Monstrous Possibility: An Invitation to Literary Politics (American Literature (Dalkey Archive))

In Monstrous Possibility Curtis White provides a unique collection of essays written in styles ranging from the criti-fictional to the deeply theoretical. These essays are often funny, usually polemical, and always urgent. White creates in these essays a lucid perspective on what it means to be a writer and a human being in the so-called postmodern moment.

Intent on describing and accounting for the impact of theory and pomo on contemporary fiction writing, White contemplates the coincidence of the simultaneous arrival in the 1960s and '70s on American university campuses of writers, poets, continental literary theory and that monstrous creature "Postmodernism."

White's efforts lead him in surprising directions: revealing arguments about postmodernism's politics and ethics; telling critiques of the anti-humanist theories of Louis Althusser, Jean Baudrillard and post-Marxism; trenchant appeals for the continued relevance of Marcuse and Theodor Adorno; and a funny but finally dead-serious reinvocation of the idea of Beauty.