Ethics and Desire in the Wake of Postmodernism

Graham Matthews is Lecturer in Modern and Contemporary Literature at Newcastle University, UK.

• Introduction; 1. "You Do an Awfully Good Impression of Yourself" - Fear and Uncertainty in Bret Easton Ellis' Lunar Park; 2. Nihilism and the Sublime in Chuck Palahniuk's Fight Club; 3. Violence and the Multitude in J.G. Ballard's Millennium People; 4. "Evil is to Morality as Magnolia is to Paint" Ethics and Aesthetics in Will Self's Dorian: An Imitation; 5. Sex Tourism and the Politics of Enjoyment in Michel Houellebecq's Platform; 6. Feminism, Satire and Critique in the Work of Tama Janowitz; Bibliography; Index.

‘Ethics and Desire in the Wake of Postmodernism offers a rare combination of theoretical agility, and concentrated close reading of literary fiction. It is at once a fresh and exciting reading of six major contemporary novelists, and a reappraisal of the critical contexts within which they have been understood. In reading contemporary literature and theory together, this is an important intervention into ongoing debates about postmodernism and its afterlives.'