Infectious Postmodernism in/as Notes of a Desolate Man

Title

Infectious Postmodernism in/as Notes of a Desolate Man

Author

Nicholas A. KALDIS

Page

47-77

DOI

10.6163/tjeas.2012.9(1)47

Abstract

This essay highlights and analyzes postmodern characteristics of Chu T'ienwen's seminal 1994 novel Notes of a Desolate Man. It simultaneously undertakes a close reading of the novel and engages in a critical dialogue with other interpretations and contextual analyses surrounding this controversial text. This essay's main conclusion is that the novel's representation of gay male culture stigmatized by AIDS, in combination with its cosmopolitan postmodern panoplies, encourages readers to view postmodernity and postmodern literature in Taiwan as twin representatives of a debauched, contagious, and invasive foreign lifestyle and literature.

Keyword

postmodernism, contagion/infectious, AIDS, non sequitur, pastiche, alienation

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