This mad "instead"

by Arthur M. Saltzman

"In This Mad "Instead," Arthur Saltzman investigates the breakthroughs and breakdowns of metaphorical operations in the writings of several contemporary American novelists. Focusing on representative fictions by Kathy Acker, Paul Auster, Don DeLillo, William Gass, Steven Millhauser, Richard Powers, John Updike, and Paul West, Saltzman examines how each author establishes a provisional government over the elusiveness of truth, the ambiguity of experience, and the hardships of language itself. Saltzman reveals figuration to be both inevitable and inevitably unreliable, and he illustrates how these writers treat this condition not as an impasse but as a point of departure - indeed, as an artistic mandate and creative opportunity.". "In the hands of the authors that Saltzman considers here, the restless, quizzical, startling quality of metaphor - the madness of the mad "instead" - provokes new awarenesses, restores the forces of language, and tests the means and motives of contemporary Ame