The following work is part of a study I have been interested in for some time now and I have covered it at many levels.

 

Looking at the short stories of Raymond Carver and other similar writers I argue that a distinct second wave of postmodernist writers from the late 1970s though the 1980s revived a type of neo-realism due to their dissatisfaction with their predecessors and their inability to comprehend postmodern American culture.

 

Raymond Carver is an instigating force behind the movement and he creates hyperreal short stories primarily as a reaction to the unsatisfactory representations of reality (unreality) offered by his metafictional predecessors and contemporaries.

As you read the following blog posts you will see how I undertake a close examination of key thinkers of the postmodern period and refer to some of their seminal studies in postmodern theory.  In order to demonstrate what is acheived by Carver's hyperreal fiction, and how it is acheived, these include Jean Francois Lyotard's The Postmodern Condition and Jean Baudrilard's Simulacra and Simulation.

 

Also included are some examples of other, key hyperreal short story writers in order to demonstrate a definite 'school' of thought.  I will conclude (eventually) by bringing these stories together with the postmodern theories in order to posit a moral question about the significance and effects of such literature in relation to contemporary society.  I will also conclude by arguing that more can be acheived, causing less alienation of the reader, by mirroring social structures and human nature, rather than examining the inadequacies of linguistic and representational structures.