|
|
Experiment in Richard Brautigan's Fiction
Sokolova, Alina ; Vichnar, David (advisor) ; Roraback, Erik Sherman (referee)
Richard Brautigan's works are short, imagistic and self-reflexive. His status in American literature is of an underrepresented symbol of the 60s counterculture. However, his works offer a wide range of postmodern experimental notions that challenge the conventional norms, perception of reality and stance on everyday experience. They open up problematic topics of a person's existence, of the validity of norms and rules in art and literature, of shifting views of what is commonly seen as beautiful and true, and of the inconsistency of language as a medium to record one's experience. Looking for answers on questions both metaphysical and mundane, Brautigan explores life in an unconventional way - through the rejection of the familiar expectations about the narratives, imagery, and style. In doing so, he adopts numerous postmodern notions, for instance, those of recombination, metafiction, and fragment. The proposed thesis will approach such works as In Watermelon Sugar, Trout Fishing in America, So the Wind Won't Blow it All Away among others in order to show the ways the experiment is used and the effect that it creates, recontextualizing Brautigan's position from the contemporary viewpoint.
|
guest ::
RSS feed.