Cultural studies has always been indebted to the analysis of how everyday experience can be made sense of in cultural texts. While during the past decades the focus has been increasingly shifted to media texts, the book has not been given much attention. This article argues for a reintegration of popular fiction into the research agenda of cultural studies, claiming that the genre of 'ladlit' may serve as a challenging cultural locus where gendered identity scripts are negotiated, constructed and deconstructed. Based on the premise that popular fiction both shapes and reflects on changing conceptualizations of gender, fatherhood and family life, the article analyses how the masculinity scripts of the New Man and the New Lad are drawn upon in the construction of identity, and how these two scripts are rearticulated and deconstructed with a specific focus on the notion of fatherhood.
In the 1990s, the male confessional novel, most prominently represented by Nick Hornby (»High Fidelity«), but also by writers such as Tim Lott (»White City Blue«) and Mike Gayle (»My Legendary Girlfriend«), articulated the structure of feeling of the male generation in their late twenties/early-to-mid-thirties. The book presents the advent of the male confessional novel in a fresh and yet critical light, challenging the feminist claim that the genre should be understood as a backlash against feminism and a relapse into sexism. By applying an eclectic theoretical framework, ranging from Raymond Williams to Anthony Giddens, Judith Butler and Jacques Derrida, the study illustrates why the male confessional novel is too complex a phenomenon to be solely interpreted in terms of retrosexism. It convincingly shows how the multitude of postmodern gender scripts adds to the crisis of identity and to the problematic nature of clearly defined gender relationships.
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