Kenneth Millard

Coming of age in contemporary American fiction

American Adolescence: The Contemporary Coming-of-Age Novel Introduction: Contemporary Coming-of-Age: Subject to Change 1. In the Name of the Father Brady Udall, The Miracle Life of Edgar Mint, 2001. Russell Banks, Rule of the Bone, 1995. 2. I Change Therefore I Am: Growing up in the Sixties Gish Jen, Mona in the Promised Land, 1996. Geoffrey Wolff, The Age of Consent, 1995. 3. Citation and Resuscitation Rick Moody, Purple America, 1997. Jeffrey Eugenides, The Virgin Suicides, 1993, and Middlessex, 2001. 4. Language Acquisition: Life Sentences Scott Bradfield, The History of Luminous Motion, 1989. Mark Richard, Fishboy, 1993. 5. Lexicon of Love Marilynne Robinson, Housekeeping, 1981. Josephine Humphries, Rich in Love, 1987. 6. Memoirs and Memorials Dorothy Allison, Bastard out of Carolina, 1992. Elizabeth Wurtzel, Prozac Nation, 1995. Conclusion.

“The Dark Unaccompanied Moment”: Louise Erdrich's The Antelope Wife and the Problem of the Origin

This paper is a critical examination of Louise Erdrichs novel The Antelope Wife , one that has a particular focus in conceptualizations of origins. That is to say, it is an analysis of the novel that scrutinizes the various ways in which “origins” are a vitally important aspect, both of the narrative and of the conceptual paradigms that might be used to interpret it. The Antelope Wife thus problematizes the ways that historical and epistemological foundations are predicated on certain crucial moments of origin, which are then used to legitimate particular interpretations. A concept of a definitive origin is also used to underwrite ideas about cultural authenticity which are then placed in the service of social and political perspectives, with wide-ranging consequences. Such origins concern the beginning of narrative, the politics of ethnicity, and the original innocence of a fall from grace. In each case, the novel is notable for its subtle examination of where such concepts begin, and of the political implications of the very concept of beginnings.

Poe Ballantine and the Gothic Frontier

ABSTRACT This article situates Ballantine’s Love and Terror on the Howling Plains of Nowhere in terms of its creative engagement with gothic history, where the domestic narrative of the “memoir” and the monstrosity of Steven Haataja’s death are closely complementary. Ballantine’s book has a keen conceptual interest in the issue of origins: Where does the (textual) “self” begin, and how can history be understood without proper knowledge of true origins? This article examines other forms of beginnings in American literature (Twain, Hawthorne, Rip van Winkle) to advocate the value of Ballantine’s work as a significant contribution to American gothic history, one founded not on secure origins but on the repudiation of history. Ballantine’s memoir is a metafictional examination of this problem, where the failure of enlightenment discourses of law and medicine is understood as an anxious expression of the potential futility of the errand into the wilderness.

Textual Authenticity and the Contemporary West: John McPhee's Rising from the Plains

A critical study of John McPhee’s Rising from the Plains in the context of recent debates about the status of regional studies in a postmodern culture, this essay asks what it means to be authentically Western in a late-twentieth-century culture comprising simulacra.