Perspectives on the Postmodern

??? COHPAnATIST BRIAN EDWARDS. Theories ofPlay and Postmodern Fiction. New York and London: Garland, 1998. 310 pp. + SCOTT DURHAM. Phantom Communities : The Simulacrum and the Limits ofPostmodernism. Stanford: Stanford UP, 1998. 258 pp. PERSPECTIVES ONTHE POSTMODERN Contributing to the already substantial critical literature on postmodernism, Brian Edwards considers "play" to be the key to our understanding ofpostmodem fiction while Scott Durham regards the "simulacrum" to be the emblematic trope ofpostmodern culture. Although both studies situate themselves at the intersection oftheory and fiction, the first provides an accessible reading ofa fairly broad range ofnovels while the second foregrounds complex theoretical issues, which are more likely to appeal to specialist readers. Ifwe take into account the different aims of these studies, each accomplishes in large measure what it set out to achieve. In Theories ofPlay and Postmodern Fiction, Edwards brings his interest in critical theory to bear on his readings ofpostmodem texts by such self-consciously self-reflexive writers as Thomas Pynchon, John Barth, Robert Kroetsch, Angela Carter, and Peter Carey. Central to this intersection of theory and fiction is the notion ofpostmodern "play" featured so prominently in Derrida's deconstruction ofmetaphysical presence. For Edwards, play is a potentially infinite process capable ofdisrupting and disestablishing restrictive hierarchies and thereby ofaffirming freedom, possibility, openness, and inclusiveness. Theories ofpostmodem play underscore the tendency in postmodem fiction to foreground the beliefthat meaning is inevitably incomplete, relative, subjective, and multiple. Emphasizing reader-response criticism (Iser, Fish, Barthes, Jauss), Edwards argues that the instability of language invites readers to participate actively in the decoding of fiction as an open-ended process. The reader can now be seen to play the text like a "trickster" (chapter 2), a "Chameleon" (chapter 3), or a "Scheherazade" (chapter 4). But it is Derrida's "Nietzschean affirmation ofplay" that is so crucial to Edwards that he quotes this famous passage at least three times. Ignoring recent, more pessimistic readings ofDerridean play as limited moments of "give" in a highly deterministic system, Edwards celebrates texts as weaves of intertextual fragments that disrupt our desire for narrative closure by accentuating how meaning is inevitably implicated in a proliferation ofcontexts whose reconfigurations the reader needs to negotiate. It is therefore not surprising that Edwards opens his readings ofpostmodern fiction by siding witii Lyotard's support of"the revolutionary potential ofavant-garde expression and abundant heterogeneity" (8 1) and against Jameson's "gloomy postmodernism" (83). The play in postmodernism, he assures us, is not marked by Jameson's "empty gesture" (86) but ought to be read as "simultaneously destructive, in its subversion oftotalities" and "constructive , in its affirmation by theory and demonstration ofthe positive cultural effects of difference" (86). Although not entirely blind to criticisms of postmodernism, Edwards chooses to see only its emancipatory potential. But it is in his attempt to save deconstruction from the criticism that it is "formalist and apolitical" (56) that he is least convincing. Arguing rather defensively that one reader sees in a text revolutionary potential where another sees conservative retrenchment, he simply affirms the cultural relevance ofdeconstructive play in postmodem fiction. Maintaining that the duplicity oflanguage resists closure, he concludes that postmodern VcH. 24 (2000): 165 REVIEW ESSAYS strategies keep "texts and social arrangements open to participation and exchange" (63). But is it really the case that questioning all grounds oftextual authority means that the practice ofreading is in itself"immediately cultural and political" (63)? The strength of Theories ofPlay andPostmodern Fiction lies, for me, less in the theoretical framing ofpostmodern theory than in Edwards's excellent close readings ofthe postmodernist fiction ofThomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow, John Barth's LETTERS, Robert Kroetsch's What the Crow Said, Angela Carter's Nights at the Circus, and Peter Carey's Illywhacker. These readings capture the exuberance of texts which reinforce the affirmation ofpostmodern fiction as a discourse that both contests oppressive hierarchies and celebrates creative innovation. Although Edwards does not claim to offer radically new readings ofthese texts, his focus on play allows him to revisit fiction he obviously enjoys and knows thoroughly. Drawing attention to Pynchon's ambiguities, contradictions, displacements, and puns, he succeeds in showing that Gravity 's Rainbow "catches the excitement of deconstructive interrogation and play" (94). Contending...