Maximalist Novel

From Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow to Roberto Bolano's 2666

Inbunden, Engelska, 2014

AvStefano Ercolino

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The Maximalist Novel sets out to define a new genre of contemporary fiction that developed in the United States from the early 1970s, and then gained popularity in Europe in the early twenty-first century. The maximalist novel has a very strong symbolic and morphological identity. Ercolino sets out ten particular elements which define and structure it as a complex literary form: length, an encyclopedic mode, dissonant chorality, diegetic exuberance, completeness, narrratorial omniscience, paranoid imagination, inter-semiocity, ethical commitment, and hybrid realism. These ten characteristics are common to all of the seven works that centre his discussion: Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon, Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace, Underworld by Don DeLillo, White Teeth by Zadie Smith, The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen, 2666 by Roberto Bolaño, and 2005 dopo Cristo by the Babette Factory. Though the ten features are not all present in the same way or form in every single text, they are all decisive in defining the genre of the maximalist novel, insofar as they are systematically co-present. Taken singularly, they can be easily found both in modernist and postmodern novels, which are not maximalist. Nevertheless, it is precisely their co-presence, as well as their reciprocal articulation, which make them fundamental in demarcating the maximalist novel as a genre.

Produktinformation

Utgivningsdatum2014-08-14
Mått152 x 229 x 16 mm
Vikt449 g
FormatInbunden
SpråkEngelska
Antal sidor208
FörlagBloomsbury Publishing Plc
ISBN9781623562915

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Stefano Ercolino is Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, Italy. He taught at Underwood International College, Yonsei University, Seoul, Korea, and has been a Visiting Professor at the University of Manchester, UK, a former Fulbright Scholar at Stanford University, USA, and DAAD Postdoctoral Fellow in the Peter Szondi Institute of Comparative Literature at the Freie Universität Berlin, Germany. He is the author of The Maximalist Novel: From Thomas Pynchon’s “Gravity’s Rainbow” to Roberto Bolaño’s “2666” (Bloomsbury, 2014) and The Novel-Essay, 1884-1947 (2014).

List of Figures Acknowledgements The Maximalist NovelIntroduction. Maximalist Paradigms1. “Art of Excess”: The Systems Novel2. “A Paradoxical Form”: The Mega-Novel3. “In the Eyes of the World”: The Modern EpicPart OneChapter I. LengthChapter II. Encyclopedic Mode1. An “Encyclopedic Novel”?2. An Encyclopedic “Genre”?3. The Encyclopedic ModeChapter III. Dissonant Chorality1. Chorality2. PolyphonyMinimalism/MaximalismChapter IV. Diegetic ExuberanceChapter V. Completeness1. Structural Practices of the Maximalist Novel1.1 Circular Geometries1.2 Temporal Architectures1.3 Conceptual Structures1.3.1 Leitmotiv1.3.2 Myth1.3.3 Intertextual FormsChapter VI. Narratorial OmniscienceChapter VII. Paranoid ImaginationInternal Dialectic. Chaos-Function/Cosmos-FunctionPart TwoChapter VIII. Intersemioticity Chapter IX. Ethical Commitment1. “Chemically Troubled Times”: Representing AddictionChapter X. Hybrid RealismBibliographyIndex

There have been attempts to define the nebulous genre of ‘big books’ before, but none so successful or analytically astute … Ercolino has taken full advantage not only of characterizing but also of naming the putative genre of the maximalist novel … I suspect that criticism on big books will soon be filled with references to the ‘maximalist novel.’ For this we are indebted to Ercolino’s study which makes a significant and important contribution to the criticism on late twentieth- and twenty-first century narrative fictions.