Shifting anxieties in the fiction of Kazuo Ishiguro and Don DeLillo

• Main Author: Lim, Keith Jeong Yin
• Other Authors: Cornelius Anthony Murphy
• Format: Theses and Dissertations
• Language: English
• Published: 2016
• Subjects: DRNTU::Humanities::Literature
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/68874
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

Contemporary fiction, explored through the work of Kazuo Ishiguro and Don DeLillo, complicates our understanding of how fiction evolves through time. An irregular ebb and flow of postmodern literary style from these authors’ earlier works to the present day can be detected when we analyse the subtle shifts in style between their texts. These subtle shifts are examined in part through the lens of Harold Bloom’s The Anxiety of Influence. The fear of imaginative death is a powerful motivator and force that shapes Ishiguro and DeLillo’s fiction that when viewed alongside postmodern literary technique reveals significant aesthetic choices. Fundamentally, then, postmodernism in the literary context may be understood first and foremost as a technique that writers may choose to adopt over the course of literary history.