Clio Bemused: The Uses of History in Contemporary American Fiction

Abstract

The frequency with which historical actuality occurs in American fiction of the last decades-one thinks of Barth's late seventeenth century New England or of his newest Arabian Nights, of Reed's and Doctorow's early twentieth century New York, of the Second World Wars of Pynchon, Heller, Kosinski and Vonnegut, of John Updike's persistent chronicling of the Americas of Kennedy and of Nixon, and of Robert Coover's presentation of the climactic year of the Eisenhower administration-this recourse to the identifiable past, and, more particularly, to identifiable historical personages, in itself provokes the student of contemporary American fiction to reflect on the uses fictionists make of history. It will be my contention in what follows that there are three principal ways in which innovative writers have exploited history. On the one hand, a selection of historical incidents and characters may be incorporated into fiction as a background pastiche of objets trouvis, acting collectively as an overall associative metaphor. Alternatively, a complete past age may become the dominant motif of the fictional text in order to further the satirical