Irritable Bodies and Postmodern Subjects in Pynchon, Puig, Volponi

«In this elegant and finely crafted comparative study of contemporary postmodern fiction in the United States, Latin America, Italy, and several other countries, Giorgio Mobili offers us a fresh new view of what it means when modern-day artists, be they writers or cinematographers, make a point of showing what has previously remained hidden to their audience. Writing beautifully and persuasively on a host of well-known, critically acclaimed novels, as well as on several important films of the last few decades, Mobili demonstrates the indispensable value of the Lacanian notion of the Real – in essence, that which resists or exceeds symbolic articulation – to our understanding of current literary production. The notion in question, which internationally recognized theorists from Kristeva to Zizek have studied and developed in other contexts, is shown here to translate as the disquieting omnipresence of the human body, especially in its most abject forms, in contemporary literature and art. Referring to fears of nuclear holocaust in Volponi’s works, sexual anxieties in those of Puig, or utopian disillusionment in Pynchon’s, Mobili opens our eyes wide to the many ways in which bodies are now represented and perceived. He also explains in terms far simpler than those utilized by many other critics the different historical, socio-political, and psychological reasons behind this perspective and thematic evolution in the modern novel. All readers and viewers of modern fiction and cinema thus stand to learn a great deal from this lucid, informed book, in particular those who continue to ask why we as a global society seem nowadays to need to visualize corporeal horrors unimaginable in previous times.» (Stamos Metzidakis, Assistant Chair, Romance Language; Director of Graduate Studies in French; and Professor of French and Comparative Literature, Washington University in St. Louis)