Life, works and literary influences in eric kraft's novels. Hern'n'n lorna (1988), reservations recommended (1990) and where do you stop? (1992)

Abstract

Eric Kraft can be labeled as a postmodem realist writer, as he has produced an essentially complex metafictional world, in the middle of the overwhelming reality of the last two decades of the twentieth century. The ultímate purpose of my analysis has been to study this combination or symbiosis of postmodemism and realism, which we can find in Kraft's literary universe.In order to accomplish my aims, I had to move back even to the beginnings of traditional Realism, and the first three chapters in my dissertation constitute a theoretical approach to the ever-changing relationship existing between fiction and reality.I try to present the different points of view on reality provided by Realism, Romanticism, Naturalism, Modemism, Postmodernismand, finally, by Postmodern Realism. Chapter IV of my work is dedicated to Eric Kraft's life, works and literary influences. He has published nine books so far, and although each of them can stand alone, all of them form a family saga, linked by different characters, themes and style, but especially by the presence of the author's alter ego, his narrator, prefacer and protagonist, Peter Leroy.Kraft's nine books form a series, a mega-novel, under the mega-title The Personal History, Adventures, Experiences & Observationsof Peter Leroy; however, my dissertation only focuses on Kraft's earliest novels, ¿ Herb `n' Loma, first published by Crown in 1988. ¿ Reservations Recommended, published in 1990. ¿ Where Do You Stop?, published in 1992. Chapter V of my dissertation is dedicated to the first novel Kraft published, Herb `n' Loma. It portrays the figures of Peter Leroy'smaternal grandparents, Herbert Piper and Loma Huber, asid we observe their evolution over a period of over seventy years. Theresult is a thorough introduction to the universe of the Piper, Huber, asid Leroy families. Kraft's second novel, Reservations Recommended, has as protagonist one of the strangest alter egos of his world, Matthew Barbar.In Reservations Recommended, the sunny world of Herb asid Loma Piper gives way to Matthew Barber's troubled, distressed and doomed existente. The protagonist of this novel progressively descends into the particular hall that his tormented mind and his disgraceful childhood propitiated. Chapter VII of my dissertation is dedicated to Kraft's third novel, Where Do You Stop?, which is the first novel that fully introduces Kraft's readers to the fresh and witty childhood world of his main literary alter ego and hero, Peter Leroy. The novel focuses on the anxieties and emotions that Peter experiences on his passage from childhood to adolescente, which will determine his adult personality. We also learn about the origins of Peter's scientific inquietude, and about the author's concern regarding the topics of class and race, which are especially significant in our postmodem society. Peter Leroy's fictional world is a complex mixture of the realist impulse to depict life in credible terms, and the postmodern understanding of life that has gradually modified our representation of reality for the last forty years.Along these years, Kraft has become a sort of "character" in his own life, but, for the ones who actually know him, he is surely the omniscient artificer who creates Peter's life. Peter is his omniscient narrator; he is Kraft's voice, his imagination. However, their limits are not that clear, after all. Both Peter and Kraft are creators, characters, and narrators. In sum, they present the type of fiction that only postmodemism has made possible in the last decades of the twentieth century, while trying to show the current reality,whatever this notion represents.