Hicks, Tribes, and Dirty Realists: American Fiction after Postmodernism - Hardcover

Rebein, Robert

3.5

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9780813121765: Hicks, Tribes, and Dirty Realists: American Fiction after Postmodernism

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0813121760 ISBN 13: 9780813121765

Publisher: University Press of Kentucky, 2001

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Robert Rebein argues that much literary fiction of the 1980s and 90s represents a triumphant, if tortured, return to questions about place and the individual that inspired the works of Hawthorne, Melville, Twain, Faulkner, and other giants of American literature. Concentrating on the realist bent and regional orientation in contemporary fiction, he discusses in detail the various names by which this fiction has been described, including literary postmodernism, minimalism, Hick Chic, Dirty Realism, ecofeminism, and more. Rebein's clearly written, nuanced interpretations of works by Raymond Carver, Cormac McCarthy, Don DeLillo, Louise Erdrich, Dorothy Allison, Barbara Kingsolver, E. Annie Proulx, Chris Offut, and others, will appeal to a wide range of readers.

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From the Inside Flap:

In Hicks, Tribes, and Dirty Realists: American Fiction after Postmodernism, Robert Rebein argues that fiction writing in America is alive and well, contrary to the common assumption that the experimental writing of the 1960s and 70s amounted to a logical culmination—or dead end.

Rebein finds that much literary fiction of the 1980s and 90s represents a triumphant, if tortured, return to questions about place and the individual that inspired the works of Hawthorne, Melville, Twain, Faulkner, and other giants of American literature. Concentrating on the realist bent and regional orientation in contemporary fiction, he discusses in detail the various names by which this fiction has been described, including literary postmodernism, minimalism, hick chic, dirty realism, ecofeminism, and more.

The author offers clearly written, nuanced interpretations of works by Raymond Carver, Cormac McCarthy, Don DeLillo, Louise Erdrich, Dorothy Allison, Barbara Kingsolver, E. Annie Proulx, Chris Offut, and others. In looking at their novels and short stories, Rebein argues that these contemporary realist writers have absorbed postmodernism’s last contributions while forging a new realism moderately traditional in its handling of character and reportorial in its depiction of time. However, this new fiction retains hallmark features of traditional postmodernism: the self-consciousness of language and the awareness of the limits of mimesis.

“I urge anyone still puzzled by what has been happening in recent American literature to read this book. Rebein writes clearly and convincingly of recent books which moved him deeply.”—Leslie Fiedler, SUNY-Buffalo

“Rebein brings sanity, subtlety, and lucidity to the overwrought debate between realistic and anti-realistic fiction. More, he concentrates on whose writers he admires, rather than those convenient to his thesis.”—Charles Newman

About the Author:

Robert Rebein is assistant professor of English and creative writing at Indiana University–Purdue University in Indianapolis.

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