"There is Fiction in the Space Between": Feeling, Language and Subjectivity in Ben Marcus' Poetics.

This project posits the work of the American author Ben Marcus within an increasingly dominant literary mixture of experimental and realist aesthetic strategies. In exploring Marcus’ work within the larger contexts that come to define the 21st century American literary production, such as the waning of postmodernism, the creative writing program and the affective turn, the project takes the institutionalization of postwar American fiction as its starting point. More specifically, it will discuss Marcus’ career trajectory and the evolution of his work from the avant-garde to a more mainstream position as indicative of a larger paradigm shift that has come to define contemporary American literature and writing in the wake of postmodernism.