A study of recent American fiction since World War II. The main topic will be the shift from modern to postmodern narration, and the uses of experiments in narration for discriminating private and public craziness. We shall be reading Joseph Heller's Catch-22, Vladimir Nabokov's Pale Fire, Thomas Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49, Denis Johnson's Jesus's Son, Toni Morrison's Beloved, Don DeLillo's White Noise, and Raymond Carver's What We Talk About When We Talk About Love. Though the class is not a seminar, all class meetings will be centered on discussions of the books. Format: discussion/seminar. Requirements: class participation, a 4- to 6-page paper, a 6- to 8-page paper, and a final exam. Prerequisites: a 100-level English course, except 150. Enrollment limit: 25 (expected: 25). Preference given to senior, then junior English majors. (Post-1900)