Seeing through satire : how contemporary American fiction critiques the world
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[ACCESS RESTRICTED TO THE UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI SYSTEM AT AUTHOR'S REQUEST.] In this dissertation, I argue some contemporary authors intermingle modes of satire and transparency to encourage a twenty-first century reading community. Using six contemporary American novels, I demonstrate how these works present a self-conscious homage to the radical irony that defines many postmodernist novels while also providing clarity through direct address and the presence of the imagined author. By combining satire and transparency, authors invite readers into the interpretive process to begin to form ethical judgments. Ed Park's Personal Days and Joshua Ferris' Then We Came to the End use satire to critique corporatism and the folly of the common office worker. Simultaneously, these novels present semi-transparent emotional explorations into the suffering of employees who are crushed by their own mediocrity, unfulfillment, and selfishness. Percival Everett's Erasure and Paul Beatty's The Sellout satirize the genre of the protest novel alongside stereotypical depictions of blackness. By interjecting candid self-reflection and emotional insight into each protagonist, these novels question what it means to be an African American author in the twenty-first century and how such literature might bypass post-racial criticism. Colson Whitehead's Zone One and Nathaniel Rich's Odds Against Tomorrow use apocalyptic scenarios and post-apocalyptic life or death decisions to bring the tired questions of teleology and existence in narcissistic, late-capitalist America into relief against impending annihilation.
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