Postmodern women writers?
Breon Mitchell
twenty years only) who you think of as "postmodern" (however you wish to
define that). I'm looking for novels and short story collections (generally
with an experimental bent) by women that would fit in well with works by such
male authors as Calvino, Coover, Perec, Barnes, Pynchon, Eco, and Vollmann. I
will use your responses in part for course discussion of gender and genre
issues with regard to the postmodern. Thanks for any help you can give!
Breon Mitchell (mitc...@indiana.edu)
Janet M. Lafler
books have been published as science fiction, so you may not have
heard of her.
Particularly "postmodern" are:
_The Female Man_ (1975)
_On Strike Against God_ (1980)
_Extra(Ordinary) People_ (1984)
_The Hidden Side of the Moon_ (1987 -- a collection of short stories)
Of course, they're all somewhat difficult to find. I think _The Female
Man_ is in print in an edition from Beacon Press, but I don't know about the
others.
/Janet
--
send mail to: ja...@netcom.com
"I know an Archaeopteryx when I see one, and I can tell an Ichthyosaur
from a Plesiosaur, or a Trilobite from a Graptolite, but I don't know
anything about senators." -- Oliver Butterworth, _The Enormous Egg_
Francis Muir
The first writer who springs to my mind is Joanna Russ. Most of her
books have been published as science fiction, so you may not have
heard of her.
Since there seems to have been modern women writers in Great Britain
somewhat before their counterparts over here in the States, I would
not be surprised to find a more convincing assortment of post-modernists
over there rather than over here.
Philomath
Steven Purvis
One obvious suggestion is Kathy Acker (_Empire of the Senseless_, _In
Memoriam to Identity_, and _Portrait of an Eye_). Her work is often
presented in the context of continental postmodern thought. However, there
are more subtle forms of feminist postmodern writing. For instance,
many of the novels of Margaret Atwood (_The Edible Woman_ and _Lady
Oracle_) are arguably postmodern. BTW, I would never present these novels
as being postmodern novels written by feminists. I don't think postmodernism
should be given teleological priority. Unfortunately, the contribution
of feminism to postmodern thought and culture is often ignored by
commentators.
Anyway, good luck with the course.
Steven Purvis
Gary Lee Stonum
Two fairly prominent choices would be Angela Carter (pretty much
anything by her but especially the later things) and Kathy Acker.
Stonum
Francis Muir
I would appreciate suggestions for women writers (works published
in the last twenty years only) who you think of as "postmodern"
(however you wish to define that). I'm looking for novels and
short story collections (generally with an experimental bent) by
women that would fit in well with works by such male authors as
Calvino, Coover, Perec, Barnes, Pynchon, Eco, and Vollmann.
If postmodern also implies non-linear, then A.S. Byatt's POSSESSION is a
candidate.
Philomath
mca...@dialcall.com
How about Margaret Atwood (The Handmaid's Tale, Cat's Eye)
Margaret Drabble (The Radiant Way, A Natural Curiosity)
Nadine Gordimer
Anne Tyler
What exactly do you mean by an "experimental bent"? Don't you think that any
novel written in the last 20 years would qualify as postmodern, or are you
looking for some type of fiction out of the postmodern age? I'd like to know
what it is exactly you consider postmodern.
Meg Alley
Alayne McGregor
In a previous posting, Janet M. Lafler (ja...@netcom.com) writes:
> The first writer who springs to my mind is Joanna Russ. Most of her
> books have been published as science fiction, so you may not have
> heard of her.
I particularly enjoyed Russ' novella _Souls_, which was distributed as
part of a Tor double, as well as in one of Russ' collections and (I think)
in a best-of-year SF collection.
If Joanna Russ qualifies, then surely James Tiptree Jr. (aka Raccoona
Sheldon aka Alice Sheldon) must, too. One of her short story collections,
such as _Her Smoke Rose Up Forever_, _Ten thousand Light Years from
Home_, or _Warm Worlds and Otherwise_ would be the best.
--
Alayne McGregor aa...@freenet.carleton.ca
ala...@ve3pak.ocunix.on.ca
mcgr...@cognos.com
Eric Rauchway
fiction from Molly Hite, scholar of same, who argues in _The Other Side of
the Story_ that women postmodernists are up to things different from those
to which their male counterparts are up, circumlocutorily speaking.
In said course the postmodernist women & their works we read were, as I
remember,
Doris Lessing, _The Golden Notebook_;
Margaret Atwood, _Lady Oracle_,
Joanna Russ, _The Female Man_,
and oh, probably somebody else I can't remember just now. They
accompanied the usual roster of guys: Barth, Borges, Nabokov, Pynchon.
Professor Hite has, since then, written a postmodernist detective story,
_Breach of Immunity_, which I recommend.
--
Eric Rauchway
Department of History
Stanford University
rauc...@leland.stanford.edu
Those who do not remember history are doomed to flunk my class.
Gad
I might suggest Mary Capanegro, and her short story collection, _The Star Cafe_.
--
Greg Dyer || If it's bigger than your head,
g...@ksu.ksu.edu || it's probably a melon.
http://www.ksu.edu/~gad ||
SamWellers
last twenty years only) who you think of as "postmodern" (however >you
wish to
>define that).
The PoMo women writers that spring immediately to my mind are
Luce Irigaray and Helen Cixous. However, Irigaray is not a novelist;
she's a (post)Lacanian psychoanalytic theorist. She also happens to
be what I consider to be a beautiful writer. Cixous is a novelist
and philosopher. Laugh of the Medusa (1978?) is her most famous
novel, I think.
I think Clarice Lispector could also be categorized as a Postmodern
female writer. The Hour of the Star is a wonderful and well regarded
novel. It is quite short.
Also, as previously mentioned, Kathy Acker and Jeanette Winterson
could fit the pomo niche. And don't forget Marguerite Duras, who is
being re-read by many poststructuralists as a writer who puts Lacanian
theory into a literary context.
Catherine Weller
Sam Wellers Books
SAMWE...@AOL.COM
Dan 'Fergus' Roberts
>If Joanna Russ qualifies, then surely James Tiptree Jr. (aka Raccoona
>Sheldon aka Alice Sheldon) must, too.
I have a hard time seeing James Tiptree Jr as that 'thing' we call
'post-modern.' Her stories were, to me, examples of classically
well-crafted stories.
****************************************************************************
Dan 'Fergus' Roberts
Fergu...@delphi.com ga0...@vnet.net
****************************************************************************
rst...@utdallas.edu
> I would appreciate suggestions for women writers (works published in the last
> twenty years only) who you think of as "postmodern"
How bout Kathy Acker? I can't recall her titles, but she's steeped
in pomo deconstruction, semiotics, gender, identity, etc.
> (however you wish to
> define that).
I don't wish to : )
Robert S
--
Joe Ahearn
blessed with so many good, and thoroughly "post-modern," women
poets.
Jorie Graham springs immediately to mind as a writer who works
consciously and interestingly with the whole notion of
"post-modernism."
Brenda Hillman is perhaps the most intelligent poet writing in
the country and deserves high praise for her "post-modern"
examinations and deconstructions of feminine identity,
feminism, and gnostic spirituality.
Adrienne Rich, who is old enough to have written modernist
classics, is also old enough to have worked with great force as
a post-modernist, epecially in terms of her evaluation of
political and public discourse.
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Joe Ahearn
jo...@delphi.com
Serious writers write for money.
David Emery
Leslie Marmon Silko's Almanac of the Dead - a long, densely populated,
apocalypse-shaded account of the political and cultural crises engulfing
the people of North America. Very disturbing, exposing the dark realms
of society that we occasionally glimpse in newpapers, open windows, bad
neighborhoods, and our own subconscious.
stephanides adam l
entitled _The Mauve Desert_, which I would consider post-
modern. Its structure is unique, as far as I know: the
book is divided into three parts, of which the first
is a book-within-the-book,
also entitled "The Mauve Desert";
the second is the working notes of a woman working on a trans-
lation of the book into French; and the third is the translation of the
book produced by the translator, given in full. In the original,
the "book" and its "translation" wsere presumably both given in
French; I have the English translation, which gives both in English.
Having said this, I have to admit I did not finish the book myself.
It clearly required more concentrated attention than I was prepared
to give it at the time.
--Adam
stephanides adam l
(although the original French title had the article). Also,
my preceding post didn't really make clear how the first and
third parts differed. The "translation" is given in the same
language as the original, but practically every sentence is
reworded or altered in some way, reflecting the "translator's"
input.
--Adam
Charlotte Freeman
Woman in teh Chinese Hat). I usually hate postmodern novels (for the
emptiness I find at their core) but it seems to me that Maso uses the
tools of postmodernism (fragmentation, collage, non-text inclusion) in a
particularly useful manner.
stephanides adam l (aste...@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu) wrote:
: It turns out the book is called just _Mauve Desert_, no article
Christopher Reiner
Fingers Press). Chadwick writes very short (and usually very funny)
"fictions" that I think are indicative of a particular kind of postmodern
writing in which there is a deep concentration (rather than
fragmentation) of narrative, while conventional ideas of character
motivation and development are called into question. There are certain
male writers that do this, such as Barry Yourgau, Stephen-Paul Martin and
Mark Leyner; but Chadwick is one of the few women writing in this vein.
Christopher Reiner
cre...@crl.com