Contemporary Fiction: A Very Short Introduction

Citation

Eaglestone, R. (2013). Contemporary Fiction: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford University Press. Very Short Introductions.

Chapter Summary

This is a short book in Oxford's Very Short Introductions series, organised in seven chapters: an introduction, five thematic chapters and a conclusion. The publisher describes contemporary fiction as "a wide and diverse field, now global in dimension", with an enormous range of novels and writers that keeps growing quickly, and presents the book as an exploration of its "major themes, patterns, and debates". The topics it names run from genre, form and experimentalism to the legacies of modernism and postmodernism, the relationship between globalization and terrorism, and the impact of technology. Throughout, Eaglestone examines how novels reflect the world in which they are written as well as the artistic concerns of writers and readers. The author, Robert Eaglestone, is Professor of Contemporary Literature and Thought at Royal Holloway, University of London.

Chapter 1: Introduction

The introduction opens a book about a field that, in the publisher's words, is now global in dimension and continues to grow at great speed.

Chapter 2: Form

A chapter on the shape and technique of contemporary novels. The publisher names form together with experimentalism and the legacies of modernism and postmodernism, which suggests the chapter's concern with how recent fiction relates to earlier experiment.

Chapter 3: Genre

The chapter on genre takes up the kinds of fiction within the contemporary field, one of the topics the publisher lists first.

Chapters 4–6: The past; The present; The future

Three chapters organised by time, on contemporary fiction's relation to the past, the present and the future. The publisher's list of topics, which includes globalization and terrorism and the impact of technology, indicates the kind of material these chapters cover, but it does not assign topics to particular chapters.

Chapter 7: Conclusion

The book closes with a concluding chapter.

Key Concepts

Chapters 1–3: Introduction; Form; Genre

• Contemporary fiction: fiction of recent decades, which the publisher describes as global and growing fast.
• Form and experimentalism: the technical choices of recent novels and their relation to earlier experiment.
• Legacies of modernism and postmodernism: the inheritance from earlier movements that contemporary writers work with or against.
• Genre: the kinds into which contemporary fiction falls and the debates around them.

Chapters 4–7: The past; The present; The future; Conclusion

• Past, present and future: the three time frames that organise the middle of the book.
• Globalization and terrorism: the relationship the publisher names as a central concern of fiction about the present.
• Technology: its impact on fiction and on how the future is imagined.
• Patterns and debates: the book's method of finding connections across a large, unfinished field.

Critical Analysis

Strengths

• A clear organising scheme. Two chapters on how fiction is made (form and genre) are followed by three on its relation to time (past, present, future), which gives a large and shapeless field a simple, memorable structure.
• Global rather than national scope. The publisher stresses that the field is now global in dimension, so the book is framed around contemporary fiction as a whole rather than a single national literature.
• Connects art and world. The publisher's account of the book stresses both the world novels reflect (globalization, terrorism, technology) and the artistic concerns of writers and readers, so formal and contextual reading are kept together.
• A specialist author. The book is written by a professor of contemporary literature and thought, in a series designed to give concise, balanced introductions.

Limitations

• Very short for a vast field. A pocket introduction to fiction that is still being written can only sample it; readers will need the novels themselves and further criticism.
• Quick to date. Published in 2013, the book cannot cover fiction or debates since then, a particular drawback for a subject defined by being recent.
• Thematic, not a reference work. Organised by themes and patterns, it does not offer systematic coverage of authors, countries or movements.

Where It Fits in the Course

In the course on modernism and contemporary literature, Eaglestone's book covers the end of the timeline that most of the other books stop short of. For modernism, Christopher Butler's Modernism: A Very Short Introduction is its companion in the same series, and Peter Childs's Modernism and Pericles Lewis's The Cambridge Introduction to Modernism give fuller accounts; reading one of them first makes Eaglestone's discussion of modernism's legacies easier to follow. Linda Hutcheon's A Poetics of Postmodernism is a theoretical study of postmodern fiction built around historiographic metafiction and goes deeper into the postmodern inheritance and fiction's engagement with history. The Cambridge Companion to Modernism is a collection of specialist essays, better for research than for a first reading.

How to Use This Book

The book suits undergraduates beginning courses in contemporary literature and general readers; no prior study is needed, though having read a few recent novels helps.

• Read it whole first. At its length it can be read in a sitting or two, which is the best way to grasp its scheme of form, genre and time.
• Then use it as a frame. For each novel on a course, ask which chapter it belongs to: how it handles form or genre, and whether it is chiefly concerned with the past, the present or the future.
• Pair chapters with novels. Read "The past" alongside a recent historical novel, "The present" alongside a novel about globalization or terrorism, and "The future" alongside fiction about technology.
• Read backwards into theory. Follow the discussion of modernism's and postmodernism's legacies into Butler or Lewis and into Hutcheon.
• Update it. Because the field moves fast, test the book's patterns against novels published since 2013 and note where they still hold.