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Examines Sukenick's role in reshaping the American literary tradition.
In Musing the Mosaic prominent critics of postmodern and contemporary fiction and culture discuss the fictional and theoretical works of Ronald Sukenick, one of the most important American writers to emerge from the late 1960s. Sukenick has been a prolific participant in reshaping the American literary tradition for two generations and played a pivotal role in the creation and growth of the Fiction Collective and FC2 publishing houses, as well as the journals American Book Review and Black Ice Magazine. In his work he argues that contemporary fiction can neither perform traditional functions nor rely on any conventions in an ever-more dynamic world. Staying true to Sukenick's own creative style, one that takes the seams out of writing before re-stitching it in ways that are truly novel, the contributors examine how and why his writing comes closer to the dissolving, fragmentary nature of reality and its lack of closure than perhaps anything written before it.
Contributors include Mark Amerika, Nancy Blake, Marcel Cornis-Pope, JR Foley, Charles Harris, Ursula Heise, Jerome Klinkowitz, Larry McCaffery, Brian McHale, Lance Olsen, Matthew Roberson, Charles Russell, Campbell Tatham, and Steve Tomasula.
"…the contributors to this collection do an excellent job of clarifying the significance of Sukenick's work." — CHOICE
"There's a lot of creativity in this collection, a lot of mold-breaking efforts that parallel Sukenick's own efforts. This is a stylish and important book that will propel you back to Sukenick's fiction for a re-read." — Joseph Natoli, author of Memory's Orbit: Film and Culture 1999–2000
"A variety of paradigms are used to read Sukenick's diverse canon, providing a greater sense of Sukenick's importance in the postmodern landscape, as well as a better understanding of the elasticity of his talent." — Todd F. Davis, coauthor of Formalist Criticism and Reader-Response Theory
Introduction
Matthew Roberson
Taking the Line for a Walk: In Form to Narralogues, A History in Medias Res
Steve Tomasula
"At Play in the Fields of Formal Thinking": Up and Postmodernist Metafiction
Charles B. Harris
What's Your Story: Narration and "A New Knowledge of Reality" in The Death of the Novel and Other Stories
Nancy Blake
Sukenick's Posthumans
Ursula K. Heise
Interruption Discontinuity Imperfection It Can't Be Helped
Campbell Tatham
Explorations of Postmodern Time, Space, and Image: Considering the Works of Ronald Sukenick and David Salle
Charles Russell
Sukenick in Space, or, The Other Truth of the Page
Brian McHale
Graphiction: Technological Reality in Ronald Sukenick's 98.6, Doggy Bag, and Mosaic Man
Lance Olsen
The Artist is the Medium is the Message: A Ron Sukenick Re-Mix
Mark Amerika
Unwriting/Rewriting the Master Narratives of "Bankrupt" Modernity: Ronald Sukenick's Mosaic Man
Marcel Cornis-Pope
Down as Up, Out as In: Memoir as Manifesto
JR Foley
Exploring the Question of Values: An Interview with Ronald Sukenick
Larry McCaffery
8½ Ronnies
Jerome Klinkowitz
Selected Bibliography
List of Contributors
Index