Postmodern Novels Research Articles

The Postmodern Rewritings of Great Expectations to Reinvent Antipodean identities; A Study on Jack Maggs by Peter Carey and Mister Pip by Lloyd Jones

The present study pivots on the individual analysis of the antipodean writers` novels Jack Maggs by Peter Carey and Mister Pip by Lloyd Jones the retellings of Great Expectations by Charles Dickens. The paper concentrates on the approaches based on its perception towards ideological, historical, authorial, cultural, narrative and geographical representations of Australia in literature. The select novels are under analysis for their employment of postmodern narrative strategies such as intertextuality and carnivalesque. By applying these theories, the writers are successful in generating new ideologies, varying perspectives and reframing the status of canon. The fictionist takes cues from the fictional world which is a rhetorical construct, by having the possibility of adding and filling gaps to complete it by using intertextuality. In a postmodern scenario, the literary mode of carnivalesque is utilized to reverse the conviction of realism. The novelists give liberty to their protagonists Maggs and Matilda to vindicate their rights by unearthing the voices as well as to vocalize their stories in a way of deconstructing artificial stereotypes. One of the ideologies of postmodernism is “incredulity towards metanarratives” (p. xxiv) propound by Lyotard, it replaces by mini or local narratives. Thus, oral narratives/ storytelling take dominion and unfold a space for a new authentic narrative rendering from the indigenous other, by a subaltern voice and a cast-out victim. Objective: The paper strives to analyze its antipodean characters and their continuum with historical equivalents in Australia. The novelists try to imply and recontextualize rewritings from a broader spectrum of cultural reproductions. The article also endeavors to readdress nineteenth-century texts into their contemporary postmodern relevance. Theoretical Framework: The theoretical framework of the study is to look through the lens of postmodernism. Postmodernism believes that every text carries the fragment or traces of other texts and every work can be read against the relation or background to each other texts. In Jack Maggs the story gives the background to why and how the eponymous character becomes a convict and thus offering him a voice and re-centering him in the center like an Englishman Pip. Mister Pip is about the journey of an indigenous girl named Matilda who dives into the fictional world of Dickens amidst war and personal losses. The select novels have the ability of genre-blurring intersecting with historical novel, fictional biography, and metafiction. The point of departure from the existing research about the novels Jack Maggs and Mister Pip is that there is an alteration of focus from political resistance towards foregrounding postmodern literary struggle in rewriting. Method: The paper discusses with a postmodern study of the novel Jack Maggs and Mister Pip as a retelling of Dickens` Great Expectations. The methodology of the study is qualitative textual analysis with a postmodern approach. The theories that are applied to the select texts are, Julia Kristeva`s Intertextuality and Mikhail Bakhtin's Carnivalesque. The select novels are written to subvert Eurocentric metanarratives, which is further explained by Jean-Françoise Lyotard that, ‘those totalizing narratives are to be replaced with mini or local narratives.’ The framework of the paper is restricted to study the textual, intertextual, thematic and contextual analysis. Results and Discussion: This article investigates the way in which Australian identities are remodeled using fictional constructs. Finally, by reading these novels the readers get to know the multiple perceptions of the canon. The novel`s self-reflexivity has subdued any fixed, totalizing or final assertion towards any narrative. These novels foreground the importance of storytelling, writing, each creating their own story amid falsehood and misrepresentation. Postmodern novels are concerned with the representation of reality. It is cynical towards versions of history and reminds the readers that history itself is an artificial construct. The oral narratives/ storytelling take dominion and unfold a space for a new authentic narrative rendered from the indigenous other, by a subaltern voice and a cast-out victim. The fictional reinvention of the antipodean authors not only questions the ambiguous status of representation, but they are successful in recreating their autonomous versions of their self-supporting narratives. Thus, by reading Careys` and Jones` novels through the lens of postmodernism have attempted to evaluate the validity of western metanarratives and cultural conventions.

Литература и кино в епохата на глобализацията – фрагменти от дебата за културната хибридизация през XXI век

The article examines the globalization of the 21st century, which is driven by the postmodernist processes of decanonization that create a hybrid cultural environment in the present. The main focus of the text is the film-literature relationship, which is both synergistic and competitive in the market of cultural products. The article presents key postmodern novels from the 80s and 90s of the last century and their film adaptations, which even in the 21st century reproduce with the techniques of cinema a common, archetypal, futuristic, fictional model. Cinema and literature in the third millennium are subordinated to corporate interests and media giants, and the rhizomatic interface between the arts argues for the ubiquitous hybridization of culture. In conclusion, the dialogical modes between world literature, world cinema, and world media are highlighted.

A childhood dream that can be a memory: Magical Realism and Memory in the "Ocean at the End of the Lane"

The novel "The Ocean at the end of the Lane" sheds light on the children's view of the world and the unique perception of reality, which is completely different from the perception of adults. The object of the study is the manifestations of memory impairment in the novel. The subject is the analysis of changes in memory with age, as well as its role in overcoming stress caused by trauma. The purpose of the article is to understand, in the light of personality psychology and memory research, how and why the memories of the child protagonist change and merge with the imagination as the narrative changes. This helps to identify oppositions of imagination and reality in the novel, which echoes the perception of the world by the main character-a child in parallel with the perception of the world by adults. The novelty of the research lies in the fact that psychological research is used in the article in order to show how magical realism reflects the problem of memory changes in the novel "Ocean at the End of the Lane", and, therefore, provides a basis for further opportunities to study children's magical perception, realistic memory in postmodern novels. The results of the study demonstrate to what extent the style of magical realism expresses the transformation of mental abilities and perception of reality during the transition from childhood to adulthood in the novel. In this sense, "The Ocean at the end of the Lane" is an image of the world seen both from the point of view of adult life and from the point of view of childhood.

Review: Pleading the Blood: Bill Gunn’s “Ganja & Hess,” by Christopher Sieving

Review: <i>Pleading the Blood: Bill Gunn’s “Ganja &amp; Hess,”</i> by Christopher Sieving

The Global Catastrophic Impact of 9/11 Attack: Analyzing the Mental Condition in the Postmodern Novels and Media in the Post-Apocalyptic Context

Post-Apocalyptic novels unveil the disasters that traumatize the psyche of the people. Apparently, such a catastrophe has an excruciating impact. This paper analyses the impact of the World Trade Centre (9/11) attack on American postmodern characters, it’s representation through Media and as a result, the reverberating references in Indian novels as well. Don DeLillo’s novel Falling Man presents the dreadful effects of the 9/11 attacks through the complex life of the Postmodern characters. The title, “Falling Man” is identical to the name given to a photograph released on The New York Times, “The Falling Man” taken by Drew, Associated Press. It is the media’s representation of the 9/11 American fall. Along with the postmodern tenets, themes, and techniques, the paper probes into the mental condition of the postmodern characters in the Post-Apocalyptic context. Horney's psychoanalytic social theory is an effective tool for comprehending how catastrophic events influence people psychologically as well as how they interact and behave. The impact of the catastrophe is traced in the American novel, in the Media’s photograph and in the Indian Novel.

소비자본주의와 인종, 대항서사

John Edgar Wideman’s Philadelphia Fire is a postmodern novel in which its textuality is emphasized and its narratives are led by multiple voices of diverse African-Americans. However, instead of embodying political ‘indeterminacy’ of most postmodern novels, Philadelphia Fire not only reexamines how the black lower class is victimized by the racialized consumer capitalism of white dominant American society, but urges readers to be aware of its social and political inequality. By disclosing the implications of the scattered diverse narratives and connecting the silences and gaps in those narratives, this study attempts to investigate the ultimate causes of the catastrophic ‘MOVE’ fire in the context of the racialized consumer capitalism. Furthermore, through analyzing raps in part 3 as well as the narrator Cudjoe’s revision of The Tempest, this paper examines how Wideman’s resistant awareness of the problematic contemporary American society is expressed in the counternarrative.

Dezorientacje: Antologia polskiej literatury queer [Disorientations: An anthology of Polish queer literature

<i>Dezorientacje: Antologia polskiej literatury queer</i> [Disorientations: An anthology of Polish queer literature

Some Notes on the Poetics of the Postmodernist Novel

The purpose of the present paper is to explore some key poetological categories of the postmodern novel. It discusses the premises that led up to the birth of the postmodern era as well as aesthetic and philosophical peculiarities of the postmodernist paradigm. The paper focuses on such postmodernist narrative strategies as metafictional techniques, double/triple coding, the use of simulacra, intertextuality, deconstruction, eclecticism etc. Iconoclastic and irreverent, the&nbsp;postmodern&nbsp;novel is by definition a radical experiment that emerges when a writer feels the customary tropes of fiction have been exhausted. For the&nbsp;postmodernist, the well-worn genre of the novel is insufficient and no longer capable of conveying the imagination of the writer or the magnitude of historical events. Postmodern fiction is a product of the post-World War II period. It can be viewed as an extension of rather than a decisive break or deviation from modernism, the defining literary movement of the twentieth century. Like the modern novel, the postmodern novel is subversive; that is, it counters traditional notions of plot, narrative, chronology, and character development. Postmodern novels are often described as&nbsp;self-reflexive — that is, they center on the nature of fiction itself and are written as though fiction is independent of society, reality, and any realm outside itself. Postmodernist novelists focused on fiction as a self-sustaining universe of its own. Postmodernist fiction encompasses forms as wide-ranging as North American metafiction, Latin American magic realism, the French New New Novel, concrete prose and science fiction. Their common denominator is its ability to thrust its own ontological status into the foreground and to raise questions about the world (or worlds) in which we live.

The reader behind the narration, the novels of Saad Muhammad Rahim "by choice"

Meta is one of the important technologies dealt with by postmodern novels that dealt with addressing discourse formation process within the fictional work, and the reader was one of the important elements upon which the metanarrative construction is based. It is known that the metanarrative novel or postmodernity questions and discusses the process of creating a novel to declare in the end that the truth is relative and can be viewed from all directions, and by revealing the content metanarrative of Saad Muhammad Rahim, we find that the reader has an important role, as he occupied a large part of that world and formed an axis on which the concerns of the novel revolve, and we review the most prominent details in his works novelist.

Transcending Borders: Cultural integration and hybridization in the select works of Amitav Ghosh – A Systematic Review

Purpose: The topic chosen for the study centers on the themes of Cultural Integration and Hybridization as illustrated in Amitav Ghosh's post-modern novels. The term ‘postmodernism’ refers to a broad movement that came into being during the latter part of the twentieth century. This movement came after modernity and after modernism faced its decline, when it comes to postmodernism, there is a rise and a fall in every aspect of knowledge and existence. It was an era of an uprising, whether it is literary work, philosophy, or science. Postcolonial literature, particularly novels, explore fundamental difficulties that people face, such as the blending of many cultures, hybridity, and the search for one's own identity. The purpose of this study is to investigate how these topics are handled in the works of fiction by the authors selected for this study. A detailed reading of a few of Amitav Ghosh’s works reveals the impact of racial discrimination, as well as the tyranny of colonial rule. His writings have achieved appreciation on a global level, which means that they are not limited by political, geographical, or social borders. Design: A review of Literature is done by collecting information from secondary sources such as peer-reviewed journals, National and International Publications, internet sources, and research sources like Google Scholar, Research Gate, SSRN, Elsevier, Academia, and Shodhganga are used for identifying the research gap. To highlight the key aspects of the research ABCD analysis is used. Data is acquired from research journals, doctoral theses, scholarly articles, and websites to carry out the research that has been proposed. Concentrating on the keywords History, Transcending Borders, culture, Integration, and Hybridity of the chosen topic, the methodology used depends mostly on collecting, analyzing, and interpreting previous knowledge. The textual analysis and comparative method will be used in the methodology. There will be a close reading of the select works of Ghosh followed by discussions on related issues. Writing research papers and participating in conferences on the subject are also aimed at. While conducting the analyses of the study, APA Manual has been followed to adhere to its requirements. Findings: It has been decided, after looking through a large number of publications, including articles, books, and theses, that the aim of the study could be centered on Cultural Integration and Hybridization in the select works of Amitav Ghosh. It’s proved that Cultural Integration and Hybridity are not a static existence; they differ from one person to the next, one area to the next, one culture to the next, and one nation to the next in any situation. A genuine social and human relationship developed and sustained with the real dignity of humanity is the means to prevent the problems and difficulties of social conflicts. The primary emphasis of the research will be placed on cultural integration and hybridity as it relates to chosen works by Ghosh. The study intends to take review the literature on the subject and will probe in detail the issue under consideration. Originality: The proposed study focuses primarily on the role that cultural integration and hybridity crucial role in the development of identity, the study that is planned to be carried out will be an original one. Nations exclude and include individuals and societies. The study of Amitav Ghosh's writings regarding migration, culture, and hybridity concerning a person's sense of his/her own identity focuses on the stages that are involved in the construction of identities within a postcolonial context. Paper Type: Review Paper

NAALA E SHUB GEER

Postmodernism is modern contemporary theory. It gave birth to too many theories and ideas. One of the most important theories is feminism. This theory influenced fiction Urdu novels have also been influenced by postmodernism. That is why fiction writers have written postmodern novels. Which are different from Classical novels. The characters in these novels are also different from the traditional characters. Nowadays characters are being created in the novel that can be called postmodernism. Musharraf Aalim Zouqi is one of the greatest novelists of our time. He wrote many novels, one of the most important of these is the novel Naala e Shab Geer. The story of this novel consists of seven parts which have been given different titles. Which are as follows: Dasht-e-Khuf, Atash-e-Gul, Rig-e-Jinnu, Bahr-e-Zalamat, Wadi-e-Israr, Barish-e-Sang, and Safar-e-Akhar-e-Shab. The characters are portrayed in different ways. There is a story hidden in each title. In his novel Naala-e- shubgeer, he presents the postmodernist concepts of women. Nahid Naz is a rebellious woman who wants to live a life of her own free will. That's why she wants to keep her husband under her control, and she rules over her husband in every way, just as men rule over their wives. She asks her husband to do women's work. Sometimes she wears him a saari, sometimes she asks him to apply lipstick. One night she orders her husband to leave the house and also tortures him, therefore, she emerges as a postmodern woman. This article critically examines Naheed Naz's postmodern behaviour.

MODELS OF WORLD CAPITALS IN THE PROSE OF THE XXI CENTURY

The paper dwells on the topical problem of modern literary criticism – the study of the creation of a literary image – a model of the capitals of the world in prose of the 21st century. The article also engages the following socially important issues, such as city life, a little man the city, the problem of loneliness, aloofness of an individual.The work is directly connected with the actualization of urban theme in literature at the beginning of the third millennium. The article begins with a review of the theoretical literature on matters under investigation. The methodological basis of the research is the works by the scholars, such as M. Beville, A. Wessels, P.Torkamane, S.V. Pirogov, V. V. Tsurkan, T.I.Vasilieva, N.L. Karpicheva and others. The following postmodern novels are the object of research – Just Together (2004) by French writer Anna Gavalda, The Book Without Photos (2011) by Russian prose writer Sergei Shargunov, White Orda (Ақ Орда) (2005) by Kazakh author Dukenbay Doszhan. Using hermeneutic analysis of the selected literary works which depict the world capitals such as Paris, Moscow and Nur-Sultan, we have identified the following models of the capital: 1. «Capital – a chronotope»; 2. «Capital – a beautiful city»; 3. «Capital is a city of memories»; 4. «Capital is an Orthodox city»; 5. «Capital is a city of career»; 6. «Capital is a symbol of a new country».

ПРОБЛЕМНО-ТЕМАТИЧНІ КОМПЛЕКСИ В РОМАНІ «УРОКИ» (2022) І. МАК’ЮЕНА: ТОПІКА «ШЛЯХУ ГЕРОЯ»

In the paper, the author explores the problem-thematic landscape explicated in Ian McEwan’s post-postmodern novel “Lessons” (2022). Philosophical aspects of the literary work by the British writer have been studied, in particular, the representation of environmental issues that shape the worldview of the protagonist (Roland). The genre specification of the novel has been clarified, and the genre forms exploited in the novel Lessons have been outlined. Emphasis is placed on the reinforcement of the topics of romantic discourse (with a focus on the metaphysical/transcendental phenomenon represented through music), which is a general typological feature of the British post-postmodern novel. The scope of problem-thematic complexes that define the existential and epistemological landscape of the novel has been determined: the interaction of erotic and thanatological aspects in the life of the protagonist, problems of sexuality, the motif of Roland’s coming of age, awareness of the planetary threat to humanity, the fragility of human life in the second half – end of the 20th century. The specific events in Roland’s life are compared with historical, social and political events, particularly in terms of how the specific and general interact in the space of the novel. Emphasis is placed on the forms of explication of the road motif in McEwan’s Lessons, which involves the sub-motif of self-discovery, rethinking mistakes and self-improvement, etc. In this way, the thematic aspects of the novel reveal the meta-genre pattern of mystery, which opposes the carnivalization of reality in postmodern novels. The protagonist understands the crisis of political institutions and the danger of an ideology that seeks to conquer the individual at all costs. The policy of the USSR indirectly affects the formation of the worldview of the young British man, Roland, giving him the opportunity to accept for the first time his own finitude through the understanding of a hypothetically possible nuclear explosion. The second global problem discussed in the novel as a consequence of the Soviet ideology, is the Chernobyl disaster. The novel reveals the stages of formation of existentially significant categories and values in the life of the protagonist. The detective plot, which revolves around the key intrigue in the novel, intersects with social criticism of power, political discourse in general, environmental policy, etc., combining skepticism and irony with Roland’s attempt to find out the essence of human beings: both physical and metaphysical.

Creating Communicative Space and Textual Reality via Emotiogenic Means in Fictional Discourse

The article focuses on the strategies of reconstructing communicative space between the author and reader as well as forecasting the emotional impact on the reader through transforming textual reality. The emotiogenic characteristics of fictional discourse provide the emotional perception of literary texts since emotions are central to the experience of literary narrative fiction. Such a perception is made possible by the identification, comprehension, and interpretation of the emotionally significant textual components of different types. The authors of the article have classified them as the following: graphical and visual, punctuation, and semantic-stylistic ones. These means, found in the postmodern novels by Salman Rushdie, Tahereh Mafi, Marina Lewycka, Kazuo Ishiguro, Alexandar Hemon, and Stephen King, have been analysed to explicate the character of the phenomenon of emotiogenic fictional narratives. The emotiogenic means in the selected novels are exploited by the writers of different ethnic affiliations that can be resulted from their multicultural experience. The superimposition of some means is explained by their semantic relationship. The article tests a hypothesis that the cognitive architecture of the emotiogenic means is determined by an emotional situation reflected in a literary text that appears to be a special code through which readers interpret their emotional and evaluative meanings. The indicators of the text’s emotionality occur to be signs of the textual representation of emotional knowledge. This study contributes to the investigation of the emotiogenic means of creating communicative space which are considered those discursive expressive elements that affect the perception of textual reality.

СПИРАЛЬ ВРЕМЕНИ И КОНЦЕПЦИЯ НЕОБРАТИМОСТИ В РОМАНАХ ТОМА МАККАРТИ

The article examines the work of the contemporary English writer Tom McCarthy in the framework of the original author’s concept of time and space. Based on observations about the consonance of McCarthy’s postmodern novels “Remainder” (2005), “C” (2010), and “Satin Island”(2015) and the entropy systems theory, as well as certain philosophical concepts of postmodernism (“Mobius strip”, ellipse, ruin), the conclusion is made about the conjugation of the personal and the cosmic. The cyclical nature of the plot episodes in McCarthy’s novels is associated with the idea of the character’s involvement in the processes of world disintegration and total irreversibility, being in a loop, in atemporal space, in the entropy funnel of time. The traumatized “Self” of the main character symbolizes the universal trauma of infinite non-anthropological time. McCarthy’s work significantly develops images, compositional and narrative tools, associated with non-linearity and fragmentation, which are characteristic for modernist and postmodernist writing (Joyce, Faulkner, Rob-Grillet, Pynchon). Cyclicity in McCarthy’s postmodern art is no longer associated with absolute mythological time and “everyday cyclic time” (Bakhtin), but with the “temporality of the accelerated cycle” (Baudrillard), with some loss, disintegration, “ellipse” (Derrida), with an endless spiral like a shell. The McCarthy’s cyclicity appears as a repetition, which cuts off the road to the future.

تشكيل الفضاء الروائي في رواية مابعد الحداثة

The modernist retreat of the author from his/her prerogated space as “authorial persona” precipitated the radical changes in the nature and form fictional space that bifurcates into narratival and narrational. This evacuation of the authorial persona space, effected by the cultural pressures that render “totalization” difficult, transfers the interpretation responsibility to the reader. Postmodernist fictions, in this respect, push the reader to occupy more space in the narrative by leaving sizable gaps in it; metafiction presents itself as a logical outcome of this process. When the reader has secured a place within the narrative ontology, the metafictional author contends with the reader for the occupation of fictional space. This results into the foregrounding of the fictional space and fictionality in general. The dynamics of this process relates to a consideration of the space of the speaker, the narrational space of fiction. This paper discusses the issue of postmodernist fictional space with reference to pertinent theories and relevant postmodern novels as examples that clarify the discussion.

(Non)Human Alterities in Postmodern Novels about Metamorphoses (Will Self and Marie Darrieussecq Follow in the Satirical Footsteps of Apuleius)

(Non)Human Alterities in Postmodern Novels about Metamorphoses (Will Self and Marie Darrieussecq Follow in the Satirical Footsteps of Apuleius)

Язык теории как объект метапародии в прозе русского постмодернизма

This article deals with the roles that metaparody plays in modern prose. Methodologically, it follows Yuri Shatin’ semiotic approach to parody. In his works, parody is regarded as a special function of aesthetic language that comically reimagines a work’s pretexts while also expanding its referential semiotic structure by pointing out its intertextual sources. Contemporary fiction expands the semantic field of the plot by having narrators or characters reflect on philological terms and concepts. Furthermore, in postmodern fiction, representation of popular theoretical interpretations often achieves the effect of metaparody, the parody of scholar metalanguage. This paper studies metaparody in A. Bitov and A. Zholkovsky’s “philological prose”. It also deals with parodic reception of well-known theories (such as V. Propp’s fairy-tale functions; Structuralist approach to language; PostStructuralist concepts of discourse and narrative) in post-modern novels by M. Uspensky, A. Lyovkin, and V. Pelevin. Investigating references to theoretical discourse in various story episodes and structure units makes it possible to define the principles of “intrigue of interpretation” found in contemporary novels. This intrigue, featuring readers as characters (including professional readers such as scholars, librarians, critics, or publishers), becomes especially valuable in post-modern situation of “lacking reality.” Texts of this variety showcase the methods of interpreting and describing them as parts of the plot, while the “superior” theorizing instance becomes interwoven into the event-line. As such, both theoretical models and basic narrative conventions appear in parodical light, including even the crucial postmodern conflict between literary solipsism and the “open structure.”

Hermeneutic Distanciations in Postmodern Chicanx Literature: Utopian and Dystopian Horizons in Ana Castillo’s So Far from God (1993) &amp; Salvador Plascencia’s The People of Paper (2005)

This essay focuses on the concept of distanciation in hermeneutic phenomenology and its relevance to an understanding of the utopian and dystopian dimensions in Ana Castillo’s So Far From God (1993) and Salvador Plascencia’s The People of Paper (2005), two postmodern novels that perceive Chicanx history aslant. I analyze how distanciations in these novels open possible cultural worlds that aid readers in interpreting new and/or estranging historical traditions. Ultimately, the distanciations in Ana Castillo’s So Far From God pattern the hope for an emergent queer Chicanx spiritual-activist identity, while the distanciations in Salvador Plascencia’s The People of Paper pattern a dystopic neoliberal worldview hidden behind decontextualzed kitchy representations of Chicanx identity. Although seemingly opposed, both cultural worldviews emerge through ruptures that occur between actual and possible worlds afforded by the novels’ distanciations of Chicanx identities and histories. Keywords: Postmodern Chicanx Literature, Distanciation, Estrangement, Hermeneutic Phenomenology, Utopia

Narrative Machine: The Naturalist, Modernist, and Postmodernist Novel by Zena Meadowsong

Reviewed by: Narrative Machine: The Naturalist, Modernist, and Postmodernist Novel by Zena Meadowsong Dan Colson (bio) Narrative Machine: The Naturalist, Modernist, and Postmodernist Novel, by Zena Meadowsong. New York: Routledge, 2019. xiii + 253 pp. Cloth, $140.00; Ebook, $140.00. In the opening paragraph of “The Mechanics of Fiction,” Frank Norris claims “of all the arts . . . novel-writing is the least mechanical” (147). He then proceeds, for some eight pages, to outline novels’ mechanics— the “wires and wheels and cogs and springs of the affair”— suggesting that “no work is so . . . artistic that it cannot be improved by systematizing” (151, 153). “Defective machinery” will leave an author with “hastily constructed [End Page 228] boilers” that “will flounder” when “the storm” comes (152). This mechanistic perspective on writing may seem strange coming from a writer so fixated on “romance,” but Norris is equally as fascinated with machines. Here, he figures the internal workings of novels as constituent parts comprising an aesthetic whole. Elsewhere, we find the tentacled railroad, the cacophonous machinery of the Little Dipper mine, and the ceaseless chattering of the telegraphic stock ticker. His era’s technologies saturate Norris’s work, even, it appears, creeping into his understanding of craft. Zena Meadowsong’s Narrative Machine: The Naturalist, Modernist, and Postmodernist Novel intervenes at this precise point: the interstices of mechanization and narrative. In it, Meadowsong reconsiders machines’ role in not only naturalist novels but modern and postmodern novels as well in order to make a two-pronged argument. She unearths a long trajectory of what she calls “the monster machine” (7) and simultaneously pays “specific attention to the narrative consequences of mechanization” (15). In other words, her text offers both a fresh reading of machines’ representations and an intriguing claim that these machines determine the narrative form of the texts in which they appear. Her exploration of mechanical monstrosities stretches from the 1870s to the present; from England to France to the United States; from Émile Zola to Thomas Pynchon. Along the way, she offers readings of novels from each of three major literary periods, sampling a veritable who’s who of literature from the last 150 years. In her three chapters on naturalism, she analyzes novels by Zola, Thomas Hardy, Norris, Theodore Dreiser, Stephen Crane, Edith Wharton, George Moore, and George Gissing. In the modernism section, she discusses works by D. H. Lawrence, James Joyce, Ernest Hemingway, Marcel Proust, and Virginia Woolf. And her concluding chapters on postmodernism examine novels by J. G. Ballard, Philip K. Dick, Kurt Vonnegut, Pynchon, Don DeLillo, and Georges Perec. This expansive scope— stretching over multiple literary movements, more than a dozen decades, and the Atlantic Ocean— is both a strength and a weakness of Narrative Machine. On one hand, it allows the book to provide a broad perspective on the role machines play in fiction from across almost the entire span of modernity. With a nearly audacious disregard for periodization, Meadowsong challenges traditional boundaries, which positions her to trace an evolution in literary form that would otherwise be impossible to see. On the other hand, only a few novels receive extensive analysis. When the text dedicates substantial space to a single novel, its claims are incisive and compelling, but addressing more than 25 [End Page 229] novels in such a short space (the naturalism section, for instance, covers 12 novels, though it runs fewer than 60 pages) leaves some of the book’s arguments underdeveloped: the central premises of its readings are at times ingenious, but some of the book’s analysis remains more tantalizing than convincing. Running through each of these readings we find the text’s two intertwined argumentative threads, as Meadowsong identifies the manner in which the novels’ various monstrous machines shape their narrative form. While her reading of machines distinguishes itself admirably from previous treatments of industry’s and technology’s thematic and symbolic appearance in novels, Narrative Machine’s most ambitious contribution comes from its formalist approach— the insistence that machines operate not simply as content in these texts but that representations of the mechanical shape, distort, and determine novels’ form. The nature of this determining influence transforms as both technology and literature evolve, yet Meadowsong finds...