Examines Sukenick's role in reshaping the American literary tradition.
In Musing the Mosaic prominent critics of postmodern and contemporary fiction and culture discuss the fictional and theoretical works of Ronald Sukenick, one of the most important American writers to emerge from the late 1960s. Sukenick has been a prolific participant in reshaping the American literary tradition for two generations and played a pivotal role in the creation and growth of the Fiction Collective and FC2 publishing houses, as well as the journals American Book Review and Black Ice Magazine. In his work he argues that contemporary fiction can neither perform traditional functions nor rely on any conventions in an ever-more dynamic world. Staying true to Sukenick's own creative style, one that takes the seams out of writing before re-stitching it in ways that are truly novel, the contributors examine how and why his writing comes closer to the dissolving, fragmentary nature of reality and its lack of closure than perhaps anything written before it.
Contributors include Mark Amerika, Nancy Blake, Marcel Cornis-Pope, JR Foley, Charles Harris, Ursula Heise, Jerome Klinkowitz, Larry McCaffery, Brian McHale, Lance Olsen, Matthew Roberson, Charles Russell, Campbell Tatham, and Steve Tomasula.