"Futures possible": reading for realism in contemporary literary genre fiction
Abstract
This thesis reads three contemporary novels, Colson Whitehead's Zone One, Thomas Pynchon's Inherent Vice, and Lydia Millet's Mermaids in Paradise in relation to literary realism. What is so novel about this approach is that all three of these novels are, to varying degrees, genre texts. Whitehead's novel is a post-apocalyptic zombie novel, Pynchon's is a stoner detective pastiche, and Millet's is a fantasy novel about a newly discovered cadre of mermaids. The point, simply put, is that these novels are not easily understood as literary realism--and with (somewhat) good reason. Despite the obvious genre elements, however, all three of these novels deny genre in service of a more "realistic" (my quotations) approach to their material. These novels, then, leave room for interpretation via a model of literary realism. The goal of this thesis is to understand how contemporary writers deploy genre and realism to both image a possible future and sketch the limitations of such a project.
Degree
M.A.