American Literature in the Era of Trumpism: Alternative Realities (American Literature Readings in the 21st Century)

This edited collection offers an exploration of American literature in the age of Trumpism―understood as an ongoing sociopolitical and affective reality―by bringing together analyses of some of the ways in which American writers have responded to the derealization of political culture in the United States and the experience of a ‘new’ American reality after 2016. The volume’s premise is that the disruptions and dislocations that were so exacerbated by the political ascendancy of Trump and his spectacle-laden presidency have unsettled core assumptions about American reality and the possibilities of representation. The blurring of the relationship between fact and fiction, bolstered by the discourses of ‘fake news’ and ‘alternative facts,’ has not only drawn attention to the shattering of any notion of ‘shared’ reality, but has also forced a reexamination of the purpose and value of literature, especially when considering its troubled relation to the representation of ‘America.’ The authors in this collection respond to the invitation to reassess the workings of fiction and critique in an age of Trumpism by considering some of the most recent literary responses to the (new) American realit(ies)―including works by Colson Whitehead, Ben Winters, Claudia Rankine, Gary Shteyngart, Jennifer Egan, and Steve Erickson, to name but a few―, some of which were composed in the run-up to the 2016 election but were able to accurately and incisively imagine the world to come. Acknowledgments Contents Notes on Contributors List of Figures Chapter 1: Introduction: On the Meanings of ‘American Reality’ A Corpus of Trump Fiction? Against Literary Nationalism Aims and Organization of the Volume References Part I: Getting Across in a Trumpian World Chapter 2: “The office could be any office”: Toward a New Sincerity in the Age of Trumpism Nixon and the Useful Tools of Postmodernism Untruth or Post-truth: The Unavailability of a Trump-Watergate David Foster Wallace and Image Culture Between New Sincerity and the New/Alt-right From Jefferson to Reagan and Trump: America’s Private Language Aestheticization, Irony, and Privacy Learning from Wallace’s The Pale King Truth-Values: The Pale King, Trump and the Neoliberal Marketplace of Ideas Digitization and the Alt-right Establishing Moral Responsibility and Truth After the Death of the Author “The Office Could Be Any Office”: Trump in the (Oval) Office References Chapter 3: “I’d get so constipated if I were you”: Ottessa Moshfegh’s Intimate Disgust “Just as I’d Always Hoped It Would Be”: Disgust in Moshfegh’s Fiction “Don’t say It, It’s Disgusting, Let’s Not Talk”: Disgust in the Trump Era “Everything Is Political”: Affect and the Novel “‘Is He Worth The Stink?’”: Disgust, Contamination, and Artistic Value in My Year of Rest and Relaxation Coda: Death in Her Hands References Chapter 4: Writing the Resistance: Claudia Rankine’s Exploration of Whiteness in The White Card On Whiteness On Blackness On Naming References Part II: Alternative Histories of ‘America’ Chapter 5: Alternative Facts, Alternative Genres: Jennifer Egan’s Manhattan Beach The Turn to Genre Manhattan Beach and the Performance of Genre Authority and Authenticity Reading Genre, Reading Genre Fiction References Chapter 6: The Day the Music Died: The Invisible Republic in Steve Erickson’s Shadowbahn The Dream Life of the Nation American Weimar Shadowbahn The Invisible Republic Saving America From Itself References Chapter 7: “The direction of the bizarre”: Reimagining History in Colson Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad References Chapter 8: Underground Airlines, Chaos, and Dehumanization Literalizing a Metaphor Writing About the Black Abject An Alternate World Dehumanization and Violence Chaos and History Conclusion References Part III: Humor as Contestation Chapter 9: How Do We Laugh about This? Literary Satire in Trump Times Bad for America, Good for the Novel? It’s Difficult Not to Write Satire References Chapter 10: American Dirt’s Trumpian Discourse and the Latinx Parodic Response Trump vs. the Latinx Community: A Discourse Analysis American Dirt and the Idealization of the ‘Good’ Latinx Migrant Writing My Latino Novel: Mocking the Stereotype Through Twitterature References Chapter 11: Writing as Antidote: Muslim Writers Resist in Don’t Panic, I’m Islamic and Banthology “Stories from Unwanted Nations” “Words and Pictures on How to Stop Worrying and Learn to Love the Alien Next Door” Testimonies of a Political Moment Humor and the Speculative in Najwa Binshatwan’s “Return Ticket” Humor, Vulnerability, and the Luxury of Astonishment in Karl Sharro’s “The Joys of Applying for a US Visa” Concluding Thoughts References Chapter 12: Coda: Empathy in the Age of Trump: Or, Using Our Weird Cultural Moment to Reassess How Fiction Works References Index