REMARKS, NOTES, INTRODUCTION AND OTHER GUEST-EDITORIAL TEXTS PREFACING _Postmodern Culture_'s SPECIAL FICTION ISSUE DEVOTED TO POSTMODERN FICTION by LARRY MCCAFFERY Department of English San Diego State University _Postmodern Culture_ v.3 n.1 (September, 1992) Copyright (c) 1992 by Larry McCaffery, all rights reserved. This text may be freely shared among individuals, but it may not be republished in any medium without express written consent from the author and advance notification of the editors. Dedication: For Ronald Sukenick and William T. Vollmann The Final Measurement: Guest-Editor's Remarks Prefacing _Postmodern Culture_'s Special Fiction Issue Devoted to Postmodern Fiction I. *Epigraphs* I. 1 Was there no end to anything? When would he reach the final measurement? William T. Vollmann, _Fathers and Crows_ I. 2 As writers--& everyone inscribes in the sense I mean here-- we can try to intensify our relationships by considering how they work; are we putting each other to sleep or waking each other up; and what do we awake to? Does our writing stun or sting? We can try to bring our relationship with readers to fruition that the site of reading becomes a fact of value --Charles Bernstein, _Artifice of Absorption_ I. 3 "You see what's happening here you take a few things that interest you and you begin to make connections. The connections are the important thing they don't exist before you make this. This is THE ENDLESS SHORT STORY." --Ronald Sukenick, _The Endless Short Story_ II. *Editor's Preview of Contents for the Issue:* I. Epigraphs: I. 1. From William T. Vollmann I. 2. From Charles Bernstein I. 3. From Ronald Sukenick II. Editor's Preview III. Editor's Prefatory Note IV. This Is Not the Introduction: Games that Fiction Anthology Editors Play--Towards a Consideration of the Aesthetic Conventions of the Fiction Anthology as a Literary Genre. IV. 1 ". . . Unusual formal principles and aesthetic features . . ."? ". . . despite the inherent fascination involved . . ."? IV. 2 List of Fiction Anthology Categories and Potentially Useful Postmodern Applications IV. 3 Additional Bonus For Critics Developing a Postmodern Aesthetics of the Fiction Anthology Who Are Also Interested in Postmodern Music. IV. 4 Establishing the process of collaborative interactions between anthology's editorial introduction and fiction selections (a process which joins these two seemingly different forms of discourse into an aesthetic unity; summary of the absurdities, limitations, and inherent deceitfulness that arise from following out-dated approaches to such introductions; sequential listing of the topics resulting from adhering to these conventions. IV. 5 Postmodern Textual Practices and the Editorial Introduction V. Introduction: Cancelled (See Editor's Apology) V. 1 Fiction Selections Coded for Postmodernist Features Appendix A: Kathy Acker introductory comments V. 2 Contributors' Notes VI. Appendices B, C, D, E, F. Fiction Selections in the Issue: Kathy Acker, "Obsession" Robert Coover, "Title Sequence for The Adventures of Lucky Pierre" Ricardo Cruz, "Five Days of Bleeding" Rikki Ducornet, "From _Birdland_" Rob Hardin, "Dressed to Kill Yourself" Annemarie Kemeny, "Attempts on Life" Marc Laidlaw, "Great Breakthroughs in Darkness (Being, Early Entries From The Secret Encyclopedia of Photography") William T. Vollmann, "Incarnations of the Murderer" *III. EDITOR'S PREFATORY NOTE:* Waist Deep in the Big Muddy I began writing some of the following material in late May and early June 1992, just before I departed San Diego for a nine-week stay in Tokyo to begin work on a project ("Postmodernism in Japan") funded by an N.E.H. summer research fellowship. Although traces of that initial draft remain embedded in the current version (mostly in Part V), what readers now have before them differs so significantly in content and approach from my earlier drafts that for all practical purposes the two are completely different texts. During that May-June period when I began to develop my editorial introduction, I had already accepted five pieces of fiction for the issue--this out of the total number of six or seven selections, agreed upon by myself and Eyal Amiran, _Postmodern Culture_'s co-editor, when I accepted his offer to guest-edit a focus of his and John Unsworth's journal devoted to Postmodern Fiction. Thus I began my editorial introduction assuming that I had only to make an additional one or two selections for the issue, insert a few extra remarks into the draft of my introduction regarding the relevance of the new material to the issue as a whole, contact the authors when I returned from Tokyo on 8-31 to make certain they had sent Eyal their selections on computer discs, and then my duties as guest editor would have been completed. When I departed for Tokyo on 6-27 I recall feeling quite confident and optimistic that these duties would be discharged successfully, and the template I had developed for my introduction reflected these feelings. There were good reasons for this optimism. The material I already had in hand for the issue was strong, both individually and in the ways the works' stylistic and thematic concerns represented various key features associated with postmodernism (see V. 1 coded listing of selections). Moreover there was also an interesting mixture of authors and works: a selection from one of the already-canonized authors from the 60s "boom period" of postmodernism (Coover); work from two authors who had begun work in the 70s--Kathy Acker (now widely recognized as a central and controversial arrival on the postmodernist scene, and Rikki Ducornet, a writer whose works were now beginning to be recognized and praised); a piece by Marc Laidlaw, whose mid-80s novel, _Dad's Nuke_, was recognized within the genre of science fiction as a major cyberpunk novel, but whose overall literary accomplishments had been obscured or distorted by his association with genre writing; and one relatively anonymous young author (Ricardo Cruz) whose garish, surrealist depictions of urban ghetto life seemed to me to be the most original fiction about black life I'd seen since the early Ishmael Reed. The selections also included several different types of postmodernist innovations, ranging from Coover's typically outrageous forays into myth, media, sex and death, to Ducornet's delicately rendered, magical realist fables, whose lyricism often serves to highlight the "diabolism" of her "macabre fantasies," Cruz's "rap fiction," and so on. I was also taking with me to Tokyo several other promising works by authors I respected, as well as expecting to receive submission from several authors who hadn't yet replied to my original letters of inquiry or to _Postmodern Culture_'s call for fiction. During my stay in Tokyo I periodically re-read the materials I had brought with me, as well as a few intriguing possibilities that were sent to me by Eyal (incidentally, I had considerable editorial input from Eyal at each step of this project's evolution); by the time of my return to San Diego on 8-31, we had narrowed down our options to a few selections. Eyal and I set a tentative date of September 12 by which to have made the final selections for the issue; this would give me the week of September 12-19 to complete my introduction, arrange for the discs to be sent to Eyal, and generally handle the final details for the issue (the September 19 date was my own personal deadline for completing all the work on the issue, since I would be leaving then for Boulder, Colorado to take part in the Novel of the Americas Conference being held during the week of 9-19 to 9-26). However, upon arriving back in San Diego, ripples began to appear on editorial waters that had been up to now extraordinarily smooth. Within a week, a real storm was brewing. The forces responsible for this were various, some relatively minor (there were problems getting discs from the authors) and some involving financial issues, miscommunications, dozens of phone calls that crossed back and forth across the U.S. like ping pong balls or Pynchon yo-yos, and even the confusion of agents and publishers about how the new literary "space" of electronic, computer driven data should be defined or categorized.... [EDITOR'S NOTE: I find it too painful from a personal standpoint to continue with this summary except to say to my readers that the labyrinthine series of darkly humorous events that unfolded from 9-5 until 9-19 were...beyond the pale.] *IV. This Is Not the Introduction: Games that Fiction Anthology Editors Play By--Towards an Aesthetics of the Fiction Anthology* Like all other literary forms, anthologies are language games--structures of words with distinctive generic properties which arise due to a system of conventions and semiotic rules that govern its operations. As with the rules and systems of transformation in all games, those at work in anthologies not only set limits on what can (and cannot) occur, but also channel operations into certain pattern of recurrence. The principles underlying the anthology game are, of course, only vaguely sensed by readers (if at all) and even most anthology editors are themselves aware of them only intuitively. Given the primacy afforded artistic "originality" in Western aesthetics, it's not surprising that (to my knowledge) no one has ever given serious attention to studying the anthology as a literary form. Not only is the "final product" of an anthology, as well as the editorial process involved in its creation, essentially collaborative in nature, but the different functions played by editor and contributor have encouraged people to see the roles as being essentially separate. The result is that most readers and critics have regarded anthologies less as literary forms in their own right and more as simply arbitrary structures that "contain" literary objects. Without belaboring the point, and admitting the fact that having spent a lot of time and energy over the past several years putting together fiction anthologies devoted to various topics (see the Contributors' Notes), let me just suggest that now is the appropriate time for someone (thought the time is definitely not appropriate for _me_) to develop a serious discussion exploring the aesthetic of anthologies generally--and of the fiction anthology as a literary genre in particular. The timeliness of such an exposition results from the unusual formal and aesthetic features of fiction anthologies, the rich series of topics such an analysis would need to delve into, the ways that such a discussion can be linked to concepts operating in postmodern fiction and in poststructuralist and deconstructive critical theory--not to mention the fact that it hasn't occurred to anyone to develop such an essay, this despite the inherent fascination involved in developing such an essay. *IV. 1 " . . . unusual formal principles and aesthetic features . . . "? " . . . despite the inherent fascination involved . . ."?* Indeed, consider the enjoyment and intellectual stimulation involved in working out a definition of the fiction anthology as a genre, working up a typology that best describes the different sub-categories and permutations that comprise the genre, the satisfaction of gradually beginning to recognize how much FUN it will be for you to take this hitherto despised form--a form that in fact will not even be recognized as a distinctive literary genre until your essay bursts onto the academic scene--and then being able to show off your critical skills by applying a barrage of complex-and-trendy terms and implications drawn from recent critical theory, the secret satisfaction you'll derive throughout the process of developing your essay by anticipating the ways your peers' initial derision and bewilderment at your choice of topics will gradually be transformed, first to a begrudging respect, then to astonishment, and eventually to shame and embarrassment at having ever doubted you. Consider the following (the categories that apply to this current anthology are indicated in *bold*): *IV. 2 Listing of categories, *Aspects of PO M subcategories, other variables that aesthetic practices determine specific aspects of the and critical theory form and content found in any that can be used in individual anthology (incomplete)* developing a theory of the formal Anthology's scope and eventual properties of length is left open to editor fiction anthologies or restricted to a maximum of (incomplete)* (100, 200, 300, 400 or more) pages, or limited to (3-5, *6- Citation of the relevancy 8*, 8-10, 10-15, 20 or more) of such works as contributors _Pale Fire_ Selections to include previously (Nabokov), published fiction or _Ficciones_ *restricted to unpublished* (Borges), _If on a To include works by women or men or Winter's Night a *both* Traveler_ (Calvino) Selections restricted to those Death of the author written by authors of a Imagination as plagiarism specific racial, sexual, or Strategies of ethnic orientation *or not* appropriation, Anthology to include *any* form of collaborations and fiction that fits the focus or intertextuality to include only specified genre fiction (SF, Regency Familiar categorical Romance, Detective, etc.) or oppositions between only work non-generic works or subjective/objective a mixture? "creative"/non- Anthology's focus is based on creative denied. commonalities theme or Valorization of aesthetic tendencies or on "creative" over non- links with specific periods or creative writing *literary movements* questioned Anthology to appear as a book or as Endless play of a *special issue of a lit signifiers journal* which you are *guest- Bakhtin's heteroglossia editing* or regular editor of The changes in meaning To be published by a commercial that result from house or small press or moving a text from *university press* one context to Audience whose reading tastes and another interests the anthology is Denial of author as aimed for is mass market (male originator of or female or both), academic, discrete meaning *"serious" readers*, cult Sampling as central po mo audience (many options) aesthetic Editor is professional (with no, Strategies of misreading some, a lot of) experience or and re-reading used *doing this on the side* to create Contributors to be paid (no money, some money, major bucks) for Foregrounding of the contribution process of creation, Editor to be not paid or paid emphasis on the (small or *middling* or large contingencies and flat fee) *in* (royalties or personal choices in royalties plus an advance involved in which is small, medium large). aesthetic creations, The deadline for the editor to have the willingness to completed all aspects of his reveal that seeming role is (less than 6 months, "natural" or *6-12* months, 1 year or 2 "objective" patterns years, more than two years), and conclusions or no fixed deadline. result not from their relationship to any exterior state of truth or actual conditions but from aesthetic choices *IV. 3 Additional Bonus Provided to Critics Interested in the Postmodernization of Contemporary Music:* Consider developing an extended discussion that suggests how the aesthetic issues you're describing for fiction anthologies are analogous to those found in the recent appearance of so many "cover" albums (and there are many categories of such "anthologies" of musical materials)--e.g., The Coolies' _Dig_, Pussy Galore's _Exile on Main Street_, Cicone Youth's _The White Album_, and the series of "cover" albums produced by Hal Wilner. Since processes and products related to sampling are so central to rap and postmodern music generally, feel free to explore the implications of their use in terms of such concepts as intertextuality, originality, the effect of cut-and-paste methods on meaning, etc.. Develop the analogy of anthology editors to rap master DJs behind the board, mixing and cutting, using their intuition and audio memories to mix and match sounds, riffs and phrases in ways that open up new aesthetic and thematic aspects of prior materials, that communicate to knowledgeable audiences via reference and intertextuality. Perhaps point out the more subtle point that the role of anthology editor would really be analogous to a DJ only if the anthology being assembled contained only previously published fiction. If it included only new fiction, you'd need a slightly different analogy. Be sure to note the sorts of interesting issues raised by the aesthetics underlying rap and fiction anthologies. For example, is "borrowing" unfamiliar materials "more creative" than sampling materials people should know? Is it possible for a musician to _not_ borrow materials? In what sense? Should strategies that fundamentally rely on appropriation, sampling, or collaboration be considered "creative" at all? In what ways does the recent tendency to problematize authorial originality and the distinction between "literary" and "critical" writing provide ways of thinking about fiction anthologies as literary forms? *IV. 5 Establishing the process of collaborative interactions between the anthology's editorial introduction and fiction selections (a process which joins these two seemingly different forms of discourse into an aesthetic unity); summary of the absurdities, limitations, and inherent deceitfulness that arise from following out-dated approaches to such introductions; sequential listing of the topics that result from adhering to these conventions.* The options available to anyone hoping to assemble an interesting fiction anthology are virtually unlimited. Unfortunately, there are considerably fewer options available to editors once it comes time to write the editorial introductions that accompany such anthologies. As with book reviewing, editorial introductions are essentially written according to a formula that controls the overall structure, tone and content of the discourse--a formula whose main features have evolved primarily to serve the private interests of the editors and their publisher rather than to serve any necessary generic function. No matter how complex or unique the anthology's focus, how creatively and flexibly the editor has used this focus in the selection process, no matter how original the fiction selections are in terms of formal innovation or thematic complexity--in the end, nearly all editorial introductions follow a sequence of presentations that can be listed as follows: 1. Attention-grabbing opening paragraph that establishes why the anthology's theme or focus is particularly important _now_, usually accompanied by references to the inadequacies of other anthologies with a similar focus. 2. Details introduced regarding the background of the anthology, how this editor became involved in the project (here modest indications of how the editor's professional background and other credentials make him or her particularly suited to put together such an anthology), what the anthology's original aims were (and hence what sorts of considerations were involved in the selection process), and a summary of how these aims changed or remained consistent as the volume took shape. [See Appendix C.] 3. Brief, "punchy" overview of the anthology's contents. 4. Presentation of information regarding the authors' lives, citation of previous most significant publications, literary movements associated with the authors, etc.. 5. (Optional.) Roll call of other authors considered for the anthology (if applicable) with reasons why any expected figures aren't represented. If necessary, comments designed to blunt charges of the anthology's imbalances (gender, race, etc.), justifications for any political incorrectness that might be perceived in selections, followed by suggestions of what misreadings on part of the reader created such perceptions. 6. Citations regarding the appropriateness of the selections in terms of the anthology's focus; justification for any pieces that at first glance seem very much out of focus. 7. Overview of notable themes and stylistic features (examples and quotations to support this list), followed by favorable comparisons of this anthology with rival anthologies that may have preceded it. 8. Claims made for the overall significance of the anthology material, pronouncements about how the individual aesthetic and thematic features found in the anthology's fiction relate to broader trends within and outside of literature. 9. Concluding paragraph which reveals ways this anthology's selections indicate rich possibilities, new directions, etc.. 10. Final sentence designed to get the reader to turn the page as quickly as possible. The problem here isn't that these formulaic elements are all trivial or inappropriate. The problem is the formulaic nature of the formula, the tendency of editors to pass off hasty and usually self-serving conclusions based on inadequate sampling of their subject. Rather than follow many postmodern authors who try to develop methods that permit them to find systems and significance but who do so honestly by acknowledging their own subjectivity and actual, less-than-systematic experiences, many editors feel it necessary to adhere blindly to a formula whose elements encourage dishonesty, misrepresentation, superficiality, and manipulation. At least in anthologies that introduce new work by serious fiction writers, such introductions are nearly always the product of bad faith--the bad faith of editors who know better but deliberately attempt to reduce ultimately uncategorizable works to "trends," "patterns," or labels, the bad faith of literary guides who've been living inside this rich literary terrain for weeks and months, and who've been damn excited about how untranslatable the stuff is, and how resistant it is to the kinds of paraphrases and overstatements the editor is expected to make in the introduction. This isn't to say that editors shouldn't present their views and point out trends or patterns--after all, though finding a pattern in the stars may be primarily an act of the creative imagination, such patterns help people locate themselves and find out where they're going. Editors should express their opinions in a performative act that strives to break through the discursive screens of traditional editorial representation to the repressed, authentic data of the material at hand. [Editorial Note, Los Angeles, 9-25. As explained in Editor's Note for V. Intro (Cancelled), circumstances made it impossible for me to complete some sections of this Editorial Introduction (such as the actual Editorial Introduction itself). I am, however, able to provide readers with some discarded fragments of the concluding paragraph that I worked on some time ago (see Appendix F) which should clarify what I would have said if circumstances had been different. *V. Introduction (Now Cancelled)* [EDITOR'S APOLOGY:] Due in part to the time and energy required to develop the earlier sections of his remarks concerning the need for an aesthetics of fiction anthologies, partly because of circumstances beyond his control, and partly because he doesn't wish to risk the bad faith referred to earlier, the editor regretfully acknowledges that he will be unable to supply the editorial introduction. To compensate for this, and to provide readers with easy access to the relations between these works, the editor is providing in lieu of an introduction a listing of the anthology selections marked with a handy series of symbols whose meanings are explained below. He is also supplying contributors' notes for each author (because these are usually supplied at the end of an anthology they are often overlooked by readers); for readers interested in what the editor might have said in the (Now Cancelled) "Introduction," he is also including an appendix containing a fragment of material originally intended for the "Introduction" (See Appendices C-F). *V. 1. Listing of Anthology Selections with Easy-to-Use Coded References for Easy Reader Access to their Postmodern Features* Kathy Acker, "Obsession": A(1,3),B,C,E,F,G,H,J,K,L,M,N,O(2), P,Q,S,T,U,W,X,Y. Robert Coover, "The Titles Sequence for The Adventures of Lucky Pierre": A(1,2), C,E,F,G,H,I,J,K,O(1,2),P,R,S,T,U,V. Ricardo Cruz, "Five Days of Bleeding": A(1,2,3),E,F,G,H,I,K,L,M, O(1),P,Q,R,S,T,U,W,X. Rikki Ducornet, "From _Birdland_": C,F,H,I,K,N,T. Rob Hardin, "Dressed to Kill Yourself": C,D,E,F,H,J,K,O(2),P,Q,R, S,T,U,W,X. Annemarie Kemeny, "Attempts on Life": A(2),B,C,E,F,P,R,S,T,V. Marc Laidlaw, "Great Breakthroughs in Darkness (Being, Early Entries From The Secret Encyclopedia of Photography"): C,D,E,F,G,K,N,O,Q,R,S,T,U,V. William T. Vollmann, "Incarnations of the Murderer": B,C,E,F,G, K,N,O,P,Q,S,T,U,W,Y. Explanation of Symbols: A(1): Avant-Pop--appropriation of style and content of pop culture. A(2): Avant-Pop--appropriation of style and content of pop culture to subvert pop culture. B: Strategies of confounding the usual distinctions between author/character, fiction/autobiography, "real" history and invented versions. C: Meta-features. D: Cyberpunk features. E: Non-linear methods of presentation. F: Process over product. G: Collision of different world or planes of reality motif. H: Radically idiosyncratic voices and idioms employed. [Note: continue through Z.] ================================= *Appendix A: Commentary About Kathy Acker and "Obsession," Written by Editor for a Different Project--for Possible Sampling Purposes in the (Now Cancelled) Introduction* [Note: Once Larry realized that he did not have much time before the deadline to write a completely new version of this commentary, he planned to paraphrase it, or "sample" it (self- plagiarism). --Eyal.] Like her fiction, Kathy Acker is a bundle of contradictory parts that combine to create the jagged unity of a Raushcenberg collage. Street-wise gutter snipe and radical feminist critic, motorcycle-outlaw and vulnerable woman, cynic and visionary idealist, Acker writes a series of experimental, shocking, and highly disturbing novels that present perhaps the most devastating (and wickedly funny) critique of life under late capitalism since William Burroughs' mid-60s works. These works include her 1970s small press publications (_The Childlike Life of the Black Tarantula, by the Black Tarantula_; _I Dreamt I Became a Nymphomaniac!: Imagining_; _The Adult Life of Toulouse Lautrec, by Henri Toulouse Lautrec_; and _Kathy Acker Goes to Haiti_); her "re-writes" of classical Western novels _Great Expectations_ and _Don Quixote_, as well as works that pastiche a broader variety of prior literary works: _Blood and Guts in High School_, _Empire of the Senseless_, and _In Memoriam to Identity_. "Obsession" offers an illustration of the ways Avant- Pop authors appropriate, sample, and otherwise collaborate with prior texts drawn from the realms of both "high" and "pop" culture; it also showcases Avant-Pop's tendency to blur the distinction between author and character--a device which emphasizes the individual's imaginative role in constructing any version of "reality" and the interaction of "fiction" and "fact" in our media-soaked environment. In "Obsession," Acker--in one of her typically bold narrative manoeuvers--adopts the roles of Cathy and Heathcliff, the passionate and ultimately doomed lovers from Emily Bronte's 19th century masterpiece, _Wuthering Heights_. But as Avant-Pop authors often remind us, "re-telling" a familiar story within a contemporary context permits readers to re- think the assumptions and "meanings" they bring to such materials. "Reanimated" by Acker's surrealist imagination and fiercely political vision, the elements of Bronte's novel are transformed into a nightmarish vision of the sexual longings, gender confusions and injustices to be found in contemporary society. Also typical of Acker's work is her focus in "Obsession" on the body as a literal and symbolic site/cite of struggle between individuals seeking self-empowerment and the forces of patriarchal control that seek to regulate people's lives. This emphasis is grounded in more than abstract political concerns. As a real woman and not just a narrative person, Acker is her own text, her own gallery. Embedded i*n one of her front teeth is a jagged chunk of bronze. She's a body-builder in more than the usual way: her muscles animate spectacular tattoos, a combination that she feels allows her to seize control over the sign-systems through which people "read" her. Past mistress of the cunning juxtaposition and the Fine Art of Appropriation, Acker writes fiction that betrays a multitrack outlaw intellect. And she doesn't shrink from mining outlaw "low culture" genres like SF, pornography, and detective fiction. The net effect of her work is not merely to deconstruct, but to decondition. *V. 2 Contributors' Notes* Kathy Acker's most recent publications include: _Portrait of the Eye_ (a collection of three early novels) and _In Memoriam to Identity_. The selection included in this issue is from a forthcoming novel to be published by Random House in the Spring of 1993. She is also recording an album featuring her work set to music that Hal Wilner is producing, and rides a 750 Honda. Robert Coover recently spent two years developing teaching applications using hypertext in creative writing courses (this pilot program was sponsored by Apple). Professor of English at Brown University, he is the author of numerous novels and stories, including most recently _Pinocchio in Venice_. The fiction selection included here is part of a long experimental novel, _The Adventures of Lucky Pierre_, which Coover has been writing now for over twenty years. Ricardo Cruz's fiction has appeared in various literary journals, including _Fiction International_ and _Black Ice Magazine_. His first novel, _Straight Outta Compton_ (Fall 1992, Fiction Collective Two), was recently named winner of the Nilon Award for Excellence in Minority Fiction. Currently "out and about" in Bloomington, Illinois, he is completing work on his Ph.D. in English at Illinois State-Normal. Rikki Ducornet is the author of six volumes of poetry and a tetralogy of novels--_The Stain_, _Entering Fire_, _The Fountains of Neptune_, and _The Jade Cabinet_--that will be published by Dalkey Archive Press. Also known for her work as an illustrator of such works as the limited edition of Robert Coover's _Spanking the Maid_ and Borges's "Tlon Uqbar and Orbis Tertius," Ducornet is Professor of Creative Writing and Literature at the University of Denver. A forthcoming issue of _The Review of Contemporary Fiction_ will be devoted to her work (The Guest-Editor of this issue wishes it to be known that he is currently seeking materials for this issue). Rob Hardin is a writer and musician living in NYC who reports that writing is the way of "getting linear dissonant counterpoint--the chamber music nightmare and empty attics-- out of my system." His poetry has appeared in numerous magazines, including _Mississippi Review_, _Atomic Avenue_, and _Flagellation_. His recent album credits include The Lost Boys and Billy Squire's _Here and Now_. Annemarie Kemeny teaches and is completing work on her Ph.D. at the Department of English, SUNY Stony Brook. She has published criticism and poetry. Marc Laidlaw has spent most of his adult life in office buildings, writing on company word processors. His works include an early cyberpunk novel, _Dad's Nuke_ (1985), a SF novel abut Tibet, _Neon Lotus_. The selection published in this issue has appeared in print in Great Britain in _New Worlds 2_, ed. David Garnett (Victor Gollancz, Ltd.). Larry McCaffery is co-editor of _Fiction International_, _American Book Review_, _Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction_, and editor of _Storming the Reality Studio: A Casebook of Cyberpunk and Postmodern Science Fiction_ (Duke UP). Two new books will appear in 1993: _Interviews with Radically Innovative American Authors_ (Pennsylvania UP) and _Avant Pop: Postmodern Fiction for the 90s_, which will appear in the new Black Ice Books Series (Normal, IL: Fiction Collective Two). William T. Vollmann's recent publications include _Whores for Gloria_, _An Afghanistan Picture Show_, _Thirteen Stories & Thirteen Epitaphs_, and _Fathers and Crows_ (the third of Vollmann's projected septology of "Dream Novels"). Research for his books has taken him recently to Cambodia, Mexico City, Sarajevo, and the Magnetic North Pole. ================================= VI. *Appendix B: Editor's Log: 1/92--In the Beginning...* Before the word was the grant application for contributors' and editor's honoraria for a special issue of Postmodern Culture devoted to "Postmodern Fiction." 1-92. Postmodern Culture's co-editor Eyal Amiran contacted me, Larry McCaffery (for his background as an editor and critic associated with postmodernism, see contributor's notes), early in 1992 to discuss my willingness to guest edit this special issue. I agreed and we set up a basic gameplan: I would arrange for the appearance of approximately half dozen previously unpublished (in the U.S.) pieces that, in my view, illustrated significant formal and thematic tendencies within postmodernism; to this end, my selection process would avoid narrow or prescriptive definitions of what constituted "postmodernism," emphasizing the quality of material over "name recognition," although I would attempt to include at least some fiction by established figures (Pynchon, Sontag, Gaddis, Coover, Barth, Rushdie, Abish, McElroy, Le Guin, Barthelme, and Burroughs were all specifically mentioned in our preliminary phone conversations, and, indeed, were subsequently invited by me to submit fiction for the issue). I would also try to include writings by some of the most interesting recent authors, and selections from work that would come in response to Postmodern Culture's calls for fiction; I would supply an introduction which would place my selections in a general framework of postmodern aesthetics generally, and which would clarify whatever significant differences and similarities characterize the older and younger generations of postmodern authors. Deadline for my having all the materials in the editors' hands would be mid-September, with the issue going out on-line at the very end of the month. ================================= *Appendix C: Unrevised Fragments of Editor's (Now Cancelled) Introduction* 1. ...I agreed to accept his invitation to edit in part because I felt the process of putting such an issue together would contribute to the process of re-evaluating my own views about postmodernism. This process started several years ago, when now, and has grown out of a series of recognitions in the mid-80s about the limitations and strengths of my earlier positions about postmodernism, that I was already fullyI was alredayworking on suchpretty certain that whatever in part on question that the literary sensibilities on encounters in the best writing coming out of the younger generation of vital, innovative American authors has been shaped by a very different set of cultural circumstances and aesthetic considerationsvery different indeed from those that gave rise to the first wave of postmodern experimentalism back in the mid 60s...one generation's daring metafictional explorations about the relationship between author and text becomes the most effective tool of the 90s realist attempting to depict a world in which "signs," "texts," and various other fictions have proliferated to such an extent that they form the most substantial aspect of most people's existence. 2. ...no attempt was made to fill pre-designated slots or categories...what was surprising was the sheer volume of quality fiction written by the generation of innovative writers who have grown to maturity in the 80s and 90s...halfway into my selection process, Eyal Amiran had agreed with my suggestion that we aim less for a balance of fiction by younger and more established and concentrate instead on foregrounding work by emerging writers, using selections from the canonical postmodernists by way of showcasing aesthetic and thematic continuities or divergences between the generations. 3. Ducornet's camera serves as it does for some many other younger writers, as a magical mirror possessing the power to petrify the past, illuminate and momentarily petrify human truths that usually evaporate under life's process of perpetual change. ...a selection from perhaps the most versatile stylist, ventriloquist of all...quirky American dialects, bad jokes, willingness to push a trope until every aspect of it had been squeezed dry..."Lucky Pierre" is an excerpt from a legendy blue movie special, now over twenty years in the making. More than most other 60s figures, Coover's best work from the 60s is linked directly to writers like DeLillo, Leyner, the cyberpunks and the later authors whose work is so often drenched in a kind of constant breath surrealism and intertextual play, and whose prose is so frequently drenched in a kind of techno-media poetics. Cruz, appropriate that when his interrelated sequence of stories about life in the ghetto finally came together into a novel, _Straight Outta Compton_ appropriate on several levels-- the sheer intensity and sensuousness of his voice, the sheer vitality and anger and low-down ache of passion and the mixture of surprise, delight and playfulness with which they respond to the set of surprises that ghetto life has in store for them moment-to-moment. Cruz is the first black writer I've encountered who seems to have integrated rap's developed a prose voice, narrative [Editor's Note: Apologize in Ed. Note that I can't even provide fragments of the Kemeny because I left my only copy of her story behind in San Diego and did not receive the fax of her story sent by Eyal.] Laidlaw, Alphabetical structure, near science fictional tale of, associated with c-p but possesses a lyricism, verbal control, and intellectual delicacy that has more in common with Calvino or Steve Erickson (whose non-appearance is regretted). William Vollmann, "Incarnations of the Murderer." This is although the 90s postmodernists have only just begun the process of shifting gears into a decade that almost certainly is going to pick up speed and recklessness as the millennium approaches, but from this vantage point there's no question that William T. Vollmann has got a headstart over every other member of his generation in terms of opening up new narrative opportunities and laying aside the temerity and failure, hesitation, and general figure of will that seemed to lie heavy over the generation of authors appearing in the late 70s and early 80s fiction. Certainly no American author since the arrival of the canonized behemoth Thomas Pynchon has appeared with the combination of reckless ambition, verbal gifts, and an intuitive feel for inventing narrative strategies capable of rendering this vision. "Incarnations of the Murderer" displays many of the tendencies that make Vollmann's work seem so original and fresh. As is typical of most of his other work, "Incarnations" deals with brutality and those troubling emotional regions where extremes of passion and love are transformed into their equally vivid opposites. Also typically, Vollmann never allows a scene or a motif to remain static; instead, his imagination is constantly at work transforming the scenes and characters into variations designed to present new insights into materials that more traditional story-telling methods would use to make us feel comfortable, that we have understood their essence. "Incarnations" also displays Vollmann's characteristically prismatic handling of point of view--having matured in the aftermath of the experiments of writers like Burroughs, Mailer, Vonnegut, and Coover. Vollmann has taken ways of integrating authorial experience, collaborating with prior texts, and imagining inventive narrative to new levels. The risks he has managed to take at this pint, both personal and narrative, are astonishing. For all the attention paid to presenting even the most ugly and poignant scenes and people even-handedly, there is a deeply moving sense of Vollmann's personal engagement, his sense of moral outrage while witnessing the cruelties and stupidities human beings can inflict on each other. The risk of insisting on personally witnessing such acts of human folly as he documents in his fiction are burnout, having one's imagination or aesthetic judgement overwhelmed by the emotionality of such experiences. For now, though, at least for this reader, the sense of personal risk and danger has served Vollmann admirably. Surely if nothing else, Vollmann is helping to dispel the sense that postmodern American fiction has floundered under the weight of its own selfconsciousness. ================================= *Appendix D: Fragment found at bottom of page while developing conclusion to section IV. 5.* As I hope this "traditional" portion of my Introduction indicates, one can be fully informed about the ambiguities and limitations of any speech act; the tendency of all authors is to try to mask their confusion and personal insecurities behind a barrage of phoney rhetoric. This does not, however, relieve the author of the responsibility of attempting to draw conclusions about issues that might be of some use. It also doesn't mean that the process of engaging one's mind regularly with challenging topics can't be fun, or that the only options with topics one cares about deeply are to adopt the hypocritical or smug stance of the know-it-all or to mutter embarrassed apologies. Displays of either adopt either the hypocritical stance of the or the hanghyupocritical finding a way to present what your conclusions are and how you arrived at them has to be-- your conclusions and attitudesthat one can't expressand ones words withothers migwith as much mean, however, metaphorss well asaware of the limitations of an individual to draw conclusionsones and the postmodern seems torisks havepleasurethe risks have been worth itevident--pursuing this itye"breakthrough" in terms of casting off the authorialtaking off on the perhaps the most intriguing aspect of Vollmann's writing in terms of postmodern aesthetics--namely, his treatment of point of viewworkIn terms of In order to give language the opportunities to stretch out muscles it rarely uses, the narrative structures in these selections tend to be flexible, open-ended, the "plot" capable of veering off suddenly in several possible directions. Ironically, such structures can be seen as presenting a palpable and "realistic" sense of our world, with its constantly shifting series of signs systems and cultural codes producing surreal juxtapositions, a sense of media overload...exhilaration and confusion. to commentaryverbalash of expectations, the strangesurreal fusings of wherenothern equally familiar butnother context that is equally familiar butthe familiar elements drawn from differentcontexts into strange anddifferent sorts ofAestheticsQuestiolns of "realism" aside, however, using the free flowing narrative structures ofbarrthe sorts ofemiotic excess andthe constantly shiftingexploring its itself shared conviction that language's ability to transform our consciousness, a certain confidence that fiction's potential to create illusions that can shock and awaken, that language can enlight and...put in the service of confront banality counterability building language's power to that fiction in the powerabsorbed lessons of 60s literary radicalyounger the strength ofanew critical categories and terms arise with accelerating frequency in an attempt to keep pace with the appearance of the "new," the "exotic," and the "now"...fueled by a hysterical denial of the inevitability of bodily decay, old age and death, full of self-loathing for physical imperfection, obsessed with preserving one's experiences into images and sounds that provide the closest approximation of immortality allowed postmoderns, deeply suspicious of anything that cannot be soothingly controlled, "captured," replayed, most Americans have almost gladly accepted a life of banality in exchange for the creature comforts provided by its Daydream Nation; as reading becomes less central to the process whereby people are educated and understand each other, its significance retreats generally...on any given evening in America, the number of people sitting transfixed by game shows, their vestigial instinct toward self-improvement satisfied by the random bits of data occasionally tossed their way, outnumbers all the Americans who will read a book this year by a factor of 10 to 1. comforting reassurance that the American Dream of instant transcendence is real...you gotta believe your own eyes, right? the postmodern spectacle of the Rodney King trial, in which our citizens deeply felt intuition that they can't really trust the images comprising their postmodern world... are insubstantila, trickssuspicions about the illusory, awaht you see iwhich people comfort themselves and writing becomes increasinglytheandretreated into a dangerously somnolent or anything else that cannot be controlled or rationally the powerful difference--a relentless and ferocious pursuitanything that postindustrial capitalism, with its relentless difference engine, continues toproduced by thesodemanded by the logic of jaded consumers awahsare relentlesslyas the logic of postindustrial capitalism's difference engine, help distributors and bookstore ownerfocus the consumption of fiction and other art "products"direct the somnolent readers waiting patiently for the latest poll to let them know what they think or feel about something,epheality ofdifficulty ================================= *Appendix E: Early Draft of Comments Editor Planned to Use in His (Now Cancelled) "Introduction," Regarding Robert Coover's "Lucky Pierre" Selection (Remarks Which Would Also Have Helped Establish the Recurrent Pattern of Media-Induced Confusions, Reality Decay and Loss of Individual Identity Evident in Several of the Anthology's Selections).* One of the features that distinguished work by the 60s generation of postmodernists was their willingness to confort ashad to do with their of the brash band of Back in the early to mid-1960s, as Thomas Pynchon, John Barth, Susan Sontag, Joseph Heller, Kurt Vonnegut, Donald Barthelme and others were making it clear that a new generation of American writers were in their ascendancy, one particularly fresh angle of their work had to do with their presentation of technological change generally and "pop culture" in particular. And the writer no otherrelationir take on are direction their work area of shard interest that made their work seem so fresh and genuinely "new" had to do with their exploration of how technological change and pop culture was transforming American life--and the new art forms arising to meet this transformation. Most of these writers had experienced the thrill of Saturday afternoon serials and cartoons (followed perhaps by a Gene Autry Western or Hardy Boys movie), had collected bubblegum cards emblazoned with British and American fighter planes; they could recall Truman's announcement that a new weapon had been used against the Japanese in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and they recognized the significance once their family radios were replaced by a television set. There was something profound about such changes, of course, because in addition to transforming the physical space they were inhabiting, these developments were having deep and largely untheorized effects on their imaginations, what they dreamed of and were frightened by. Just as importantly, these things were affecting perception itself--movies taught writers how narrative materials could be cut-up, juxtaposed, what could be eliminated, tv ads provided insights about how to present information-dense materials economically, how to be didactic without tipping your hand too obviously, how principlesIn short, the 60s generation of postmodernist authors was the first to begin to explore the Media Scape that gradually began to occupy more and more of America's attention, its dreamslifeaffectingThese developments wereAll this was f having first time they saw television.memories of the vast transformations that accompanied the war, were old enough to remember a time when the family gathering around the radio each evening was still a novelty,evening radioThis was the first generation of authors who had grown up immersed in Media Culture , who were the firsthow popular new terrain they began to stake out was the effect that the mediamutual concern of the key areas ofthe first brash band of postmodern fiction writers were just bursting upon the relatively staid American literary scene, Robert Coover quickly established himself as one of the brashest ================================= *Appendix F: Fragment of Discussion to be Used in the (Now Cancelled) "Introduction" regarding Recurrent Motifs in Postmodernism and the Current Issue (with Supporting Quotes)* Recurrent references to the proliferation of images created by cameras (including video and movie cameras), the sense that photography is akin to magic in its ability to allow humans visual access to that which is normally invisible (the past, the dead, inner psychic states), the more ominous implications that by giving such previously ineffable or abstract states of being a tangible existence has created an entryway through which illusion, the dead, and the past will soon overrun "real" and the living and the present. Inventor of the praxiscope technology (*which see*), Professor Aanschultz believed that close observation of physiology and similar superficial phenomena could lead to direct revelation of the inner or secret processes of nature. Apparent proof of this now discredited theory was offered by his psychopraxiscope, which purported to offer instantaneous viewing of any subject's thoughts. --Marc Laidlaw, "Great Breakthroughs in Darkness" Postmodern Authors living in a contemporary world dominated by Media Scape, simulated experiences, Virtual-and-Hyper Realities, often literalize the metaphorical components of previous eras' attempts to poeticize the mysterious nature of truth and falsehood, life and death, reality and illusion, originality and duplication. Thus, Robert Coover places his hero Lucky Pierre into a cinematic narrative realm in which "All the world's a stage, and each must play his part, etc.." As technologies of reproduction create counterfeit worlds that become increasingly lifelike and offer an ever-expanding array of simulated experiences, the fleeting "real time" experiences of individuals begin to seem increasingly less substantial precisely because they cannot be replayed.