Rewriting: Postmodern Narrative and Cultural Critique in the Age of Cloning (review)

Abstract

THE COMPARATIST keenly sensitive to others' reception ofhis acted-out image. In this solipsism, Miller recognizes the hero's basically adolescent mind-set that inhabits the fully developed physique. Maturation into old age and wisdom that comes therewith are alien to him. As a result, in spite ofa seemingly inexhaustible variety ofheroic exteriors, the heroes share a more or less interchangeable psyche that lacks depth. Apprehensive ofthe future that promises to bring only decay and blemish to his fame, and deliberately channeling thanatic instinct to the annihilation ofselfand others, the hero willingly embraces an early, violent, "good" death in a battle. Needless to say, with many fine points and instances left untouched, a short review hardly doesjustice to the meticulous research. Conversely, some repetition is unavoidable in the elaborate interlacing ofnumerous, examined motifs and evidence . One drawback might be that Miller largely omits epics ofgenerically mixed, marginal, or innovative nature, such as religious epics, in favor ofwar epics, though he does briefly trace changing types of"the hero" that derive from their epic ancestor up to the twentieth century. Most unexpected, therefore, is his very last remark that undermines what he has so assiduously delineated when he acknowledges that "we should be ashamed to find his image so appealing, to find death and death dealing so powerful a Stimulus" (387). A basic question, then, is whether the epic functions only to reveal violence in the archetypal form of an irresistibly fascinating hero, with our sole hope to leam from its negativity. Nevertheless, with thoughtful insight and thorough scholarship, Miller's book is a major piece ofresearch that cannot be ignored in any future discussion ofthe epic and its ever-dazzling hero. Masaki MoriThe UniversityofGeorgia CHRISTIAN MORARU. Rewriting: Postmodern Narrative and Cultural Critique in theAge ofCloning. Albany: SUNY Press, 2001. xvii + 230 pp. It has proven remarkably difficult to articulate the precise relation between earlier texts and later ones that rework or refashion them, despite the fact that this has been a central concern ofcriticism and theory for the past quarter century. There have been so many different kinds ofrelations (allusion, parody, intertextuality, pastiche, etc.) in so many periods that one might reasonably come to expect most theoretical accounts to be largely vacuous or woefully incomplete. It comes as a delightful surprise that Christian Moraru has deftly navigated this unforgiving territory with uncanny clarity, fluency, and comprehensiveness in his study, Rewriting. Moraru is clearly aware of the many ages of extensive rewriting from the Greeks to the Renaissance to the present, and wisely delimits his study to focus on rewriting in late twentieth-century America, and more specifically, on how postmodem narrative reworks nineteenth-century narratives. These, it turns out, are not innocent retellings or tired recyclings, but often rather highly charged contestations ofearlier works. Or as Moraru states, "the narratives I focus on produce themselves by reproducing other narratives—their plots, themes, and styles—with a notable, formal surplus and an ideological, revisionary difference to boot" (7). This focus, along with the critical and theoretical analyses Moraru provides, leads to two significant conclusions. On the vexing issue ofthe difference between modernist and postmodem forms ofrewriting, Moraru is able to point to a genuine postmodem difference: the latter "deploys and flaunts itselfmore systematically, VcH. 27 (2003): 183 KEVIEWS often ironically and self-ironically" (26). More importantly, the works discussed within this study display an engagement with existing cultural, ideological, and political narratives; this is rewriting as cultural critique. This position in tum makes a strong claim for the ideologically progressive nature ofpostmodernism and adds to the reassessment ofpostmodernism's political valence. Moraru does a finejob in both drawing on and significantly extending the work of other scholars like Linda Hutcheon, Paul Maltby, and Marcel Comis-Pope who have advocated a similar position; he is also not afraid to go head to head with Jameson on this issue and convincingly show the inescapable limitations of the stance that condemns postmodernism as "complacently anti-political." The book begins with two theoretical chapters that situate Moraru's project and perspective against the background ofearlier, comparable studies. In doing so, it provides a useful guide to rich but difficult terrain which so many recent theorists...