1st Edition

New York Fictions Modernity, Postmodernism, The New Modern

By Peter Brooker Copyright 1996
    256 Pages
    by Routledge

    256 Pages
    by Routledge

    In this original study, Peter Brooker takes issue with the simplified opposition of postmodernism to modernism in accounts of the modern period. Instead, he follows the course of modernity in the spectacular example of New York, to reveal the complexities of both modernist and postmodern responses to the city.

    Brooker's study refers us to the fiction of Doctorow, Don DeLillo and Toni Morrison and especially to the new urban `ethnic' writing. Here the voice of creative dissent and cultural hybridity expresses the best in a tradition of Amerian newness; this Peter Brooker calls the `new modern'. The text is an important contribution to contemporary debates on modernism and postmodernism, providing a thorough interdisciplinary study of new American writing within the socio-economic context of New York City and will be of great interest to students of American Studies, Cultural Studies and Literature.


    Acknowledgements 1. Introduction: Companion Cities of the other side 2. City of Modernity 3. Fellow modernists in postmodern times 4. New York nowhere 5. Jazz records Conclusion: Alphabet city Index

    Biography

    Peter Brooker has taught at the Universities of Greenwich, Massachusettes, Northampton, and Nottingham. He has written widely on contemporary writing and theory including, Modernisms/Postmodernisms (1992), A Glossary of Cultural Theory (1999, 2003), Modernity and Metropolis (2004) and Bohemia in London (2004, 2007). He joined the University of Sussex as a Professorial Fellow In April 2008.