Periodizing the '80s: the 'differential of history' in Nicholson Baker's The Mezzanine

Thompson, Graham (2011) Periodizing the '80s: the 'differential of history' in Nicholson Baker's The Mezzanine. MFS: Modern Fiction Studies, 57 (2). pp. 300-317. ISSN 0026-7724

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Abstract

This essay examines how Nicholson Baker’s The Mezzanine shifts engagement with the details of the material world consistently onto the axis of temporality and how, in so doing, it fashions a theory of periodization in which historical and social trends and events are relegated in importance. Asking how the detail or moment might both alter an understanding of the general and spread time to infinite proportions, The Mezzanine casts doubt on the process of periodizing by way of metonymy and synecdoche and offers instead a contingent and improvised version of the 1980s.

Item Type: Article
RIS ID: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1011442
Additional Information: Copyright © 2011 Purdue Research Foundation. This article, "Periodizing the '80s: The 'Differential History' in Nicholson Baker's The Mezzanine," first appeared in MFS, Modern Fiction Studies, v. 57:2, 2011, 300-317. Reprinted with permission by The Johns Hopkins University Press.
Schools/Departments: University of Nottingham, UK > Faculty of Arts > School of Cultures, Languages and Area Studies > Department of American and Canadian Studies
Identification Number: https://doi.org/10.1353/mfs.2011.0048
Depositing User: Thompson, Dr Graham
Date Deposited: 17 Aug 2011 16:21
Last Modified: 04 May 2020 20:24
URI: https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/id/eprint/1508

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