Hybrid fictions: American literature and generation X

Abstract

Since the 1960s, academics have theorized that literature is on its way to becoming obsolete, or, at the very least, has lost part of its power as an influential medium of social and cultural critique. This work argues against that misconception and maintains that contemporary American literature is not only alive and well, but that it has grown in significant ways that reflect changes in American culture during the last twenty years. The author's use of the term is similar to that of Mikhail Bakhtin; for Bakhtin, language is by definition a hybrid form and literature, most specifically the novel, is a form that allows writers to blend distinct and often opposing social languages. The author considers hybrid fictions from Modernists to Gen Xers, hybrid desires, hybrid identities and conflicting relationships, ethnic hybridity, hybrid technologies, and hypertext, the Internet and the future of printed fiction. David Foster Wallace, Richard Powers, Neal Stephenson, Douglas Coupland, Sherman Alexie, William Vollmann, Michele Serros and Dave Eggers are among those Gen Xers whose hybrid fictions are discussed.