The Review of Contemporary Fiction

This Mad "Instead": Governing Metaphors in Contemporary American Fiction by Arthur Saltzman
Anne Foltz

Arthur Saltzman. This Mad “Instead”: Governing Metaphors in Contemporary American Fiction. Univ. of South Carolina Press, 2000. 232 pp. $39.95.

Metaphor is the holy grail of literary art—an intriguing amalgam calling attention to itself not only as a carefully crafted linguistic prize but also as a mysterious and elusive truth. Arthur Saltzman’s This Mad “Instead”: Governing Metaphors in Contemporary American Fiction examines the successes and failures contemporary novelists meet when using metaphor in the construction of their fictional worlds. Saltzman begins with the notion that “language is an especially suspicious artistic medium and must be frisked for the meanings it smuggles,” and while figurative language resides more comfortably in the world of poetry and poetics, because it is both expected and anticipated, fiction employs metaphor no less strategically or effectively. Although the approach to metaphor may be slightly different in the contemporary text due to philosophical changes in how we view the stability of language, nevertheless “metaphor aspires beyond the role of ornamentation to become a means of knowledge.” Saltzman’s selection of authors focuses on the past fifteen years of contemporary American fiction and represents a diverse cross-section of the landscape—Paul West, Don DeLillo, Steven Millhauser, Paul Auster, William Gass, Kathy Acker, and John Updike. In each of these authors, Saltzman envisions the employment of metaphor as a point of departure rather than an end in itself, an opportunity for the examination of language’s seeming ambiguity. Contrary to indictments against contemporary fiction’s lack of moral reliability, Saltzman very convincingly argues that these authors move beyond linguistic ornamentation and/or mere literary playfulness to provide an underlying structure or method of inquiry governed by a dynamic and extraordinarily active search for meaning. For anyone who believes that contemporary fiction has somehow failed to live up to its literary predecessors, Saltzman’s book shines a remarkable light, not only on individual texts but on the very language of their construction. [Anne Foltz]


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The Review of Contemporary Fiction This Mad "Instead": Governing Metaphors in Contemporary American Fiction by Arthur Saltzman Anne Foltz Arthur Saltzman. This Mad “Instead”: Governing Metaphors in Contemporary American Fiction. Univ. of South Carolina Press, 2000. 232 pp. $39.95. Metaphor is the holy grail of literary art—an intriguing amalgam calling attention to itself not only as a carefully crafted linguistic prize but also as a mysterious and elusive truth. Arthur Saltzman’s This Mad “Instead”: Governing Metaphors in Contemporary American Fiction examines the successes and failures contemporary novelists meet when using metaphor in the construction of their fictional worlds. Saltzman begins with the notion that “language is an especially suspicious artistic medium and must be frisked for the meanings it smuggles,” and while figurative language resides more comfortably in the world of poetry and poetics, because it is both expected and anticipated, fiction employs metaphor no less strategically or effectively. Although the approach to metaphor may be slightly different in the contemporary text due to philosophical changes in how we view the stability of language, nevertheless “metaphor aspires beyond the role of ornamentation to become a means of knowledge.” Saltzman’s selection of authors focuses on the past fifteen years of contemporary American fiction and represents a diverse cross-section of the landscape—Paul West, Don DeLillo, Steven Millhauser, Paul Auster, William Gass, Kathy Acker, and John Updike. In each of these authors, Saltzman envisions the employment of metaphor as a point of departure rather than an end in itself, an opportunity for the examination of language’s seeming ambiguity. Contrary to indictments against contemporary fiction’s lack of moral reliability, Saltzman very convincingly argues that these authors move beyond linguistic ornamentation and/or mere literary playfulness to provide an underlying structure or method of inquiry governed by a dynamic and extraordinarily active search for meaning. For anyone who believes that contemporary fiction has somehow failed to live up to its literary predecessors, Saltzman’s book shines a remarkable light, not only on individual texts but on the very language of their construction. [Anne Foltz]

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