After the End of History: American Fiction in the 1990s

by Samuel Cohen

In this bold book, Samuel Cohen asserts the literary and historical importance of the period between the fall of the Berlin wall and that of the Twin Towers in New York. With refreshing clarity, he examines six 1990s novels and two post-9/11 novels that explore the impact of the end of the Cold Pynchon's Mason & Dixon , Roth's American Pastoral , Morrison's Paradise , O'Brien's In the Lake of the Woods , Didion's The Last Thing He Wanted , Eugenides's Middlesex , Lethem's Fortress of Solitude , and DeLillo's Underworld . Cohen emphasizes how these works reconnect the past to a present that is ironically keen on denying that connection. Exploring the ways ideas about paradise and pastoral, difference and exclusion, innocence and righteousness, triumph and trauma deform the stories Americans tell themselves about their nation’s past, After the End of History challenges us to reconsider these works in a new light, offering fresh, insightful readings of what are destined to be classic works of literature.

At the same time, Cohen enters into the theoretical discussion about postmodern historical understanding. Throwing his hat in the ring with force and style, he confronts not only Francis Fukuyama’s triumphalist response to the fall of the Soviet Union but also the other literary and political “end of history” claims put forth by such theorists as Fredric Jameson and Walter Benn Michaels. In a straightforward, affecting style, After the End of History offers us a new vision for the capabilities and confines of contemporary fiction.

250 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2009

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Reviews

[Jon · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a v.good academic book about 1990s American fiction described along a series of "afters" (end of history, enlightenment, the fall, identity) and moving at the end toward this sense of the future anterior (i.e. that which will have been). As such, it follows the central Americanist trend of taking a period of literature, however recent, and historicizing it. This is pretty effective in Cohen's more skeptical treatment of trauma theory, which I think is generally now more critically applied after being overused in post-9/11 cultural analysis.

Overall, it reminded me how much I liked Thomas Pynchon's "Mason & Dixon" and made me want to read Toni Morrison's "Paradise" (the only novel given large coverage here that I hadn't read) for its connections to Philip Roth's "American Pastoral." I'm also always happy to see Jonathan Lethem's work ("Fortress of Solitude" here) get critical attention.