Postmodern Litereture

1. http://temple-news.com/2008/03/24/postmodern-literature-with-heart-and-humor/
The website I chose is an article interprets ‘reality and dream’ in Steven Millhauser’s writing as one of the features of American postmodernist literature through his latest novel, Dangerous Laughter (2008). Millhauser thinks people can be divided into two groups; wakers and dreamers. These two types of characters often come into his fictions. According to the writer’s opinion of this article, “today, all too many of us have become wakers, stumbling through life with our imaginations kept tied up on a short leash.” This literary feature has a possibility to be included in the theory by Jean Baudrillard as ‘simulation and the death of reality’ as postmodernism. Millhauser blears the border of reality and fantasy and in reverse shows what the reality is.

2.Steven Millhauser
Millhauser was born on August 3, 1943, in New York City. His first novel, Edwin Mullhouse: The Life and Death of an American Writer, 1943-1954, by Jeffrey Cartwright, was published in 1972. Millhauser became a Visiting Associate Professor in English at Williams College in 1986. A few years later, he became an Associate Professor at Skidmore College in New York, and he has been Professor of English there since 1992. He has won several awards for his fiction, including a Pulitzer Prize for his novel, Martin Dressler: The Tale of an American Dreamer (1996).
His novels are written by visionary, aesthetic and romantic writing style which is very rare in contemporary America. In addition, fluid prose, the utilization of detail and vivid imagery, and the imaginative nature of his work are also his feature.
In The Interview with Steven Millhauser by Marc Chénetier, Millhauser shows his view about the contrast between imagination and reality through his fictions; “…dream and imagination are methods of investigating the nature of things, they are precise instruments for exploring reality.” In the other words, he is investigating ‘reality’ through his imaginative fictions in postmodern world because he thinks these two existences can be seen by each other’s existence.