American postmodernist fiction and the past

American Postmodernist Fiction and the Past offers a new way of thinking about how history and the past function in postmodernist fiction of America. Providing close-readings of key texts by Robert Coover, Don DeLillo, Thomas Pynchon, William T. Vollmann and E.L. Doctorow, the book traces the development of the postmodernist historical novel, and outlines both the commonalities and the differences in the ways in which these writers utilise the past in their fiction. In so doing, the book not only challenges received assumptions on the relationship between postmodernism and history, but also considers the reasons for the waning influence of postmodernism in contemporary American literature.