ABSTRACT
As I hope the preceding chapters illustrate, the novels of Reed, Acker, and DeLillo attempt to problematize—in various ways—traditional notions of author, text, and reading subject. While our study’s focus has shown the respective texts to operate somewhat differently from one another and to relatively different ends, the three novels nevertheless possess a unity in the problematizing itself. The kinds of problematizing each accomplishes clearly associate them with artistic practices popularly labeled “postmodern.” At the same time, I am convinced that any simple and single minded categorization of these writers, and a good many others, as “postmodern”—as against, say, “modern”—is itself wrong headed, perhaps motivated more by one’s desire for clean theoretical categories than truthful description. Of course, we could not hope in this small space to analyze all the myriad complicated issues involved in such categorizations.
