Counterfeit Culture: Truth and Authenticity in the American Prose Epic Since 1960 (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9781108428484)

Counterfeit Culture explores the possibility of writing epic in an age of alternative facts. Examining six attempts to forge an American prose epic since 1960, this study goes on to trace a national tradition of inauthenticity, stretching back across four centuries. In works by authors such as Pynchon, Gaddis and Burroughs, the contemporary turn away from truth and authenticity can be seen as a return to an established line of literary tricksters and confidence men, with tropes of fraud and artifice running deep in the American grain. Combining archival work with historically-inflected analysis of literary narrative, this book ranges through questions of identity, technology, history, and music in its engagement. From Marguerite Young's inquiry into psychological disintegration to William T. Vollmann's ongoing cycle of false histories, the study introduces a new reading of the American epic.

Author: Rob Turner
ISBN-10: 1108428487
ISBN-13: 9781108428484
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Language: English
Published: 06/20/2019
Pages: 232
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 1.10lbs
Size: 9.20h x 8.30w x 0.60d