Minimalist/Maximalist Fiction

The terms “minimalist fiction” and “maximalist fiction” began to be used by writers and critics in the late twentieth century to describe opposing impulses or trends within postmodern American fiction. Minimalist fiction, or minimalism, denotes short works of fiction that combine a terse style and deliberate economy of means with ordinary, even mundane subject matter. The short stories of Raymond Carver, Ann Beattie, Mary Robison, Amy Hempel, Frederick Barthelme, Bobbie Ann Mason, Tobias Wolff, Jayne Anne Phillips, and Richard Ford, among others, have been associated with this style. The term “maximalist fiction,” or maximalism, meanwhile, denotes fictional works, particularly novels, that are unusually long and complex, are digressive in style, and make use of a wide array of literary devices and techniques. Among the novelists associated with this style are David Foster Wallace, Jonathan Franzen, Richard Powers, Rick Moody, William T. Vollmann, and, from a slightly older generation, Thomas Pynchon, Don DeLillo, and Paul West. In their separate ways, both minimalism and maximalism have been explained as responses to the declining relevance of literary fiction in a cultural landscape dominated by newer media such as television, video games, and the Internet.