Name: Monstrous Possibility
ISBN: 9781564781901

Curtis White

In Monstrous Possibility Curtis White provides a unique collection of essays written in styles ranging from the criti-fictional to the deeply theoretical. These essays are often funny, usually polemical, and always urgent. White creates in these essays a lucid perspective on what it means to be a writer and a human being in the so-called postmodern moment.

An Invitation to Literary Politics

Monstrous Possibility

Donald

This is an odd book to read in 2009. Most of the book is a polemic in defense of postmodern literature and specifically postmodern literature as a literature of opposition. For the most part, this is a debate I am uninterested in, but my fondness for Curtis White made me read this book anyway. These essays were written in the 80's and 90's, when deconstruction et al were still controversial. They are not totally outdated or useless now, but they certainly aren't as compelling or pressing as I imagine they once were.

I am unconvinced by the idea that postmodern literature or philosophy are oppositional or that any literature can be oppositional. I am especially unconvinced by the idea that small printing presses are somehow not capitalist or operate under a logic different from the rest of the economy.

In some ways, the essays at the end of the book are critical of those in the beginning and less optimistic, but they still carry an odd optimism about the possibility and promise of postmodern culture and high technology. I do not share White's optimism about the possibilities created by either.

Of course, I agree with a lot here too. I agree that literature and theory are meaningful and important - and not in competition with each other. I agree that the book industry is horrible (the semi-fictional account of a small literary press trying to survive in a world of large chain book stores is hilarious and spot-on). I agree that Derrida is an important thinker and that his critics, for the most part, 'don't get it'.

At the end of the day, the real question about this book is why White did not mention Thomas Pynchon, even when he rattled off a list of 30 or so 'postmodern' fiction writers. I kept waiting for a discussion of Pynchon, whose ouvre probably the best example of ethics and politics in postmodern literature, but it never came.

Monstrous Possibility An Invitation to Literary Politics

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