Jaroslav Kušnír

Jaroslav Kušnír’s book American Fiction: Modernism-Postmodernism, Popular Culture, and Metafiction is a sequel to his previous study on American postmodern fiction entitled Poetika americkej postmodernej prózy: Richard Brautigan and Donald Barthelme [Poetics of American Fiction: Richard Brautigan and Donald Barthelme]. Prešov: Impreso, 2001. It explores various aspects of American postmodernist fiction as manifested in the works by Richard Brautigan, Donald Barthelme and other American postmodernist authors such as Robert Coover, E. L. Doctorow, Kurt Vonnegut and Paul Auster. Analyzing various short stories and novels, the author shows differences between modernist and postmodernist literature in the works of Donald Barthelme; the way postmodern parodies of popular literary genres give a critique of some aspects of American cultural identity and experience (the American Dream, individualism, consumerism); and he also shows different ways postmodern authors such as Robert Coover, Kurt Vonnegut and Paul Auster create metafictional effect as one of the most significant aspects of postmodern literature.

Jaroslav Kušnír is the Associate Professor at the University of Prešov, Slovakia, where he teaches such courses as American literature, British literature, Australian short story, literary theory and criticism. His research includes American postmodern and contemporary fiction, Australian postmodern fiction, and critical reception of American, British and Australian literature in Slovakia. He is the author of Poetika americkej postmodernej prózy (Richard Brautigan and Donald Barthelme) [Poetics of American Postmodern Fiction: Richard Brautigan and Donald Barthelme]. Prešov: Impreso, 2001; and Australian Literature in Contexts. Banská Bystrica: Trian, 2003.