Evading Class in Contemporary British Literature [Paperback]

This trenchant book argues that the cultural attempt to erase class during the period from Margaret Thatcher to Tony Blair has only generated its return as a troubling subterranean element in British literature and theory. Driscoll critiques the way postmodern theory idealizes contemporary British literature as a space of fluid, flexible decentered subjects, arguing that beneath this ideology are clear evasions of class. Offering critical readings of canonized middle-class authors from Martin Amis to Graham Swift, Driscoll makes the compelling argument that the contemporary British novel, assisted by class blind? postmodern literary theory consistently works to control the problem of class.Introduction:?Questions of Class in the Contemporary British Novel 'Unworkable Subjects':?Middle-Class Narratives in Pat Barker, Ian McEwan,?and Kazuo Ishiguro 'Our Economic Position': Middle-Class Consciousness in Zadie Smith and?Will Self Classless Fictions?: Middle-Class History/Working-Class Subjects in Martin?Amis,?Peter Ackroyd, and Hanif Kureishi We're all Bourgeois Now: Realism and Class in Alan Hollinghurst, Graham Swift, and Jonathan Coe A Class Act: Representations of Class in British Cinema and Television

Surveying an impressive range of recent fiction, film, and television, Driscoll reminds us that even in an era dominated by emergent ethnicities, sexualities, and hybrid identities, class remains in many ways the great and inescapable theme of British culture. Though most of the literature he discusses seeks to deny or transcend differences of class, it betrays through the very strenuousness of its evasions the persistent social and psychic costs of economic disadvantage. Any student seeking an overview of contemporary British literature will profit from consulting this book. - James F. English, University of Pennsylvania, author of The Economy of Prestigeand editor of A Concise Companion to Contemporary British Literature

In his penetratlÓ`