Open

Place of Publication:

Lincoln : University of Nebraska Press, [2024]

Summary:

"Swallowing a World offers a new theorization of the maximalist novel. Though it's typically cast as a (white, male) genre of U.S. fiction, maximalism, Benjamin Bergholtz argues, is an aesthetic response to globalization and a global phenomenon in its own right. Bergholtz considers a selection of massive and meandering novels that crisscross from London and Lusaka to Kingston, Kabul, and Kashmir and that represent, formally reproduce, and ultimately invite reflection on the effects of globalization. Each chapter takes up a maximalist novel that simultaneously maps and formally mimics a cornerstone of globalization, such as the postcolonial culture industry (Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children), the rebirth of fundamentalism (Zadie Smith's White Teeth), the transnational commodification of violence (Marlon James's A Brief History of Seven Killings), the obstruction of knowledge by narrative (Zia Haider Rahman's In the Light of What We Know), and globalization's gendered, asymmetrical growth (Namwali Serpell's The Old Drift). By reframing analysis of maximalism around globalization, Swallowing a World not only reimagines one of the most perplexing genres of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries but also sheds light on some of the most perplexing political problems of our precarious present. "-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Introduction: Mapping the Maximalist Novel

1. See the Whole World, Come See Everything! Midnight's Children and the Postcolonial Cultural Industry

2. Certainty in its Purest Form: Globalization, Fundamentalism, and Narrative in White Teeth

3. It Shouldn't Produce No Pretty Sentence, Ever: Violence and Aesthetics in A Brief History of Seven Killings

4. The Pursuit of Knowledge: The Paradoxes of Postcolonial Encyclopedism in In the Light of What We Know

5. Two Dumb Inertias: The Uneven Drift of Globalization in The Old Drift

Conclusion: The Future of Maximalist Fiction.

Notes:

Title from online title page (viewed on November 6, 2024).

Includes bibliographic references and index.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Other Format:

Print version:

ISBN:

9781496241122

1496241126

OCLC:

1460671073

Access Restriction:

Restricted for use by site license.