Beyond irony: The cult of sophistication in contemporary American literature

The purpose of this study is to read creative nonfiction and fiction of Nicholson Baker, William T. Vollmann, Jonathan Franzen, David Foster Wallace within the context of topics surrounding recent literary criticism about new directions after postmodernism and offer a new outlook on contemporary literature. The basic premise of this study is that when considered in light of the newly emerging schools of the so-called ethical turn and the oft-mentioned end of postmodernism and the re-birth of realism, the selected works demonstrate another vista for contemporary literature that tends towards re-establishing literature?s ethical inquiry into the human element before all else. The analysis of the creative nonfiction and fiction of these four contemporary American writers present new theories of reading for contemporary literary scholarship. The selected works are all, in their own particular ways, symptomatic of a recent aspiration for ethical treatment of certain social and cultural issues and a commitment to the human. In charting the manifestations of these symptoms as evidences of a new movement in contemporary literature, this study bears witness to the common anxiety of these writers who move toward the truthful representation of the human, of reality. The selected works of creative nonfiction and fiction account for contemporary American literature?s various conflicts and dilemmas as well as searches for revitalization.