Minimalism & Ann Beattie

The plan of the research will be to set forth the origins and characteristics of minimalistic literature as a response to previous modes of literary style, and then to discuss the principal practitioners of narrative minimalism. In particular, reference will be made to the style, themes, plot development, and symbology contained in various short works of Ann Beattie, who is viewed as perhaps the foremost minimalist author. As appropriate, comparisons of Beattie's work will be made to the work of other minimalistic writers, with a view toward offering an assessment of the position and strength of the movement.

The literary style known as minimalism attained currency from 1970 onward, and has been both lauded and attacked as a response to the postmodernism that emerged in the years following World War II. Murphy describes it as the response to postmodernism, inasmuch as it follows, in linear time, a literary movement that had been widely regarded as modernist in its own response to nineteenthcentury lateRomantic or Victorian narrative conventions.1 The composition of the minimalist response is a matter that has engaged a number of critics. As Martin Esslin remarks in his discussion of the roots of the once controversial theatre of the absurd, "Avantgarde movements are hardly ever entirely novel and unprecedented. The Theatre of the Absurd is a return to old, even archaic, traditions. its novelty lies in its somewhat unusual combination of such antecedents, and . . .

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, the action is moved along by means of a series of onetoone and telephone conversations and the characters' reactions to them. As he held the phone clamped between his ear and shoulder, he looked admiringly at Petra's profile. "What's up?" he [Nick] said to Karen, trying to sound very casual for Petra. "Get ready," Karen said. "Stephanie called and said that she was going to have a baby." "What do you mean? I thought she told you in Virginia that she thought Sammy was crazy to want a kid." "It happened by accident. She missed her period just after we left." Petra shifted on the couch and began leafing through Newsweek. "Can I call you back?" he said. "throw whatever woman is there out of your apartment and talk to me now," Karen said. "I'm about to go out."7 There is someminimal, to be surenarrative characterization at work here, which is to say that the storyteller's voice is not as absent as either minimalist champions or critics might wish or lament. But the sense and even the tone of the conversation is conveyed in the choice of words. These are tense, rather unhappy people who react and behave with body language a

Category: Literature - M