ABSTRACT
Non-teleological narrative is a staple of many contemporary American fictions, however diverse the purposes of the fictions are. Raymond Carver's fiction doesn't explicitly encompass conditions of structural unemployment, incorrigible violence in the cities, the closed frontier and the sense of baffled manifest destiny, but it has superbly caught the mood generated by these conditions. The contemporary American version is infected with the philistinism of glamour that the media generate. Even the most gifted and the most distinguished writers find the temptation irresistible. In describing contemporary American fiction, the term "postmodern" is avoided as it is a much-abused term in contemporary literary discourse, because it tends to obfuscate rather than clarify the instances that support it. Unlike contemporary French experimental writing, which is invariably accompanied by ideological justification, American experimental writing does not pretend to the status of ideology.
