Introduction:American fiction after postmodernism /Theophilus Savvas,Christopher K. Coffman --Vegetarianism in the Anthropocene : Richard Powers and Jonathan Franzen /Theophilus Savvas --The genrefication of contemporary American fiction /Alexander Moran --Feverish fictions : William T. Vollmann and American literary history after postmodernism /Christopher K. Coffman --Metaffective fiction : structuring feeling in post-postmodern American literature /Ralph Clare --Entropology and the end of nature in Lance Olsen's Theories of forgetting /Alison Gibbons --Typical Eggers : transnationalism and America in Dave Eggers's 'globally-minded' fiction /Bran Nicol --Making it long : men, women, and the great American novel now /Kasia Boddy. "Several of American literature’s most prominent authors, and many of their most perceptive critics and reviewers, argue that fiction of the last quarter century has turned away from the tendencies of postmodernist writing. Yet, the nature of that turn, and the defining qualities of American fiction after postmodernism, remain less than clear. This volume identifies four prominent trends of the contemporary scene: the recovery of the real, a rethinking of historical engagement, a preoccupation with materiality, and a turn to the planetary. Readings of works by various leading figures, including Dave Eggers, Jonathan Franzen, A.M. Homes, Lance Olsen, Richard Powers, William T. Vollmann, and David Foster Wallace, support a variety of arguments about this recent revitalization of American literature."--Page [i]