Reconstructing Realism in Post-Postmodern Narrative: Dave Eggers’s A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius

Keywords: Dave Eggers, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, post-postmodern fiction, New Sincerity, metamodernism

Abstract

By analysing Dave Eggers’s autofictional work A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, this article attempts to reveal the role of this author in the post-postmodern narrative of the turn of the millennium. Following in the wake of David Foster Wallace, Eggers’s solution to overcome the problems created by postmodernism is a kind of writing based on honesty. Through a rebirth of the author, the objective of Eggers’s New Sincerity is the democratization of narrative in order to create a sensibility network aimed at ending the solipsism brought about by postmodern linguistic relativism. However, this new sensibility is reminiscent of pre-postmodern fundamentalism. The use of meta-metafiction based on the use of neo-Romantic irony enables Eggers to create an escape valve that allows for the creation of a metamodern oscillation—as described by Tim Vermeulen and Robin van den Akker.

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Author Biography

Jesús Bolaño Quintero, University of Cádiz

Jesús Bolaño Quintero is a full-time lecturer at the University of Cadiz, where he read his PhD on Paul Auster and Dave Eggers. His research interests are centred on the role of transcendentalism in post-postmodern American literature and cinema. His latest article, entitled “Alexander Payne’s Nebraska and the Return of the Grand Narratives,” was published in the 2019 edition of the journal Revista Internacional de Culturas y Literaturas.

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Published
2021-11-15
How to Cite
Bolaño Quintero J. (2021). Reconstructing Realism in Post-Postmodern Narrative: Dave Eggers’s A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. Complutense Journal of English Studies, 29, 115-126. https://doi.org/10.5209/cjes.70628
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Articles