Outside, America The Temporal Turn in Contemporary American Fiction [Paperback]

The idea of the outside as a space of freedom has always been central in the literature of the United States. This concept still remains active in contemporary American fiction; however, its function is being significantly changed. Outside, America argues that, among contemporary American novelists, a shift of focus to the temporal dimension is taking place. No longer a spatial movement, the quest for the outside now seeks to reach the idea of time as a force of difference, a la Deleuze, by which the current subjectivity is transformed. In other words, the concept is taking a temporal turn.
Discussing eight novelists, including Don DeLillo, Richard Powers, Paul Theroux, and Annie Proulx, each of whose works describe forces of given identities-masculine identity, historical temporality, and power, etc.-which block quests for the outside, Fujii shows how the outside in these texts ceases to be a spatial idea. With due attention to critical and social contexts, the book aims to reveal a profound shift in contemporary American fiction.

Introduction: America and Outside /Part I: Space of Outside /1. Dear American Road: The End of the Road in Annie Proulx'sPostcardsand Richard Powers'sOperation Wandering Soul /2. Where the Tides Rise and Ebb: Power and America in Steve Erickson'sRubicon Beach /3. Journey to the End of the Father: Battlefield of Masculinity in Paul Theroux'sThe Mosquito Coast /4. The American Traveler's Love And Solitude: The Pragmatics of the Double in William T. Vollmann'sThe Atlas /Part II: Practices of Outside /5. Nietzsche, Crime Fiction, and Question of Masculinity in Denis Johnson'sAlready Dead: A California Gothic /6. A Man with a Green Memory: Cinema, War and Freedom in Stephen Wright'sMeditations in Green /7. Time and Again: The Outside and the Narrative Pragmatics inThe Body Artist /8. WWDD (What Would Disney Do)?: Cinematic Field and Narrative Act in Richardl(