Faulkner and Postmodernism edited by John N. Duvall and Ann J. Abadie,
with essays by John Barth, Philip Cohen, John N. Duvall, Doreen Fowler,
Ihab Hassan, Molly Hite, Martin Kreiswirth, Cheryl Lester, Terrell L.
Tebbetts, Joseph R. Urgo, and Philip Weinstein. Since the 1960s, William
Faulkner, Mississippi's most famous author, has been recognized as a
central figure of international modernism. But might Faulkner's fiction
be understood in relation to Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow as well
as James Joyce's Ulysses? In eleven essays from the 1999 Faulkner and
Yoknapatawpha Conference, held at the University of Mississippi,
Faulkner and Postmodernism examines William Faulkner and his fiction in
light of postmodern literature, culture, and theory. The volume explores
the variety of ways Faulkner's art can be used to measure similarities
and differences between modernism and postmodernism. Essays in the
collection fall into three categories: those that use Faulkner's novels
as a way to mark a period distinction between modernism and
postmodernism, those that see postmodern tendencies in Faulkner's
fiction, and those that read Faulkner through the lens of postmodern
theory's contemporary legacy, the field of cultural studies. In order to
make their particular arguments, essays in the collection compare
Faulkner to more contemporary novelists such as Ralph Ellison, Vladimir
Nabokov, Thomas Pynchon, Walker Percy, Richard Ford, Toni Morrison, and
Kathy Acker. But not all of the comparisons are to high culture artists,
since even Elvis Presley becomes Faulkner's foil in one of the essays. A
variety of theoretical perspectives frame the work in this volume, from
Fredric Jameson's pessimistic sense of postmodernism's possibilities to
Linda Hutcheon's conviction that cultural critique can continue in
postmodernism through innovative new forms such as metafiction. Despite
the different theoretical premises and distinct conclusions of the
individual authors of these essays, Faulkner and Postmodernism proves
once again that in the key debates surrounding twentieth-century
fiction, Faulkner is a crucial figure. John N. Duvall is an associate
professor of English at Purdue University. Ann J. Abadie is associate
director of the Center for the Study of Southern Culture at the
University of Mississippi.
