Postmodernist Literature

Paper Summary:

This paper reviews four novels from the perspective of the representation or deconstruction of national culture in the USA. The four books this paper discusses are Philip Roth's 'Portnoy's Complaint', Kurt Vonnegut's 'Cat's Cradle', Saul Bellow's 'Herzog' and Ralph Ellison's 'Invisible Man'.

From the Paper:

"That "vanished frontier" is perhaps Vonnegut's allusion to the loss of the idealism that America once represented. "The highest form of treason is to say Americans aren't loved wherever they go, whatever they do," Minton added on page 98. "
"Vonnegut's postmodernism style throughout this book is a quasi-cynical but not entirely exaggerated representation of America; the folly of religion, for example, is shown in numerous passages. On page 4-5, God liked people "in sailboats much better than He liked people in motorboats." And on page 2, humanity is organized into teams to do "God's will" but those teams never discover "what they are doing." Hence, God is a mystery, and writers like Vonnegut have license to muse over society's clumsy attempt to define and categorize Him for their own future salvation from themselves. "

Sample of Sources Used:

• Artson, Bradley Shavit. Synagogues as Centers for Social Justice, University of Judaism. Available from http://judaism.uj.edu/content/contentunit/asp?CID=1526&u=5403&t=0.
• Bellow, Saul. 1964. Herzog, The Viking Press, New York.
• Ellison, Ralph. 1952. Invisible Man, Random House, New York
• James, Fredrick. 1991. Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, DukeUniversity Press, Durham.
• Klages, Mary. 2003. Postmodernism. English Department, University of Colorado. Available From http://www.colorado.edu/English/courses/ENGL2012Klages/pomo.html.

More papers on Postmodernist Literature:

• Essay # 29930 : "Theory of Literature"
• Analytical Essay # 18645 : "The Narrative Techniques of Postmodernist Fiction"
• Term Paper # 110157 : "Humanist and Postmodernist Perspectives"

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