Cin Cin Nat I: Postmodern Appalachian Fiction

Cin Cin Nat I: Postmodern Appalachian Fiction by Nancy Carol Joyner Say out loud "postmodern Appalachian fiction." Does it sound like a contradiction in terms, as in "what is black and white and red all over?" Is it possible for Appalachian fiction to be also postmodern/ Or vice-versa? These are relatively uncommon questions, not only because of the comparative youth of the term "postmodern" but also because of the confusions and contradictions inherent in both modifiers. What I understand postmodern fiction to be is not all that new-Tristram Shandy can lay claim to many of the characteristics of the postmodern novel. But the term itself as it is applied to lit19 erature is far more recent than the kind of writing it classifies: fiction written in the Americas and Europe since the end of War War II. As sucn it can apply to Appalachian fiction as readily as it can to any other. To view Appalachian fiction as postmodern, however, is to see it from a different vantage point than the locus ordinarily assumed, a statement that is a more telling commentary on Appalachian critics than on postmodern ones. The purpose of this essay is threefold : 1) to offer a definition of postmodernism , 2) to identify six contemporary Appalachian writers who may be considered postmodern, and 3) to explore the implications of combining the designations of postmodernism and Appalachian fiction. Postmodernism is a term borrowed from art and architecture, where it refers to the nonrepresentational on the one hand and the highly decorated on the other. The abstract expressionism of Jackson Pollock and William de Kooning, with emphasis on the surface of the canvas, is a case in point. The IBM building in Atlanta and the Pompidou Center in Paris are architectural examples of postmodernism. Many music videos shown on MTV are its filmic equivalencies. It is easy enough to see by broad analogy how this phenomenon can be and has been applied to literature, but arriving at a precise definition is more difficult . Not that people haven't tried-Ihab Hassan in the The Postmodern Turn (1987) lists a bibliography of over 500 works that relate either directly or indirectly to postmodern theory. Like the noun "discourse" and the verb "privilege ," "postmodern" (without the hyphen ) is a current buzz word of the literati . There are at least three dimensions of the word as a literary term: 1) Postmodernism describes a historical period, from the conclusion of World War II to the present. According to Matai Calinsecu, the term was first used by an American in a literary sense in 1946, when Randall Jarrell reviewed Robert Lowell's Lord Weary's Castle and called it "post- or anti- modernist" (267). On the other hand, Larry McCaffery, in his introduction to the useful Postmodern Fiction: A Bio-Bibliographical Guide (1986), sees November 22, 1963-the day Kennedy died-as the official beginning of the postmodern era in American literature in that it marked the end of "certain verities and assurances that had helped shape our notion of what fiction should be' (xii). Whatever the precise date, writing since the early sixties manifests more postmodern characteristics than had previously been seen. There are other candidates for the name of the sort of fiction that has been written in the last 25 years, such as fabulism, or metafiction, or surfiction, but postmodernism is the most inclusive term and the one most talked about. Just as romanticism and realism are terms that describe not only antithetical characteristics but also periods of literary activity in the nineteenth century, I believe that modernism and postmodernism are the two candidates most likely to succeed in the race for the labels of twentieth century literary history . 2) Postmodernism is a philosophical stance that rejects a belief in stability or a verifiable external reality. Einstein's theory of relativity, the existentialism of Heidegger and Sartre, and Wittgenstein 's insistence on the primary importance of language all contribute to this attitude. (Deconstruction, the critical counterpart of postmodernism, is also influenced by this philosophical climate .) Artistic representation of "what is real" has therefore shifted from neatly structured plots, in which everything comes out all right in the end, to...