Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 1990. — 264 p. — ISBN-10: 0809316072; ISBN-13: 978-0809316076. — (Crosscurrents/modern critiques., Third series)
Can the novel survive in an age when tales of historical figures and contemporary personalities dominate the reading lists of the book-buying public?
Naomi Jacobs addresses this question in a study of writers such as William Styron, E. L. Doctorow, and Robert Coover, who challenge the dominance of nonfiction by populating their fictions with real people, living and dead. Jacobs explores the genesis, varieties, and implications of this trend in a prose as lively as that of the writers she critiques.
Using as a case study Robert Coover’s portrait of Richard Nixon in
The Public Burning, Jacobs addresses the important legal and ethical questions raised by this trend and applies contemporary libel law to the fictionalization of living people, such as Richard Nixon. She closes her study by speculating on the future of this device and of the novel.
PrecedentsThe Historical Figure in Renaissance and Elizabethan Fiction
The Historical Figure in the Seventeenth Century
The Historical Figure Under Realism
Raising the Dead: Fiction BiographiesWilliam Styron and the Politics of Fiction Biography
Form, Style, and the Fiction Biography
The Novel as Alembic: Rhoda Lerman's
EleanorThe Photograph Becomes a Mirror: Coming Through Slaughter
Fiction Histories and the Death of ProgressNovelist’s Revenge:
RagtimeThe Novelist as Necromancer: Ishmael Reed
The Speculative Self : Recombinant FictionThe Historical Figure in Speculative Fiction
Blurring the Boundaries: Postmodernist Variations
Lies, Libel, and the Truth of FictionFiction and the Law
The Public Hunting on Trial