This mad "instead"
Subtitle: governing metaphors in contemporary American fiction
By: Arthur Saltzman.
Publisher: University of South Carolina
Published: 2000
Place of publication: Columbia
Language: eng
Number of pages: 232
Subjects: American fiction -- 20th century -- History and criticism.; Metaphor.
Description: "In This Mad "Instead," Arthur Saltzman investigates the breakthroughs and breakdowns of metaphorical operations in the writings of several contemporary American novelists. Focusing on representative fictions by Kathy Acker, Paul Auster, Don DeLillo, William Gass, Steven Millhauser, Richard Powers, John Updike, and Paul West, Saltzman examines how each author establishes a provisional government over the elusiveness of truth, the ambiguity of experience, and the hardships of language itself.

Saltzman reveals figuration to be both inevitable and inevitably unreliable, and he illustrates how these writers treat this condition not as an impasse but as a point of departure - indeed, as an artistic mandate and creative opportunity.".

"In the hands of the authors that Saltzman considers here, the restless, quizzical, startling quality of metaphor - the madness of the mad "instead" - provokes new awarenesses, restores the forces of language, and tests the means and motives of contemporary American fiction."--BOOK JACKET.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. [189]-224) and index.
Table of contents: title: Introduction : the tongue's ties; title: Beholding Paul West and The women of Whitechapel; title: The figure in the static : Don Delillo's White noise; title: In the Millhauser archives; title: Post hoc harmonies : Paul Auster's Leviathan; title: The nightmare of relation : William Gass's The tunnel; title: The trope in the machine : Richard Powers's Galatea 2.2; title: Kathy Acker's guerrilla mnemonics; title: Down the rabbit whole : John Updike's Rabbit novels; title: Conclusion : On the ethical behavior of metaphor.