Jerome Klinkowitz

Donald Barthelme: An Exhibition

Donald Barthelme (1931–1989) is regarded as one of the most imitated and influential American fiction writers since the early 1960s. In Donald Barthelme: An Exhibition, Jerome Klinkowitz presents both an appreciation and a comprehensive examination of the life work of this pathbreaking contemporary writer. A blend of close reading, biography, and theory, this retrospective—informed by Klinkowitz’s expert command of postmodern American fiction—contributes significantly to a new understanding of Barthelme’s work. Klinkowitz argues that the central piece in the Barthelme canon, and the key to his artistic method, is his widely acknowledged masterpiece, The Dead Father. In turning to this pivotal work, as well as to Barthelme’s short stories and other novels, Klinkowitz explores the way in which Barthelme reinvented the tools of narration, characterization, and thematics at a time when fictive techniques were largely believed to be exhausted. Klinkowitz, who was one of the first scholars to study Barthelme’s work and became its definitive bibliographer, situates Barthelme’s life and work within a broad spectrum of influences and affinities. A consideration of developments in painting and sculpture, for example, as well as those of contemporaneous fiction, contribute to Klinkowitz’s analysis. This astute reading will provide great insight for readers, writers, and critics of contemporary American fiction seeking explanations and justifications of Barthelme’s critical importance in the literature of our times.

Fire and power : the American space program as postmodern narrative

This text maps the cultural contours of space-age America through readings of some of the eras narratives. It is argued that these texts comprise a literary history of the space age, an exploration of the novels possibilities in uncertain times and a critique of postwar society.

Fiction: The 1960s to the Present

A decade and a half into the 21st century, everyone knows that forces abound. Often contrary, but sometimes in league for even more powerful effect, they raise the level of discourse to heights that provide encompassing perspectives. From what one critic calls “a planetary imagination” to other scholars’ interests in academic politics and digital transformations, these forces strive for an overview that enriches each of its component parts. “What this country needs is a good five-cent synthesis,” a Saul Bellow character once famously remarked. Today that synthesis is more likely to be priced in the millions.

Early Writers: Jupiter Hammon, Phillis Wheatley, and Benjamin Banneker

Jupiter Hammon (1711–c. 1786) lived most of his life as a slave of the Lloyd family on their Long Island, New York, estate. Hammon’s literary talents, which found expression in poems of religious exhortation, were encouraged by the Lloyds, and earned him the stature of a preacher and leader among his fellow slaves. Because Hammon’s poem “An Evening Thought” was published in 1761, he is generally regarded as America’s first black poet, though this rank is determined by formal publication within the structures of genteel white society. Hammon remains noteworthy as a figure whose writing technique served the demands of poetic art as well as those of his religious faith. What earlier critics saw as crudeness, contemporary scholars have come to regard as evidence of folk poetry struggling against the stricter forms of religious verse.