Realistic fiction presupposed chronological time as the medium of a plotted narrative, an irreducible individual psyche as the subject of its characterization, and, above all, the ultimate, concrete reality of things as the object and rationale of its description. In the world of post- realism, however, all of these absolutes have become absolutely problematic.
Time is reduced to presence, the series of discontinuous moments.
There is only reading and writing, which are things we do, like eating and making love, to pass the time, ways of maintaining a considered boredom in the face of the abyss. Not to mention a series of overwhelming social dislocations. Using a 'rhizomatic' critical frame suggested in Gilles Deleuze's Dialogues with Claire Parnet, we will see how these fictions 'deterritorialize' various assumptions about reading and writing texts. That such attitudes, to whatever extent they may be evidenced in these fictions, may be shockingly irresponsible will be one of the more problematic issues of this course. And so on.