Az Eszterházy Károly Tanárképző Főiskola Tudományos Közleményei. 1996. [Vol. 3.] Eger Journal of American Studies. (Acta Academiae Paedagogicae Agriensis : Nova series ; Tom. 23)

BOOK REVIEWS - Attila Kőszeghy: "New-Dirty-Postliterature-Pop-Lo-Cal-K-Mart". On American Minimalist Fiction in the 1970s and 1980s. (Abádi Nagy Zoltán: Az amerikai minimalista próza. Budapest: Argumentum Kiadó, 1994.

the other hand replaces man from the abstract worlds into his real environment" (370/371). All other details of dissimilarity are consequences of this "basic shift" (371). Minimalism rejects metaphysical problems and "returns to interpersonal relations, emotional interactions, to the family" (370). With the shift from overexaggerated, highly fictional worlds to the world of the "real man, minimalism returns to the world beyond the text, ... the non-referential or self-referential [text] ... will become referential, after the subjective visions

—objective, external view ... after the great questions

—small dimensions ... round characters after the flat characters ... antiintellectualism after a taste for philosophy"

(371). "Ironic imagination" that has been so prevailing in postmodern literature, is no longer dominant, for the minimalist writer is profoundly disturbed by irony

(372). "Postmodern parody ... gives way to a precise, clear, elliptical but concise style of smooth prose writing" (372). Abádi Nagy quotes Carver's famous saying, "no tricks", from an interview in which Carver speaks about the ethos of writing. Carver and the minimalists are not experimentalists "as a[nother] reaction against postmoderism"(373). In other words: "postmodern prose is radical, minimalism is conservative" (373). And a last but not at all negligable fact that helped this style of writing to produce a new audience for (this) fiction: "minimalism leaves the reader at rest, it does not alienate the reader but brings him/her closer to the world of its own"

(373). Abádi Nagy draws the conclusion that the discontinuity between postmodernism and minimalism is of an aesthetic nature, while the continuity between the two is supported by a similar philosophy behind both. Nevertheless, according to the author "the postmodern attitude at the bottom of aesthetic decisions is much stronger" (373) than it seems to be. "When minimalists exclude society ... they accept ... the conclusion of postmodern social philosophy ... They turn away from creating new models and theories of society. After all, postmodernists maintain that reality cannot be defined. The minimalist writer accepts the conclusion and neglects 'abstract Z-A.Z-