Hybrid Novels by Kowalik, George;

Short description:

Hybrid Novels answers long-gestating questions in Contemporary Literary Studies about how to define post-postmodernism. It suggests that hybridity is the solution to this problem. It negotiates a balance between postmodern irony and post-postmodern sincerity, which existing studies have more often placed in opposition.

Long description:

The phrase “post-postmodernism” has appeared in Contemporary Literary Studies since the 20^th century, but what does it mean? Scholars have defined the term in various, often contradictory ways. Existing studies also rarely centralise race – an essential component in the transition from postmodern irony to post-postmodern sincerity. Hybrid Novels analyses post-postmodernism’s only consistency and certainty: hybridity. This speaks for a broader social issue concerning the ethics of categorisation and the conflicting labels imposed on subjectivity. Hybrid Novels considers landmark American/British novels by Percival Everett, Jonathan Franzen, Zadie Smith, and David Foster Wallace, published from 1996 to 2001. It positions these authors at the centre of the post-postmodernism debate together for the first time. This book suggests that 2010s autofiction further develops post-postmodern tensions of irony and sincerity at the turn of the 21^st century. Major American/Canadian novels by Sheila Heti, Ben Lerner, Teju Cole, and Tao Lin are discussed, published from 2010 to 2013.

The literary moment known as post-postmodernism seemed to disappear as quickly as it arrived, and in its wake we need a substantial account of what it was, and how it worked. Kowalik’s book is precisely that account, taking a longer view on the strange history of the term and arguing for the importance of reading the post-postmodern novel as a hybrid form. Hybrid Novels: Post-postmodernism, Sincerity, and Race at the Turn of the 21^st Century delivers an illuminating history of this relatively fleeting, but nevertheless crucial, literary movement.

David Hering, Senior Lecturer in English, University of Liverpool, UK

George Kowalik’s Hybrid Novels: Post-Postmodernism, Sincerity, and Race at the Turn of the 21^st Century is rigorously researched, innovative, and beautifully written. This book will become the standard for thinking and theorizing American and British literature in the twenty-first century.   

Keith Mitchell, Associate Professor of English, University of Massachusetts Lowell, USA

Postmodernism was never exactly one thing, but it has often occupied a position of totality as a clear moment, but what came after it? Hybrid Novels: Post-postmodernism, Sincerity, and Race at the Turn of the 21^st Century, structured through insightful and informed close readings, is a hugely significant contribution to the study of the arts of the present by an important new voice in contemporary literary studies. It comes highly recommended to all who want to better understand where we are right now and where we may be going.

Michael J. Collins, Reader in American Studies, King’s College London, UK

Table of Contents:

Acknowledgements

Introduction: Post-postmodernism and the Year 2000

1. Erasure’s Paradoxes: The Post-postmodern and the Postracial

2. The Corrections and the Market Logics of Post-postmodernism

3. Association and Organisation in White Teeth

4. Infinite Jest’s Endnotes

Coda: Autofiction in the 2010s

Works Cited

Index