Musing the Mosaic

Examines Sukenick's role in reshaping the American literary tradition.

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.

Matthew Roberson is Professor of English at the State University of West Georgia and the author of 1998.6.

Matthew Roberson is Professor of English at the State University of West Georgia and the author of 1998.6.

"…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