A quest or Historical Truth in Postmodernist American Fiction

Abstract

Since the 1970's there have been ongoing debates about the nature of postmodernist American fiction. Many of the critics involved in these debates tend to think of postmodernist American fiction as metafiction, surfiction, or fabulation, emphasizing the self-reflexive characteristic of these fictions. We can see this trend of criticism reflected in the titles of books: Robert Scholes's Fabulation and Metafiction (1979), Larry McCaffery's The Metafictional Muse (1982), and Patricia Waugh's Metafiction (1984), which are regarded as important criticisms of postmodernist American fiction. Without denying that the metafictional trend is a conspicuous characteristic in postmodernist American fiction, it also appears to be correct to state that postmodernist American writers' concern with the social reality in which they live is an equal factor in the shaping of their works.