Moments of Decision in Contemporary American Fiction: Roth, Auster, Eugenides

Abstract

Debates concerning the emergence of a post-postmodern paradigm in contemporary American fiction have highlighted the thinking of transition as a central problem. In this essay I explore three examples of a literary genre—observer-hero narrative—that historically specializes in monitoring transition and identifying shifts “in the representation of things” (Jameson ix). After outlining the critical history of this genre, I go on to argue that contemporary novels in the genre, by Philip Roth, Paul Auster, and Jeffrey Eugenides, focus on the problem of representing moments of decision. I frame the alternating interpretations these novels foreground—tragic, modern, postmodern—and conclude the essay by relating this interpretive oscillation to a Derridean undecidability that challenges the spatial emphasis found in Jamesonian postmodernism, thereby pointing toward new representational possibilities in contemporary literature.

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