| The incorporation of the madman as a romantic figure is hardly novel to contemporary American fiction, for in both short stories and novels Herman Melville developed nineteenth-century models of individual alienation. It would take another century, however, before the experimental fiction of the 1960s would spawn what may be called the "psychotext," a methodology for representing societal madness and inauthenticity.; The psychotext features an emblematic figure whose outward aggression belies an inward turn, and whose nonconformist means of escape signifies a rejection of conventionality while at the same time illustrating pervasive social tendencies. In forums exposing artificiality, victimization, identity struggle, and disorder, suffering storytellers within such fictions exhibit peculiar blends of aggression and passivity: in Walker Percy's The Moviegoer, Binx Bolling engages in chronic philosophical inquiry and hollow romantic forays; in Robert Coover's The Universal Baseball Association, Henry Waugh takes part in a simulated baseball game as an artificial means of creating the excitement so lacking in his real life; in Frederick Exley's A Fan's Notes, "Frederick" worships pro football and its players as he wanders in and out of friends' dwellings and mental hospitals; in Joyce Carol Oates's Expensive People, Richard Everett endures familial and societal abuse before murdering his mother and immersing himself in ritualized eating and writing; and in Joan Didion's Play It As It Lays, Maria Wyeth aimlessly roams the freeways and engages in meaningless drug use, sex, and small talk before being exiled to a mental institution. Considered collectively, these works project a commonality of structure that defines the psychotext as a genre, and justifies its close confidentiality.; Although post-1970 novelists responded to shifts in a pluralized and mobile culture by depicting a society more open to a discussion of differences between gender, class, and ethnic identity, elements of the psychotext continued to appear. Given the genre's recurrent appearance during periods of social stress and political upheaval, it seems clear that its depictions of literary madness and its corollary calls for social reform betoken a fixture in American literature whose representations will continue to manifest themselves during periods of change. |
