Hicks, Tribes, and Dirty Realists: American Fiction after Postmodernism
Robert Rebein
University Press of Kentucky
Eschewing allegiance to particular literary movements, Robert Rebein offers a shrewd topographical map of contemporary American fiction. Rebein argues that much literary fiction of the 1980s and 90s represents a triumphant, if tortured, return to questions about place and the individual that inspired the works of Hawthorne, Melville, Twain, Faulkner, and other giants of American literature. Concentrating on the realist bent and regional orientation in contemporary fiction, he discusses in detail the various names by which this fiction has been described, including literary post-modemism, minimalism, Hick Chic, Dirty Realism, ecofeminism, and more. Rebein's clearly written, nuanced inter-pretations of works by Raymond Carver, Cormac McCarthy, Don DeLillo, Louise Erdrich, Dorothy Allison, Barbara Kingsolver, E. Annie Proulx, Chris Offutt, and others will appeal to a wide range of readers.