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Postmodern Narrative Theory Mark Currie. Postmodern Narrative Theory. New York: St. Martin's P, 1998. viii + 169 pp.
Written in a fluent and readable style that sometimes verges on the breezy and glib, Mark Currie's Postmodern Narrative Theory is part of book series called Transitions. In the words of general editor Julian Wolfreys, this series aims
to explore passages and movements in critical thought and in the development of literary and cultural interpretation. [. . .] It is hoped that the student will find this series liberating because rigid methodologies are not being put into place. As all the dictionary definitions of the idea of transition [. . .] suggest, what is important is the action, the passage: of thought, of analysis, of critical response. Rather than seeking to help you locate yourself in relation to any particular school or discipline, this series aims to put you into action, as readers and writers, travellers between positions, where the movement between poles comes to be seen as of more importance than the locations themselves.
I cite Wolfreys's statement at length because it suggests that what is problematic about Currie's book may derive from the larger context into which the author tried to make it fit. The bugbear of "rigid methodologies," perhaps, accounts for the author's impatience with narrative theorists' attempts to develop fine-grained "terminologisations" (the title of chapter 2) in discussing issues such as perspective, voice, and temporality. Unimpressed by these efforts, Currie describes narratology as "one of the places where the most offensive terminology has taken hold." By the same token, one wonders whether it requires methodological rigidity to address, head on, key questions that the author addresses only implicitly (or not at all): What constitutes a narrative and distinguishes it from other text types? Correlatively, what distinguishes postmodern narrative theory from literary and cultural theory more generally? Are there aspects of literature and culture that postmodern narrative theory should not consider as falling within its scope? And what, exactly, sets a postmodern "socio-narratology" apart from the classical, structuralist narratology Currie assumes as deficient?
With respect to this last question, the author's introduction does specify that the "transition that took place in narratological theory in the 1980s" involved a shift from discovery to invention (that...