Also author of Rewriting: Postmodern Narrative and Cultural Critique in the Age of Cloning (CH, Feb02, 39-3257), Moraru (Univ. of North Carolina, Greensboro) argues that in postmodernism one "reprises" and "represents" (which he reads as "re-presents") every bit of fiction that one reads. He sees postmodernism as "as a case of prodigious compulsive cultural recollection" and writes that "this is representation, language generally, that in saying itself, says the other, as it were, re-cites other words, speaks other idioms, the alreadyand the elsewherespoken and written." Thus "memorious discourse." Moraru sees this discourse not as imitation but as practicing: writers practice the universal way of knowing and saying. He does not focus on any novelists at great length, but his discussions of novelist Toni Morrison and of Derrida, Nabokov, and Borges are useful. Even so, only an extremely focused postmodernist will be able to follow Morarus unfocused discussion; the reader must construct the text in his or her own mind. Summing Up: Recommended. Graduate students, researchers, and faculty only.
Q. Grigg, emeritus, Hamline University
Choice, May 2006
|
