Lawrence F. McCaffery Jr. (born May 13, 1946) is an American
literary critic,
editing, and retired
professor of
English language and comparative literature at San Diego State University. His work and teaching focuses on postmodern literature, contemporary
fiction, and Bruce Springsteen.
[McCaffery on Glory Days: A Bruce Springsteen Symposium ()] He also played a role in helping to establish
science fiction as a major literary genre.
[See McCaffery's chapter "The Fictions of the Present." The Columbia Literary History of the United States, ed. Emory Eliiott. New York: Columbia University Press, 1988, pp. 116–77. ()]
Early life and education
McCaffery was born in 1946 in Dallas, Texas. He received his PhD in 1975, with a dissertation on the works of
Robert Coover.
Career
Academic career
He joined the Department of English and Comparative Literature at San Diego State University in 1976. He taught in SDSU's English Department until retiring in 2010. During his career as a professor, McCaffery took up visiting professorships at University of Nice, University of California, San Diego, Deep Springs College (where William T. Vollmann attended), Seikei University in Tokyo, Japan and was a Fulbright Lecturer at Beijing Foreign Studies University during the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989.
Literary career
In 1983, McCaffery published two books in the field of postmodern literary studies. The first was
The Metafictional Muse: The Works of Coover, Gass, and Barthelme, which explored the emergence of the "meta-impulse" as one of the defining features of postmodern aesthetics.
[ The Metafictional Muse: The Work of Robert Coover, Donald Barthelme and William H. Gass. Pittsburgh: Univ. of Pittsburgh Press, 1982. ()] The second was
Anything Can Happen: Interviews with Contemporary American Novelists (with
Tom LeClair), which helped identify the major innovative authors associated with
postmodernism.
[ Anything Can Happen: Interviews with Contemporary American Novelists (with Tom LeClair). Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1983. ()]
McCaffery went on to publish three additional collections of interviews with contemporary authors: Alive and Writing: Interviews with American Authors of the 1980s with Sinda Gregory (1986),[ Alive and Writing: Interviews with American Authors of the 1980s (with Sinda Gregory). Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1987. ()] Across the Wounded Galaxies: Interviews with Contemporary American Science Fiction Authors (1990),[ Across the Wounded Galaxies: Interviews with Contemporary American Science Fiction Authors. Urbana: University of Illinois Press 1990. ()] and Some Other Frequency: Interviews with Innovative American Authors (1995).[ Some Other Frequency: Interviews with Innovative American Authors. Philadelphia, PA: Univ. of Pennsylvania Press, 1995. ()] McCaffery explains that the interviews within these works begin orally, and, after being transcribed from tape and edited by both McCaffery and the interviewee, become "collaborative texts based on an actual conversation rather than a direct rendering of that conversation".["Guru of the Interview": Lance Olsen reviews Across the Wounded Galaxies In American Book Review August/September 1990, p. 1 (http://americanbookreview.org/issueContent.asp?id=97)]
During his career as Professor at SDSU, McCaffery played a large role as editor of literary journals. In 1983, McCaffery arranged to have the literary journal, Fiction International move to SDSU from New York City, where it had been edited and published by Joe David Bellamy since 1973.[ Mississippi Review: The Cyberpunk Controversy. #47/48. 1988. Including general introduction, "The Desert of the Real: The Cyberpunk Controversy."][Cyberpunk Timeline (http://project.cyberpunk.ru/idb/timeline.html)]
His work Storming the Reality Studio placed science fiction and cyberpunk within the field of postmodern studies.[Joseph Dudley review from Science Fiction Studies 1992.] an anthology featuring the fictional work of authors such as William Gibson, John Shirley, Samuel R. Delany, Don DeLillo, Kathy Acker, and Harold Jaffe, as well as non-fiction by writers such as Jean Baudrillard and Jacques Derrida.[McCaffery, Larry, Ed. Storming the Reality Studio Durham: Duke University Press, 1991. ()] Other notable anthologies are (1993) and After Yesterday's Crash: The Avant-Pop Anthology (1997).[ After Yesterday's Crash: The Avant-Pop Anthology. NY: Penguin Books, 1997. ()]
Awards and honors
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Judge, Electronic Literature Organization's Fiction Contest, May 2001.
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Guest-of-Honor, Death Equinox, Denver, September 1999.
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Guest-of-Honor, Readercon, Boston, April 1996.
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Pioneer Award from Science Fiction Research Association, 1994.
[for essay "Towards the Theoretical Frontiers of 'Fiction:' From Metafiction and Cyberpunk through Avant-Pop" (with Takayuki Tatsumi), SF Eye. 12 (Summer 1993):43-50.]
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National Endowment for the Humanities Research Award, Tokyo, Summer 1992. Title of Project: "Japanese and American Postmodernist Interactions"
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Guest-of-Honor at Volgacon 91: A Conference of Cyberpunk and Recent Soviet Science Fiction, Volgogrand, Russia, September 1991.
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Meritorious Performance and Professional Promise Award, San Diego State University, 1986, 1988, 1990.
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Pushcart Prize Nominee for Non-Fiction
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Selected as Fulbright Lecturer to P.R. China, Beijing Foreign Studies University, 1988–1990.
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Fiction Judge, Los Angeles Times Book Prize, 1986.
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Outstanding Young Men of America Award, 1980.
References in pop culture and legacy
McCaffery is briefly mentioned in
Raymond Federman's novel
The Twofold Vibration,
[Federman, Raymond. The Twofold Vibration. Green Integer. 2000. ()] and is mentioned throughout William T. Vollmann's book
Imperial.
[Vollmann, William T., Imperial. Viking, 2009 ()] He has also been quoted in an article in
The New Yorker about David Foster Wallace's legacy.
He created a theory of media/visual studies about the relation between memory, narrative, and sexuality called "Avant-Porn," as claimed in his introduction to Michael Hemmingson's 2000 anthology, WTF: The Avant-Porn Anthology.[see http://spinelessbooks.com/mccaffery/dustdevil/index.html] a true account.["Dust Devil" (critifictional introduction) In Michael Hemmingson, ed., What the Fuck: The Avant-Porn Anthology. NY: Soft Skull Press, 2001, pp. i–xi. ()]
McCaffery is also author of the popular best of list The . This list was written in response to Modern Library 100 Best Novels list (1999), which McCaffery saw as "being way, way out of touch with the nature and significance of 20th century fiction".[ American Book Review, September/October 1999, Volume 20, Issue 6. (http://www.litline.org/abr/issues/volume20/issue6/abr100.html)][McCaffery's 100 and explanation at Spineless Books (http://www.spinelessbooks.com/mccaffery/100/index.html)]
Selected bibliography
Books of interviews
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Some Other Frequency: Interviews with Innovative American Authors (1995)
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Across the Wounded Galaxies: Interviews with Contemporary American Science Fiction Authors (1990)
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Alive and Writing: Interviews with American Authors of the 1980s with Sinda Gregory (1987)
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Anything Can Happen: Interviews with Contemporary American Novelists with Tom LeClair (1983)
Scholarly books
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The Metafictional Muse: The Work of Robert Coover, Donald Barthelme and William H. Gass (1982)
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Postmodern Fiction: A Bio-Bibliographical Guide Editor (1985)
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The Vineland Papers: Critical Takes on Pynchon's Novel with co-editors Geoffrey Green and Donald Greiner (1994)
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Federman: From A to X-X-X-X - A Recyclopedic Narrative with co-editors Thomas Hartl, and Doug Rice (1998)
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Avant-Crit: On Contemporary Literature and Culture (2024)
Fiction anthologies
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After Yesterday's Crash: The Avant-Pop Anthology. NY: Penguin Books, 1997. ()
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. Boulder: Black Ice Books, 1993. ()
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Storming the Reality Studio Durham: Duke University Press, 1991. ()
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Expelled from Eden: A William T. Vollmann Reader with co-editor Michael Hemmingson (2004)
See also
External links
