ABSTRACT:
Foreword to Dr T. Ravichandran's book 'Postmodern Identity'
(cf, separate getcited entry). Book details:
Jaipur: RBSA, 2007
ISBN 81-7611-377-8; pages xxxi + 212
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The book is a study of the earlier fiction of John Barth and Thomas Pynchon from the viewpoint of postmodernism.
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The full foreword text is available on-line.
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Extract from Foreword:
“Dr. Ravichandran has expounded and tabulated the different elements in the earlier work of Barth and Pynchon that may best be considered representative of identifying what is postmodernism. . . . If the postmodern mode transforms narrative into a Borgesian garden of forking paths, then what the reader new to the game needs most is a map. . . . If we apply [Fredric] Jameson’s method to literary criticism in relation to postmodern works, we may conclude that Ravichandran, in this book, offers us such a cognitive map of the postmodernist text—a map enabling the reader to successfully navigate the complexities of the new mode of writing. . . . As the reader will discover, the critical exposition offered of the parallel universes of the two writers is remarkable both for its theoretical sweep and its attention to textual detail."
