The Presidential Character: Richard Nixon as Literary Subject

Year 2017, Issue: 47, 27 - 48, 01.10.2017

Seth Studer

Abstract

This article establishes Richard Nixon as a vital figure in the development of literary characterization in the United States from the late-twentieth to early-twenty-first centuries. During Nixon’s lifetime, tension between postmodernist and realist modes of representation dominated the U.S. literary landscape. As portrayals of Nixon in literature evolved from those of caricature to those of serious characterization, the figure of Nixon as a liberal subject—that is, a subject capable of being represented realistically in fiction, a character with a fully-developed consciousness who can evoke sympathy—offered ambitious novelists a device for narrowing broad, social themes into a psychological context and for widening local, psychological spaces into a historical context. In establishing the trajectory of the Nixonian trope in U.S. literature, this article examines plays and novels by Gore Vidal, Philip Roth, Thomas Pynchon, Robert Coover, A.M Homes, Don DeLillo, and others

Keywords

Fiction, Realism, Postmodernism, Characterization, American Literature, Nixon

Başkanlık Karakteri: Edebi Bir Özne Olarak Nixon

Abstract

Bu makale, Richard Nixon’ı yirminci yüzyılın sonlarından yirmi birinci yüzyılın başlarına kadar Amerikan edebiyatında karakter gelişiminde önemli rol oynayan bir figür olarak ele alır. Yaşamı süresince, Amerikan edebiyatında postmodernist ve gerçekçi temsil biçimleri arasında bir gerilim egemendi. Nixon’ın edebi tasvirleri karikatürlerden ciddi betimlemelere dönüşürken, kurmaca eserlerde gerçekçi bir şekilde temsil edilebilen ve sempati uyandıran tam gelişmiş bir bilinç düzeyine sahip bir özne olarak Nixon figürünün kullanımı, iddialı romancıların geniş, sosyal temaları psikolojik bağlamda daraltabilmelerini ve yerel, psikolojik alanları tarihsel bağlamla ilişkilendirmelerini mümkün kıldı. Amerikan edebiyatında Nixon örneğinin kullanımının izini süren bu makale, Gore Vidal, Philip Roth, Thomas Pynchon, Robert Coover, A.M Homes, Don DeLillo ve diğer yazarların romanlarını ve oyunlarını incelemektedir

Keywords

Kurmaca, Gerçekçilik, Postmodernizm, Karakterizasyon, Amerikan Edebiyatı, Nixon

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